What is going on in the Middle East ?
A guide for the confused
This course, made up of five sessions, seeks to examine and so understand what is going on in the Middle East, with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. As we watch from a distance as trauma after tragedy unfold, it is so easy to get lost in the bewildering changes that strike from day to day, and suffer the common conclusion that ‘it’s crazy, it makes no sense at all.’ Taking a step back from the daily horrors and disturbing developments, this course is designed to encourage a more careful, more systematic, more evidenced analysis of the current period in Middle East and world history. Whilst the focus is on the crucible of Israel-Palestine question, this cannot be understood without a broader consideration of the wider Middle East and beyond.
As an introduction we’ll focus on Israel-Palestine through four different approaches – law, politics, sociology, and war and peace studies - following a general introduction to the modern history of the region. These approaches will also, in turn, allow us to pick out some details in four different issues which are commonly asked about the Middle East. Thus, after the historical sketch in the first session which addresses the question “Who started the war ?”, we’ll look at :
2. ‘What is genocide ? Is there a genocide ?’ International law, the laws of war, humanitarian law, and the Gaza wars.
3. ‘What’s Zionism ? Who are Zionists ? What does Israel (and its supporters) want ?’ Ideologies of nationalism, colonialism and international order.
4. ‘Who are Hamas ? What’s Hezbollah ? Where is Palestine ?’ A sociology of nationalism, colonialism and international order.
5. ‘Will the horrors ever end ?’ War and peace studies of ceasefires, settlements and the peace agreements.
Whilst these and other questions are the guiding questions of the course, the main educational question of the course is that of how do we best go about studying complex social-political problems.
Seminar 1 :
These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad.
In this first session we shall highlight, we divide the session into two parts. The first opens with some general questions and problems in history and the second part turns to a sketch of modern history of Middle East, especially Israel-Palestine. We consider and discuss the following:
“These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad.”
Title of session, from Macbeth, expresses real difficulty of dealing with traumatic or tragic events, so how do we begin examining the horrors of the continuing conflict ?
Part 1 : how do we start ?
Sequence of typical reaction to the horrors most often lead to no clearer comprehension let alone explanation.
Truth is first casualty of war
Importance of history and historical analysis; problem if (a) we take things at face value and (b) constant bombardment with ‘news’ and information which actually stops us from making sense.
Stories and history as “meaning makers”.
So what kinds of stories ? What kind of evidence or material ?
Briefly review history as
“One damn thing after another …”
Chronology, genealogy, lists of people, lists of events …
Origin
Result, outcome
Experience
Moral, morality tale
Destiny
Introduce a couple of concepts that my help us in any historical analysis:
Braudel’s notions of time and periodisation - epochs, generational, chronicler’s.
And, the problematics of Heraklitus (stepping in same river twice) and the ship of Theseus or grandfather’s axe.
Some reflections on tragedy in culture, in theatre, in history.
Making history but not in circumstances of our own choosing. Tragedy of Macbeth; Oedipus. Structure, agency.
Part 2 : Empire, war and ‘peace’.
Use a sequence of maps to show evolution of modern Middle East, incl. ethnic, linguistic, administrative and political composition
Briefly sketch and survey,
1917 Balfour Declaration
1919 Paris Treaties (Sevres) & Covenant of the League of Nations (Article 22) 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
1937 Palestine Royal Commission [‘Peel Commission’] (Cmd 5479, 1937).
1938 Palestine Partition Commission Report [Woodhead Report]. (Cmd. 5854, 1938)
1947 United Nations Partition Plan
1948 Israel Independence, Palestinian ‘nakba’ or catastrophe
Use a sequence of maps to show evolution and division of modern Israel and Palestine . Ask,
Who started the war ? ………
What started the war ? ….
which war ? … just one war …
‘who’ ? who is who ? …
How do we address such questions ?
What counts as evidence, what kind of evidence ?
Sources
Below are listed the principal sources of material directly used or cited in the first seminar“Among the calamities of War may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.”
Samuel Johnson, The Idler, no. 30, November 11, 1758.
“God is not averse to deceit in a just cause.”
Aeschylus (Fragm. Incert, xi). c.500BCE
“History is just one damn thing after another …”
attr. Arnold Toynbee [Toynbee actually meant the opposite; history had a pattern, which could be discerned]
“So, like savages before their gods, they worship facts. And in return, the facts hit them like hailstones. Life is just one damned fact after another. They turn to collecting facts—laying them down—making “Outlines” of every real and fancied fact in the universe, until “truth” becomes an endless succession of stepping-stones that have a way of disappearing into the bog as soon as they are passed over. . .”
Max Plowman, The Adelphi, 1932 December
Fernand Braudel “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 32:2 2009. pp. 171-203
“Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river.”
(Plato, Cratylus. 360BCE)
“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”
(Plutarch, Theseus. 35BCE)
“the vulnerability of human life; the value of facing the limits of our control with courage; and the powerful, sometimes inescapable, effects of our decisions.“ (Scodel 2010, p.7)
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
K. Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852
‘… it is horrible how we are circumstanced …”
T Hardy Jude the obscure
Macbeth Act 5 Sc 5
There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Patrick Stewart [Rupert Gould, 2010 film]
Ian McKellen masterclass {Explaining the final soliloquy]
Maps :
Ethnic composition of the Middle East Decline of Ottoman Empire, 1774-1914
Vilayet of late Ottoman empire
Syke-Picot agreement, 1916
UN Partition Plan, 1947
Actual partition 1947 & 1949
Oslo Accords 1993-1995, Areas A, B & C
Population distribution, 1946 to present. Treaty and other texts :
Treaty and other texts :
1917 Balfour Declaration
1923 Treaty of Lausanne
1937 Palestine Royal Commission [‘Peel Commission’] (Cmd 5479, 1937).
1938 Palestine Partition Commission Report [Woodhead Report]. (Cmd. 5854, 1938)
