In case there are any lingering doubts about who is interested in peace in this region, this should clear everything up.
Israel offered Syria the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria reducing its ties to Iran. Syria, of course, has rejected the Israeli peace offering.
Israel should therefore ignore any further U.N. resolutions regarding a return to the "pre-1967" borders because there is no serious partner for Israel to make peace with--in Syria or amongst the Palestinians.
Israel attempted to comply and the Syrians swatted the offer away. This is predictable and perhaps even sensible from the Syrian perspective. They are benefiting greatly from their alliance with Iran, the rising power in the Middle East, and likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. They just recently reached an historic arms agreement with Russia who is once again extending her tentacles into the Middle East. Syria sees herself and her benefactors as the strong horse.
Bashar Assed has clearly wagered that he and Syria's allies (Iran, Hezbollah, etc.) have the upper hand. With the United States behaving in an intractable and irresponsible manner toward its stalwart ally, Israel, these players in the region sense weakness.
And weakness in this part of the world means war.
This is yet another Israeli gesture in a long line of gestures that has gone unappreciated by the West and been rejected by Israel's enemies. From the 1993 Oslo Accords to the 2000 Camp David Summit where Ehud Barak literally offered ninety-eight percent of the West Bank to Arafat to the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel extends the metaphorical olive branch and receives a quite literal hand grenade.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Progress of Delay
Fried Camel has been on a more or less unannounced hiatus for the past few weeks due to impending deadlines for two of our papers. For the History of the Ottoman Empire seminar that our class took last semester, I'm currently writing about the British relationship with the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th Century until the eve of the First World War.
It is with great candor that I admit the excruciating tedium with which this paper is being written. Of all the issues or topics that one could study in the Middle East, I personally find the Ottoman Empire to be quite dull. They were around for nearly six hundred years but had very little impact on the world. The Greeks left us great philosophers and early incarnations of our own political system that remain relevant some two thousand years later. The Romans gave the world the common derivative language of Latin which forms the basis of dozens of languages still in use today--ours chief among them.
The Ottomans gave us fez caps.
Truly, the only thing of great importance that I have been able to ascertain from the legacy of the Ottoman Empire is the composition of the modern Middle East following the Empire's collapse. The British and the French were able to carve the former Ottoman provinces up into mandates which then metastasized into nation states.
In essence, the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, unlike other truly great empires, is its death.
In time, perhaps the gifts of the Ottomans to the world will become more perceptible.
In the interim, their gift to me comes in the form of being required to write about them--a remarkably vapid gift that promises to continue draining valuable hours from my life.
It is with great candor that I admit the excruciating tedium with which this paper is being written. Of all the issues or topics that one could study in the Middle East, I personally find the Ottoman Empire to be quite dull. They were around for nearly six hundred years but had very little impact on the world. The Greeks left us great philosophers and early incarnations of our own political system that remain relevant some two thousand years later. The Romans gave the world the common derivative language of Latin which forms the basis of dozens of languages still in use today--ours chief among them.
The Ottomans gave us fez caps.
Truly, the only thing of great importance that I have been able to ascertain from the legacy of the Ottoman Empire is the composition of the modern Middle East following the Empire's collapse. The British and the French were able to carve the former Ottoman provinces up into mandates which then metastasized into nation states.
In essence, the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, unlike other truly great empires, is its death.
In time, perhaps the gifts of the Ottomans to the world will become more perceptible.
In the interim, their gift to me comes in the form of being required to write about them--a remarkably vapid gift that promises to continue draining valuable hours from my life.
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