The Middle East can be considered as the part of the planet that has the most conflicts, with emphasis on the divergences between Arabs and Jews. Fact that began with the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1947.
In 1988, Palestine and Israel started their participation in peace agreements. In 1993, for example, Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli prime minister at that time, and Yasser Arafat reached a peace agreement.
This agreement had an interim nature, giving self-government to the Palestinians over the occupied territories, a fact that allowed for a ceasefire. However, this was not enough, as the attacks intensified in the region, triggered by dissatisfaction on the part of Palestinian and Israeli radical groups. The problem was compounded by the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Orthodox Jewish student opposed to Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
Yitzhak was succeeded by Shimon Peres, who continued with the peace process initiated. In 1996, Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority with a high number of votes (88.1%).
The formation of a Palestinian state did not take place completely, given that military control and foreign affairs were still the responsibility of the Israelis. In the late 90's, conflicts became frequent due to the initiative of Palestinian and Israeli radical groups, which hindered the process of formation of the State of Palestine.
Conflicts lasted until the early 2000s, with a significant increase in the incidence of attacks and armed confrontations, mainly suicide attacks by the Palestinians. Thus, Israel quickly responded to the offensives with several attacks on the Palestinian territory, causing the deaths of terrorists and civilians.
Faced with the bleak picture, the Security Council of the UN (United Nations) approved and proposed, through the United States, the creation of a Palestinian State. Even with these initiatives, the current geopolitical framework is still quite troubled, marked by a high number of armed conflicts and attacks. The differences seem to be endless, given that the Israelis blame Palestinians for not punishing extremists within the territory of their operations. The Palestinians, on the other hand, blame the Israelis for further aggravating the situation by responding in an armed way to terrorist attacks by their extremists. In short, it seems that this conflict is endless, given such intolerance externalized by both sides.
It is not possible to highlight conflicts in the Middle East without mentioning the issue of Iraq. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait with the pretext that that country was not complying with the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) rules on the volume of production of Petroleum. Offensive interfered by the United States, with UN approval. Thus began the Gulf War, which lasted from January 17 to February 28, 1991, ending with the defeat of the Iraqis, frustrating the plans of leader Saddam Hussein. This war left a balance of hundreds of thousands of deaths, mainly of soldiers and citizens of Iraq. Despite being defeated, the dictator leader was not removed from office, on the other hand, the United States instituted an economic embargo, a fact that intensified social problems in Iraq.
There is another geopolitical problem involving Iraq, the aspiration of the Kurdish people to obtain their political and territorial independence. In the year 1991, the Kurds tried to seek their independence from Iraq, but were aggressively stopped by Iraqi forces that they carried out a real massacre, thousands of Kurds were killed, in addition, approximately 500,000 fled to the mountains in the region. This ended only with the intervention of the UN, which created a protective barrier in favor of these people.
In 2001, on September 11, the United States suffered terrorist attacks, thus the then US President George W. Bush asked the UN for approval to invade Iraq, a request that was not approved by most members of the organization. Despite this, the United States invaded Iraq, and, in March 2003, started a war, causing the death of more than 100,000 people and the surrender of that country. In addition, the Americans removed Saddam Hussein from the presidency of Iraq. Despite the end of Saddam's dictator government, conflicts still raged for seven years. Only in August 2010 the US army withdrew from Iraqi territory, however, about 50,000 soldiers will remain to perform training.
There is also, in the Middle East, the struggle for possession of hydrographic basins and groundwater, which has motivated the emergence of outbreaks of armed conflict, an example of this is the Jordan River basin, disputed between Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. There is also a fierce dispute over the Tigris and Euphrates river basins by Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
By Eduardo de Freitas
Graduated in Geography
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/geografia/geopolitica-oriente-medio.htm