The New Middle East that Never Was

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

How lucky the Middle East was, I thought as I re-read my International Spectator piece of 1996, when the worst nightmares of Arab opinion leaders were connected to the political risks involved in what seemed like an emerging new regional division of labour brought about by a peace treaty between Israel and its Arab neighbours. A substantial part of the Arab intellectual and political elites at the time feared that their countries would lose in relative terms, compared to Israel, if a comprehensive settlement of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian and broader ArabIsraeli conflict were to lead to an economically integrated “New Middle East”. They would not have had to fear this, as we know today. Arab and Israeli leaders did not complete the peace process (of which I spoke with some optimism in that article) and made few efforts to convince their publics of the advantages of a settlement; the United States and the European Union were not willing or capable enough to push it forward. It is not important here to go on about the division of responsibilities for that failure. Certainly, the factors I mentioned in 1996 all played a role: the prevailing zero-sum logic (which lets actors consciously forego absolute gains if they fear that their adversary may gain more in relative terms); mutual mistrust; lack of leadership in Israel and in the Arab polities. Arguably, they should not have harboured these fears. Settling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as well as the territorial dispute between Israel and Syria would certainly have created economic opportunities all over the region, however unequally divided. It would have increased competition, which would have been a challenge for some countries more than others. It would also probably have triggered economic and (some) political reforms that could have put statesociety relations in countries like Syria or Egypt on a new basis. There is a strong argument to be made that such reforms, the necessity of which was clearly visible even in 1996, would have saved these and other countries from the revolts and turbulences of 2011 onward. We do not know, of course.