A BRIEF COMMENT REGARDING THE POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

I've avoided making more than passing references to the Israel’s political situation in my narrative. My reports of our experiences on the 32-day cruise are intended to a BLOG, not a collection of travel essays. 

The "Webopedia" definition of Blog is:  

(n.) Short for Web log: a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

I do not feel qualified to do extensive analysis of the politics of the regions we traveled through, but after writing the blog entries on our excursions from Port Said and Ashdod there were good reasons to insert a word or two about what I actually observed. I'd like to put my experiences into some perspective. 

During our 5 hour-excursion from Port Said the security procedures as well as the carefully monitored narrative from our Egyptian tour guide seemed just annoying. After we got home from the trip, I came to realize that the Ismailia excursion was more than a just a stressful travel experience. Our two days in Israel during the two days after Port Said on this cruise were calm, safe, and really quite relaxing. I reflected on Egypt and Israel that we might have been seeing the devolution of Egypt and perhaps more alarming indications of Israel going down the same road.

The guide on our excursion from Ashdod across Israel to the Dead Sea was in his late 20s. He said he had Palestinian friends who he has hung out with for years. He insisted that the outside world's view of the conflict within Israel was not reflective of the actual situation as he experiences it. Palestinians and Jews were not at all at each other’s throats he insisted. I wondered what the Palestinians would say, especially those with relatives in the West Bank or Gaza.

On our drive on the alternative route through the Negev we passed some towns with predominant mosques. The Israeli Christian and Muslim Arabs have been obliged to live in towns that had considerably fewer amenities than in the new "Jewish towns" the government now was building to encourage urban commuters to move south. The tour guide said that the Arabs in the region were upset by this. Ya think? The Israeli government is essentially bribing middle class and professional Jews to move from Tel Aviv to districts where non-Jews have representation in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. I couldn't help thinking that China has been doing the same thing for years in Tibet.

The Israeli nomads in the Negev have houses with water and sanitation that were built for them by the Israeli government. These towns appeared pretty basic. The Arabs are upset that their grazing lands are being taken away from them. They claim that the government has not provided shopping centers and parkland for them such as the new Jewish towns are getting. Israel insists that the Arabs in the Negev still own their land and can raise their flocks as before. The Bedouins say that isn't true. The new towns are being built on grazing land they have been using for millennia. They are afraid that their rights to live their traditional lives are in jeopardy as the area gets urbanized. It should be noted that there were only a few Arab towns where both Christian and Muslim Arabs both lived, and of course the two communities were separate within those villages.

I can imagine how the Palestinians must feel. Their situation is probably much worse. Their land is occupied in their eyes, and they have much to support that contention. Our guides in Israel never mentioned the Jewish settlements in the West Bank or the onerous security wall. It is deemed necessary by Israel to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, but Palestinian communities are being torn apart and people are prevented by the barriers from going to school and work. Families are separated.

There may be an eventual accommodation for the West Bank, but the Gaza Strip seems to be in a much more difficult situation. We drove south from Ashdod to within a few miles of the Gaza Strip. I must say without looking at the map I couldn't tell how close we were until the guide pointed out how most of the area we were passing through had been evacuated a few years ago as the Katyusha rockets fell randomly. They were still falling from time to time! I was more amazed when we heard the same thing from the guide on the excursion to Acre the next day. He said that the entire population of Haifa lived in bomb shelters for the months of the 2014 conflict. The guide called it, “The Recent War”. Israel and the Middle East in general seem always at war or just between wars.

I could see how these guides thought that the rest of the world doesn't understand Israel's motivations. It's kind of like the contributions for a ham and egg breakfast: the hen is involved but the pig is committed. (Maybe my mention of pork is ill advised when speaking of Jews and Muslims.) Keeping with the analogy though, we know that the USA is definitely involved but Israel is committed. We in the West really don't understand what it is like to live in Israel. The constant dangers are real. Most citizens of Israel are officially in the military through middle age. The entire population is prepared for armed conflict at any time. There have been a number of all-out wars with neighboring countries as we all know. There continues to be the danger of random rockets launched from the Palestinian territories or Syria falling just about anywhere in the country. Still there must be a solution, even after a few thousand years of conflict.

It should be repeated that both Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel and are much better off for it. Jordan remains relaxed as far as its relations with Israel is concerned. The Egyptians have turned their anger within themselves. The fear of terrorism in all three countries continues, perhaps stronger than ever in Egypt where the Sinai is increasingly out of control. The Palestinians in the West Bank and more so in the Gaza Strip are left slowing twisting in the wind. Egypt’s government talks about modifying or even abolishing the treaty with Israel, but I suspect this is more for internal consumption. But the treaty has provided a level of peace. Breaking it would not be good.

I'm afraid that Israel is dealing with increasingly intractable internal conflicts. The current politics are pitting the leadership against itself. It’s kind of like in the USA but with much more hollering and bizarre possibly self-destructive compromises to keep the current Israeli administration intact but with arguably worse consequences for humanity. Israel appears to have less ability to deal reasonably with their citizen Palestinian and Arab minorities, much less with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. To quote the philosopher, Rodney King, "Why can't everyone get along?"

Now back to finishing a final entry to my blog, a short description of our visit to a “modern” site (actually medieval but modern for this part of the world) before we ended the cruise and started our journey home to Colorado.

MB 6/20/2015