xvi INTRODUCTION
in some of the self-serving explanations for the region’s problems as developed, notably,
by Islamists, ranging from Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, to the current leaders of Iran and al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden. As with any
one-size-fits-all accounting of complex historical forces, this finger-pointing at West-
ern treachery absolves the people of the Middle East—if not their rulers, who are often
portrayed as Western dupes—of all responsibility for their own plight, making it that
more difficult for them to shoulder the burden of creating a better future.
The documents reproduced in this book, along with the essays placing them in
historical context, tell the stories of political leaders and nations grappling with the
results of their own actions and those of others. Because of the focus on events and
conflicts relating to politics, the documents primarily consist of speeches, treaties, offi-
cial agreements, and reports generated by leaders and public institutions. Such texts
tell only part of the story behind a series of events, but they often express the hopes
and expectations—some fulfilled, some not—essential to the story.
The issues of terrorism and the advocacy of extremist religious or ideological views
provide a backdrop to much of the material in The Contemporary Middle East.Of
course, the use of violence to advance a cause is not unique to the Middle East, or
even to recent history, but in the contemporary, world violent acts of terrorism have
become particularly associated with that region. Within living memory, the Middle
East has been plagued by the violence of Jewish gangs fighting British mandatory
authorities in Palestine before World War II, airplane hijackings in the 1970s, and
suicide bombings in Lebanon in the 1980s and in Israel and the occupied territories
starting in the 1990s, and more recently the daily carnage of sectarian killings in Iraq
under U.S. occupation. In some cases, the violence helped the perpetrators achieve
their goals; for example, the British tired of the attacks against them in Palestine, open-
ing the way for the creation of Israel as a Jewish state. Other uses of terrorism and
violence have been less successful, notably, the failure of the Palestinians to achieve
either their previous goal of driving Israel into the sea or their later goal of an inde-
pendent Palestinian state.
In a similar vein, oil also features in the background of several chapters. Since the
first major oil strike in Iran in 1908, international reliance on abundant oil and nat-
ural gas has been a contributing factor in the Middle East’s frequent bouts of turmoil.
Britain’s conflict with Iran in the early 1950s (after Tehran nationalized a British oil
company) and the Persian Gulf crisis and war of 1990–1991 are but two examples in
which nations have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the supply of Middle East-
ern oil.
This book focuses on a range of countries and territories in the Middle East that
have seen some of the greatest turmoil of the past century. As might be expected, Israel
features prominently in several chapters simply because the conflict between Jews and
Arabs has been a dominant factor in the region for almost the entire period since World
War I. The Palestinians are the other half of the equation that for some four decades
has been called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a cycle of violence interrupted occasion-
ally by failed diplomacy, that neither side seems able to win or bring to a conclusion.
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey are the other countries on which the vol-
ume concentrates. Each has experienced chronic political turmoil and outright war.
Although on the periphery of the Middle East, Afghanistan has experienced the
types of foreign intervention, sectarian conflict, and ideological extremism common to