[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by Irenicus

^Um, no.

Huh!? yes...

Originally Posted by Irenicus

1) If you count being the stage for the Hellenistic kingdoms' internecine warfare and massive Roman-Persian wars as peace. The Arabs only found it so easy to ride in and take everything because Rome (well, Constantinople) and Persia just finished another one of those sack-every-damned-village all out wars they liked to fight every once in a while.

First of all Persians are not Arabs, and before the Arab conquest of Persia, the hardly had anything to do with the region.

Now during the phoenician and greek colonization of mediterranean there was hardly any conflict, rather peaceful and cooperative trade, between the two races and the celts of continental Europe.

The hellenistic period had no conficts, insurgencies and the like in the middle east, the war was between Persians and Greeks, and this persisted during the successor states.

After (not during) the Roman conquest, the only rebellions in the region were from jewish and these are mainly supported by biblical archeologists, which occasionally have claimed really wild theories.

During the Byzantine era, and post Islam, there were two Arab-Persian invasions, but the two regions enjoyed enjoyed better relationships after the crusades and turkish and mongol invasions.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

2) One conqueror a generation, often more than one a generation battling each other for supremacy. Even the Mongols destroying everything between Bukhara and Baghdad didn't bring peace, it just means localized Turko-Mongol warlords fighting for scraps within the decade.

East of the Red Sea, the empires were very stable and peaceful internally. Of course during power struggles there were battles, but that occured once per century or two, not per generation.

West of the Red Sea the situation wasn't that peaceful, particularly in modern Morocco... nonetheless, we can not even begin to compare to the amount of bloodshed that was occurring at the same period in Europe and the Far East. Plus the situation got a lot better after Ottomans conquered them too.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

3) A very short timeline in comparison, collapsed spectacularly anyway, didn't account for insurgencies and "internal" chaos (like in, say, Iran or Egypt), and left the seeds of current woes. Oh, and the Anglo-Afghan wars.

I agree that its collapse was spectacular, less so than the everyday war the region is suffering after it. Now in general, modern conquerors (ottomans, english and french) of arabs (and not persians) saw less infighting and rebellions, compared to the periods that they ruled themselves. As for Egypt, I guess you are refering to the Suez Crisis, and that was almost 50 years after the English left the region.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

Being the crossroads of cultures, empires, and migrating peoples, and now the world's oil well, the Middle East has never really known peace. Perhaps the longest stretches of peaceful periods would be during the Ottoman hegemony, and that's only when they and Safavid Persia left each other alone. Though perhaps you may also call Achaemenid Persia a relatively peaceful time in the heartlands (which is quite the opposite of what the Macedonians did to the place).

This is a factor, but I think that all cushitic cultures have a tendency towards infighting, and unless under foreign rule or a nationalist-socialist regime (like Ba'ath or Israel), there turn on eachother.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

I also find it very strange that you'd consider Israel an occupying power. Even if it's young in comparison, it's locally based and its citizen don't exactly have anywhere else to go. It's here to stay.

Legally Israel occupys Palestine (from Jordan), Gaza strip (from Egypt) and Golan heights (from Syria)... Historically though the presence of Jews (religiously, and not strictly racially) in Levant was not more numerous than Poland, Germany, Spain, etc. Until of course they were massacred.

Anyway, after the second world war, the main problem is that the region was ruled by either Nationalist-Socialist parties (Israel, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen), religious fanatics or bloodthirsty tribal lords. So with or without oil, it's natural that they will kill each other. Plus having two nuclear powers in the region with extremely aggressive foreign policies and pursuing racial, religious and ideological purity, that rather kill a few hundred or thousand people in order to win an election is not particularly good news for the future of the region.