86059 - Transcription: High Strategy Analysis in the Middle East

N. Lygeros
Translatedfrom the Greek by Athina Kehagias

If we examine things in the Middle East rationally and observe, not merely the crisis taking place right now, but over a long period of time, even if we begin from 1948 onwards, we see the following which is obviously incomprehensible to most. The first war was between Israel and the Arab countries. Therefore, it was all the Arab countries against Israel, clearly stating that it should not exist, even if there was the famous resolution in the United Nations. After this phase, this war, we moved into another phase which was now merely an alliance of Arab countries, but not all Arab countries against Israel. This was large enough to be a problem, but in actual fact the matter had already changed, as they were no longer all against, but some who constituted an alliance. After those wars, which resulted in defeats and then of course we also had the Oslo I, II and Abraham Accords, what actually happened? The countries that were very close withdrew from this fight, it was no longer a battle of the neighborhood, because slowly but surely countries which were initially hostile, became neutral and even with diplomatic relations, we are of course thinking of Egypt and then Jordan and finally we’ll see what follows. Then we only had, we are now talking about the intifada, what we would call, Palestine against Israel, and now this issue has changed again, is that we are actually talking more about the Gaza area under the control of Hamas, therefore we are talking about things which have changed after 2006, and which are not under the PLO or Fatah influence. Consequently you see that this reduction in the range of the struggle is of course also related to the development of relationships. So in the region they no longer want the same things they wanted prior. The players who however do want the same, are not so much in favor of Gaza and the Palestinian people, they are more against Israel and of course those players are Iran and Qatar. Therefore, they are players who are at a distance, who are not neighbors, they are also playing with another religion, because we are talking more about Shiites and not Sunnis. Russia also plays of course at a distance in relation to Syria, but of course China as well, but what matters is that the huge struggle which had begun, has slowly shrunk and we have reached a level where we are talking more about a terrorist organization rather than regarding a confrontation between communities, entities, states. It is good to keep this in mind in order to interpret the data correctly and so we can see how the European Union and America play their role within this context to see that all this belongs to a Rimland which comes into conflict with Heartland.