Close to half a million Syrians have died in the Syrian Civil war since 2011. In Aleppo alone, since 2012, over 100,000 Syrians have been killed. As of 2015, the UN puts the estimate of civilians killed by the Syrian regime at 250,000. Other estimates range from 150,960 to 470,000.¹

More Arabs have been killed by Bashar Al-Assad since 2011 than by Israel since 1948.

Imagine you are among the first settler colonial humans to discover extraterrestrial life. You have landed somewhere in a distant planet, disembarked, and were going about your daily tasks as you encounter the first signs. Some seemingly sentient, intelligent creature approaches you. It looks different, nothing like you or anyone you've seen, not even like a reptile or sea creature. It approaches.

You might be afraid--you have no means of communicating with this creature. Your first thought is to reassure it: "I come in peace," you could proclaim... not that it would understand.

Since its beginnings, the Arab-Israeli Conflict has been through several phases of distinctive characteristic foreign policies, political attitudes, and strategies. Through a number of monumental defining events—including the major wars—shifts in policies, strategies, and attitude took place, marking transition between these phases. In this essay, I argue that the climate of the Arab-Israeli Conflict can be characterized by four historic phases after an initial period of indecision: Arab Nationalism and Defiance, Resistance and Refusal, Palestinian Armed Resistance, and then a Phase of Contradictions, starring two Arab camps with a widening gap, one entering the Peace, Negotiation, and Reconciliation phase, and the other entering the Islamic Resistance phase.

The Palestine Question was a concern to the Middle East and International Community since the 1920s. The Arab response to the Zionist movement wad under debate in the period, and was first solidified in 1948 with the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the Arab War the next day.

Prelude

I have been thinking about this one for a while. You see, I am very interested in regional politics ("region" here comes from the Latin "to Middle East"...), and I like to read about it in as many places I could, including blog posts of course, and I often comment when I feel compelled to share or add.

This took a good portion of my energy for the past month, and discusses the history of political development, and its lack thereof, in Jordan. It is rather long, but nevertheless, if you have a comment or something to say, then at least more than the abstract.

Abstract