IRAQ DISASTER: Salt Lake Tribune - The Middle East after Iraq will see more Islamist states

The Middle East after Iraq will see more Islamist states
Israeli historian Benny Morris is famous in his country for reopening the forgotten history of the expulsion of the Palestinians during the 1948 "war of independence" and deconstructing the Israeli myth that they freely chose to abandon their homes. By five years ago, however, he had lost faith in a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and was openly saying that everybody would have been better off in the long run if one side or the other had won a decisive victory in 1948. If Israel had conquered all of Palestine and expelled all the Palestinians in 1948, Morris wrote, "today's Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place, with a Jewish state between Jordan and the Mediterranean and a Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan. Alternatively, Arab success in the 1948 war, with the Jews driven into the sea, would have obtained the same, historically calming result. Perhaps it was the very indecisiveness of the geographical and demographic outcome of 1948 that underlies the persisting tragedy of Palestine." Well, of course, but most outcomes are indecisive. Like many knowledgeable people in the Middle East, Morris's mood was strikingly pessimistic even before the invasion of Iraq, but five years later the mood is darker still. Beyond forecasts of civil war in Iraq, however, there has been little effort to discern what the Middle East will actually look like after the troops go home. ....



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