V.

History

Civilization as we know it began in the Middle East. The cultivation of cereals, first undertaken in the Middle East around 8000 bc, led to the creation of the first settled communities with permanent dwellings. Large archaeological mounds called tells contain the remains of some of these communities. Tells have been found in present-day Turkey and throughout the Fertile Crescent, an ancient agricultural region containing parts of present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Jericho in the present-day West Bank and Çatal Hüyük in present-day Turkey are two of the best known of these sites.

The first civilizations—groups with complex, hierarchical political organizations—began about 3000 bc in the valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris and Euphrates. Civilizations grew out of the need to organize the distribution of water for irrigation and to protect the land around the rivers from floods. These developments improved agricultural yields and made economic diversification possible. Complex urban societies with codified legal systems, often centered on religious-based monarchies, evolved. Their rulers gained control of long-distance trade, which was especially important given the scarcity in the river valleys of mineral resources and of timber for building. Writing systems using hieroglyphs, pictorial characters representing recognizable objects, began as a means of facilitating administration. Alphabets with symbols representing sounds rather than objects evolved about 1500 bc.

A.

Mesopotamia and Egypt

The earliest civilizations in an area between the Tigris and Euphrates known as Mesopotamia (Greek for “between the rivers”; the area is now Iraq) were the Sumerians to the south and the Akkadians to the north. From about 2330 bc the Akkadians expanded southward, extending their control from Syria to the head of the Persian Gulf and east into Persia (now Iran). Two other dynasties, the Amorites and the Elamites, succeeded the Akkadians, and the area split into a number of smaller states including Assyria and Babylon. Hammurabi, the king of Babylonia during the first half of the 18th century bc, developed one of the earliest systematic collections of laws (see Code of Hammurabi). The Hittites, whose empire extended through much of present-day Turkey and into northern Mesopotamia by the 14th century bc, traded with their contemporaries in Greece. As a result of this trade, many Mesopotamian ideas reached Greece.

Egyptian civilization also began about 3000 bc when a single ruler united southern and northern Egypt. Egypt exhibited a greater degree of political continuity than Mesopotamia. There were no major foreign invasions or externally imposed changes of regime until the beginning of the 1st millennium bc. While Mesopotamian kings were often also priests, Egyptians believed their kings were gods who could control the waters of the Nile. The pyramids, richly treasured tombs in which kings were buried, serve as lasting symbols of this divine monarchy. The Great Pyramid at Giza, built during the middle of the 3rd millennium bc, remains among the most notable structures in the history of architecture. Over the centuries Egypt extended control south to mine the extensive gold deposits of Nubia (a region of southern Egypt and northern Sudan), and northeast toward present-day Syria.

B.

The Birth of Judaism

Late in the 2nd millennium bc the Aramaeans moved into present-day Syria, establishing the ancient country of Aram. They spoke a Semitic language (see Aramaic language) from which Hebrew and Arabic are derived. Other Semitic peoples, a confederation of Hebrew tribes called the Israelites, settled in the region of Palestine during the same time period (see Hebrews (people)). Israelite religion and institutions were shaped under Hebrew prophet and lawgiver Moses about 1300 bc and subsequently under Saul and David, the first two kings of ancient Israel, in the 11th and 10th centuries bc. The Israelites believed that they, the Jews, were the chosen people of their one God. They were the first ethnic and religious group to adopt monotheism. The region was attacked by Assyria in 722 bc and by Assyria’s successor, Babylonia, in 586 bc. On both occasions many thousands of Jews were forced into exile.

C.

Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires

In the 9th century bc the empire of the Assyrians expanded beyond Mesopotamia to include the entire Fertile Crescent region. It endured until 612 bc when the Babylonians and the Medes, a polytheistic tribal culture from the northeastern part of present-day Iran, conquered the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. In 550 bc Persian ruler Cyrus the Great overthrew the Medes and founded the Achaemenid dynasty. At the height of its rule under Darius I, the Persian Empire extended from northern Greece and present-day Libya in the west as far east as the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan. During this period another monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, developed in Persia. Its tolerance of Judaism and of the various polytheistic religions of the region helped maintain the empire's unity for the next two centuries. Now almost extinct, Zoroastrianism flourished for many centuries throughout Persia.

The conquests of Macedonian king Alexander the Great between 334 and 323 bc briefly united an area covering present-day Greece, Turkey, Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan prior to partitioning after World War I), Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. After his death the region remained a vast commercial and cultural area, often referred to as the Hellenistic world (from the Greek word Hellas, which means “Greece”). This Hellenistic Age, in which Greek became an international language, many new cities were founded, and Greek religion and arts blended with native ways, lasted until the Romans rose to power in the Mediterranean region at the beginning of the 2nd century bc. Roman general Pompey the Great had conquered the territory from the Mediterranean Sea to western Persia by 62 bc, and Egypt fell to Rome in 30 bc. The Parthians, an independent kingdom in present-day Iran and Afghanistan, blocked Roman attempts to advance further east. Jewish revolts against the Romans during the 1st and 2nd centuries ad led to exile and major migrations of Jews from Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia to other parts of the Roman world (see Jews: The Great Revolt).

D.

Early Christianity

Christianity began in Jerusalem as a Jewish sect that proclaimed Jesus Christ as the Messiah, or savior of the Jews. As the movement grew after the death of Jesus about ad 30, it separated from the Jewish faith. An early Christian missionary and theologian named Paul began to preach the new religion to the wider, non-Jewish world in the eastern Mediterranean, southwestern Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Conversion was gradual and piecemeal, but by the 2nd century ad Christianity had spread beyond the Middle East to parts of Europe and North Africa. The Romans, whose religion demanded emperor worship, perceived the new religion as a threat to their control. Romans persecuted Christians until the early 4th century when Roman emperor Constantine the Great converted to Christianity and established it as the official religion of the Roman Empire. By 600 most of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Fertile Crescent, as well as southern and western Europe and North Africa, was Christian.

However, differences over interpretation of the faith developed within the early church, prompting councils in the 4th and 5th centuries to define Christian doctrine. Communities that would not accept the councils' definitions formed separate churches. Some of these, such as the Coptic church in Egypt and the Nestorian church in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, still exist today. The split of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western segments in the 4th century and the fall of the Western section in the 5th century undermined the unity of Christianity. A split developed along regional lines between the church of Rome in the West and that of Byzantium (now İstanbul, Turkey) in the East. The two sides became the Catholic and Orthodox churches, respectively, because Eastern Christians would not accept Rome as the center of church authority. The split became permanent in the 11th century, when the Catholic church began to assert its claim to authority more vigorously.

E.

The Rise of Islam

Islam, the last of the three great monotheist religions, began with the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad at the beginning of the 7th century in Mecca and Yathrib (now Medina), both in present-day Saudi Arabia. Over the next century, Arab armies brought the faith as far west as Spain, as far north as the Black Sea, and as far east as the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan. In the process they defeated the Sassanids of Persia (see Persia: The Sassanids) and forced the Byzantines out of eastern Anatolia, the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and North Africa. In general, this expansion met with little resistance.

After the rule of the first four caliphs, or successors to the prophet, the political center of Islam moved away from the Arabian Peninsula, first to Damascus, Syria, from 661 to 750 under the Umayyad caliphate and then to the new city of Baghdād in Mesopotamia during the early years of the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258). The political unity of the Muslim world gradually disintegrated in the 9th and 10th centuries, but the region retained a considerable degree of cultural unity through a common legal and commercial system and a common language of literature, high culture, and religion. During this period local dynasties in Iran inspired a national cultural revival, keeping alive Persian traditions, including literature and court ceremonies, which influenced the Arab caliphates. Meanwhile the Fatimids, an Ismaili Shia caliphate with origins in North Africa, conquered Egypt and established the city of Cairo, from where they ruled all of North Africa, Palestine, and Syria until the late 12th century (see Caliphate: The Fatimid Dynasty and the Umayyads of Spain). The Seljuks, a Turkish dynasty from Central Asia that converted to Sunni Islam in the 10th century, expanded their control to Anatolia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria in the 11th century. They expanded the supremacy of Sunni Islam by founding theological colleges in most of the major cities. Graduates of these colleges staffed the political, religious, educational, and judicial institutions of the state.

F.

The Crusades

In the 11th century, European Christians began to challenge Muslim predominance in the Mediterranean, retaking Sicily and much of Spain by the mid-12th century. At the same time, the papacy inaugurated the Crusades, a series of largely unsuccessful efforts to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims. Initially the Crusaders established a number of small states on or near the Mediterranean coast: Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem, and Tripoli. Edessa returned to Muslim control in 1144, and the others had fallen to Kurdish Muslim leader Saladin by the time of the Third Crusade in 1189. Although the influence of the Crusades in the Arab world was slight, many of the European merchant communities established in the Crusader states remained intact after Muslims recaptured the region. These communities continually promoted trade between Europe and the Middle East.

G.

The Mongols and the Mamluks

The last nomadic group to migrate west from inner Asia, the Mongols, arrived in the 13th century (see Mongol Empire). By 1231 they had overrun Iran and Mesopotamia, and in 1258 they destroyed Baghdād, ending the caliphate of the Abbasids. Originally pagans, the Mongols soon embraced Sunni Islam and became its zealous defenders. The Mamluks, slaves who had advanced to high military and political posts in Egypt, halted the Mongol invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1260. Mamluk general Baybars I became sultan of Egypt, uniting Egypt and Syria into a single state for the next 250 years.

H.

The Ottoman Empire

Late in the 13th century, a Muslim warrior known as Osman began to lead successful raids against the Byzantine strongholds in western Anatolia. His followers, the Ottomans, extended control in all directions, forging an empire that would be the principal political force in the western Islamic world for 600 years. At its height in the second half of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire included southeastern Europe, Anatolia, Iraq, western Iran, Greater Syria, Egypt, the western Arabian Peninsula, and the coast of North Africa between Egypt and eastern Morocco. Further east the Ottomans' contemporaries and rivals the Safavids established a dynasty in Iran and Afghanistan between 1501 and 1722, imposing Twelver Shia Islam as the official religion and founding the modern Iranian state. Both the Ottomans and the Safavids ruled some of the most advanced and militarily and economically secure states of their time. In the early 18th century the Ottoman Empire began a long process of decline and decay, brought about by a combination of internal strife and external pressures from the rise of the European powers to economic, scientific, and political domination.

I.

European Interest

In the mid-18th century, as France and Britain fought for control of India, both took a strategic interest in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, which lay across the route between Europe and India. Britain had gained supremacy in India by 1763, but in 1798 French emperor Napoleon I attempted to establish a stronghold in Egypt from which to attack the British in India. The Battle of the Nile resulted in the defeat of France and Britain's continued supremacy in India, as well as renewed European interest in the Middle East. As industrialization progressed, first in Britain and then in other European nations, demand grew for both raw materials and markets for manufactured products. The Middle East became a source of grains and wool, as well as cotton in Egypt and Syria, silk in Lebanon, and tobacco in Anatolia and Iran. Overall, the value of European trade with the region increased tenfold during the 19th century.

At various times in the 19th century, the governments of Egypt, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire began to borrow on European money markets, almost always on disadvantageous terms. Partly as a result, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire went bankrupt in the 1870s. Bankruptcy was followed by the installation in local treasuries of European financial controllers who introduced austerity programs and tax increases to pay off the debt. These measures aroused strong local opposition, which in Egypt was followed by a British invasion in 1882. Although supposedly made to protect the ruler from his rebellious subjects, the invasion actually inaugurated a long period of foreign rule.

By the first decade of the 20th century, a variety of nationalist movements had come into being in the Ottoman Empire. Arab nationalism became popular among intellectuals in Greater Syria, while Armenian nationalism also grew after the massacres of Armenians in Anatolia in the 1890s. Zionism (the movement to reunite the Jewish people in Palestine) had begun to gain momentum in Europe, and the first waves of Jewish settlement in Palestine began in 1882. A Turanian movement stressing the unity and solidarity of the Turkish people from present-day Turkey eastwards through Central Asia was growing as well.

J.

World War I and Aftermath

In 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World War I (1914-1918) on the side of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria) against the Allied Powers (28 nations including Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States). In order to protect the oil installations of southwestern Iran and to preempt an Ottoman thrust toward the Persian Gulf, British Indian troops invaded southern Iraq in the first weeks of the war, eventually reaching Baghdād in March 1917. Syria and Palestine remained under Ottoman control until the last months of the war. Upon defeat by the Allies, the Ottoman Empire lost its Arab provinces and was confined to present-day Turkey.

Conflicting arrangements that the Allies had made among themselves and with others during the war complicated control of the Middle East after the war. In 1916 the Allies negotiated the Sykes-Picot agreement, which stated that rulership of the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire would be divided among Britain, France, Italy, and Russia after the war. Meanwhile, in 1915 and 1916 the British government promised Husein ibn Ali, the sharif of Mecca, the right to Arab independence in return for collaboration with the Allies against the Ottomans. However, the British left vague the precise areas where Arab independence would be recognized. Finally, the British promised their support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to win worldwide Jewish support for the war effort. The vagueness and potentially conflicting commitments of these agreements strained relationships among all the parties involved, particularly with regard to Palestine.

During various postwar peace conferences the idea of direct colonial rule over the former Arab provinces was discarded in favor of a mandate system. Under this system, members of the newly formed League of Nations were granted supervision of territories with varying degrees of independence. Five new mandate states were created: Britain took over Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan (now Jordan), while France took Syria and Lebanon. When the Allies attempted to parcel out parts of present-day Turkey, Turkish soldier Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) rallied national support and expelled French, Greek, and Italian forces from the country by 1922. Kemal signed the final postwar territorial settlement in 1923, and the Turkish republic, with Kemal as president, was proclaimed later that year. Turkey abolished the caliphate (an office assumed by Ottoman sultans) in 1924.

K.

Uprisings and Independence Movements

The new political order was widely contested after the war. The Arab states had been subject to Ottoman rule for centuries before European arrival. In many cases, what was anti-Ottoman sentiment soon became anti-European sentiment. In 1920, uprisings in Iraq against British rule compelled the British government to modify the mandate system by creating a provisional government. Iraq became formally independent in 1932. In Syria the French had considerable difficulty controlling a major national uprising from 1925 to 1927. Despite negotiations in 1938 for increased Syrian autonomy, independence was not achieved until 1946. Transjordan obtained qualified independence in 1928 and full independence in 1946. Lebanon became fully independent of France in 1943. Egypt, which had become a British protectorate in 1914, became an independent state in 1922. However, a large British military presence remained until 1954.

L.

The Birth of Israel and Ensuing Conflicts

During the early years of British-mandated Palestine, Jewish settlement increased. Jews formed 11 percent of the population of Palestine in 1922 and 29 percent in 1936. Arabs opposed British support of Zionism, and they started a revolt that lasted from 1936 to 1939. In an effort to appease the Arab world, Britain issued the White Paper of 1939, restricting Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews and providing for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within ten years. Britain's weakening commitment to Zionism, combined with the Holocaust during World War II (1939-1945)-in which German Nazis systematically murdered millions of European Jews-caused Jews in Palestine and worldwide to step up their demands for a Jewish state. In 1947 Britain decided to leave Palestine, and called on the United Nations (UN), the successor to the League of Nations, to make recommendations for the area’s future.

In November 1947 the United Nations resolved to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas, and Britain announced that it would leave the region by May 15, 1948. The Jews accepted the proposal, but the Arabs rejected it as a violation of their right to self-determination. Violence erupted and soon turned into full-scale civil war. In early 1948 Jewish guerrilla forces began terrorist attacks on Arab communities, forcing much of the Arab population to flee. When Israel was declared an independent Jewish state upon British withdrawal, forces from neighboring Arab countries joined the war against Israel. By the end of the fighting in 1949, Israel had substantially increased the size of its territory beyond the area granted to it by the UN partition, and about 900,000 Palestinians became refugees outside the state of Israel.

Arabs and Israelis failed to reach a comprehensive peace agreement, and additional wars followed. In 1956 Britain and France joined Israel against Egypt in a conflict over control of the Suez Canal (see Suez Crisis). Diplomatic intervention by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) helped end the conflict. Israel further expanded its territory by taking the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula (known collectively as the Occupied Territories) in the Six-Day War of 1967. In this conflict and in another in 1973, the two superpowers stepped up their involvement by supplying weapons, the United States to Israel and the USSR to the Arab nations (see Arab-Israeli War of 1973).

In October 1974 the Arab League recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a group founded in 1964 to work toward Palestinian nationhood, as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In addition, the United Nations granted the PLO observer status, meaning it could participate in UN deliberations but could not vote on resolutions. The 1978 Camp David Accords, under which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and the resulting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel of March 1979 removed Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, Israel did not reach peace agreements with the other Arab nations, and the future of other occupied regions remained undetermined. In 1987 a movement known as the intifada, a series of demonstrations, strikes, and riots against Israeli rule, began in the Gaza Strip and spread throughout the Occupied Territories.

M.

Islamic Revival and the Iranian Revolution

In the first half of the 20th century the spread of literacy, wider access to education, and the growth of modern communications networks substantially changed Middle Eastern society. With the formation of new classes and political institutions came increased pressure to end foreign rule and to widen political participation. Most early political movements were avowedly secular in their structure and objectives. The 1950s in particular seemed to be a time of great hope and optimism for the peoples of the Middle East. The rise of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and his early triumphs with the Suez Crisis and at the Bandung Conference, where 29 nations of Asia and Africa demanded an independent voice in international affairs, were a source of inspiration. He rejected Western influence, embraced a policy of nonalignment with either the U.S.- or Soviet-led blocs of power, and espoused the possibility of a strong, united Arab world. The potential of socialism, or state-sponsored economic development, together with the friendship of the Soviet Union and increasing oil revenues, gave new confidence. The reality, embodied in the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, was far less inspiring.

In the 1970s Muslims in many countries began to seek, often violently, the revival of Islamic law in both governmental and wider societal spheres. There are various explanations for this “Islamic revival.” It most likely resulted from the combination of many factors, such as the perceived failure of mass political movements in the second half of the 20th century, the deeply undemocratic and unrepresentative regimes in power in almost all Middle Eastern states, and the lack of progress on major regional issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Other factors were the pro-Western attitudes of rulers like the shah of Iran and Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, the increasing gap both within and among states between rich and poor, and widespread misery and despair caused by war, inflation, unemployment, and poverty that had affected the region for so long. However, Islamic fundamentalist activists have rarely offered viable alternatives to the conditions they criticized.

The most successful attempt to establish an Islamic state was the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1978 and 1979. During the 1960s and 1970s Iran’s ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, attempted to modernize Iran at great speed. Although living standards rose, inflation soared and rapid migration to cities as the economy industrialized severely disrupted Iran’s traditional social structure. Many foreigners working in Iran brought Western habits and an increased demand for consumer goods, which further stressed Iran’s cultural values. Also, the shah's role as a principal ally of the United States in the Middle East made him highly unpopular. Religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in exile since 1963 for criticizing the shah, broadcast messages from Iraq and later from Paris to his followers. Matters came to a head in 1978, when hundreds of demonstrators were killed in clashes with the police. In January 1979 the ayatollah’s followers forced the shah to flee Iran, and Khomeini returned the next month. He and his supporters set up an Islamic republic by a referendum in April 1979.

N.

Iran-Iraq War

In neighboring Iraq, dictator Saddam Hussein feared that the Iranian Revolution would prompt Iraqi Shias to rebel. Using a border dispute as a pretext, Hussein invaded southwestern Iran in September 1980. The war proved to be one of the most costly, unnecessary, and fruitless conflicts of the 20th century. Finally, in 1988, the two countries accepted a UN resolution calling for a cease-fire.

O.

Persian Gulf War

The Iraqi economy was severely weakened by the war with Iran, and the regime of Saddam Hussein became deeply unpopular. To divert attention from his domestic problems, and to punish neighboring Kuwait for its part in depressing the price of oil, Hussein directed his forces to invade and annex Kuwait in August 1990. In response, an international coalition led by the United States launched an air attack against Iraq in January 1991. After a brief ground war the coalition defeated Iraqi forces by the end of February. See Persian Gulf War.

The conflict highlighted significant changes in world politics and international relations since the late 1980s. The decline of the USSR, which had been involved in Middle Eastern affairs since the 1950s, combined with a lack of support from other Arab countries that had traditionally banded together, left Saddam Hussein with virtually no allies. The Iraqi people, exhausted after eight years of fighting Iran, did not support the invasion of Kuwait. Many Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and the smaller Persian Gulf states, lent military support to the coalition that defeated Iraq. Fearing regional instability, the coalition did not attempt to remove Hussein from power. The lack of international support for Kurdish and Shia rebel groups in Iraq after the war further showed the hesitancy of other nations to become involved in Iraqi internal affairs.

P.

The Middle East in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries

At the end of the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century many ongoing issues continued to affect relations between the Middle East and the rest of the world. In Iraq, economic sanctions, imposed after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, remained in effect. These sanctions, which included an embargo on Iraqi oil, were intended to force Iraq to pay war reparations and destroy its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In December 1998 Hussein’s decision to expel international weapons inspectors who were sent to Iraq to ensure that these conditions were met drew renewed criticism and threats of military action from several Western nations. UN member nations, many of whom rely heavily on Middle Eastern oil, often failed to agree on the extent and duration of the sanctions and on an appropriate response to Hussein’s noncompliance. Following a UN resolution in October 2002, Hussein agreed to readmit weapons inspectors. The government of U.S. president George W. Bush, however, insisted that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was actively planning to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. In March 2003 U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq and overthrew the Hussein regime. Following the war, however, no evidence was found that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or the production facilities needed to manufacture them. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

Despite some steps toward peace, the continuing conflict between Israelis and Arabs continued to play a significant role in regional and worldwide relations. Negotiations beginning in 1993 between Israel and the PLO resulted in limited Palestinian self-rule under the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in some parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This initial progress in negotiations improved relations between Israel and many Arab countries, including Jordan, which signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. However, terrorist attacks continued on both sides. An Israeli student opposed to the peace process assassinated Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995. The peace process stalled once again, especially after the election of a right-wing government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, which called for the adoption of a much more uncompromising stance toward the Palestinians.

Ehud Barak took office in July 1999 and created a broad center-left coalition government in Israel. Barak pledged to take “bold steps” to help forge a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. He focused his attention on negotiations with the Palestinians and promised to withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, which Israel had occupied since 1982, within one year. The withdrawal was completed by June 2000.

In an effort to move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward, the United States convened a summit at Camp David, Maryland, in the summer of 2000, at which U.S. president Bill Clinton, Barak, and PNA president Yasir Arafat focused on a comprehensive peace agreement. Despite intense efforts and some areas of accord, no agreement was reached, and violent clashes between Palestinians and Israelis ensued. Barak suddenly resigned as prime minister in December 2000.

Barak was succeeded by Ariel Sharon, who announced in 2003 that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Sharon argued that the peace process could not go forward until the PNA demonstrated that it could control terrorism by groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israel completed the evacuation of Gaza in August 2005. However, the PNA, now headed by Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat following Arafat’s death in 2004, continued to seek a more wide-ranging negotiated settlement which would include Israeli withdrawal from all or most of the West Bank and perhaps from East Jerusalem.

Politically motivated Islamic groups continued to operate in many Middle Eastern countries in the early 21st century. In general, these groups express anger and frustration against what they regard as corrupt and illegitimate regimes, against U.S. activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against continuing U.S. support for Israel. However, violence has not been confined to the struggle against tyranny and injustice, but has also been directed against individual advocates of tolerance and democracy. Most Middle Eastern governments have responded with varying degrees of repression, both against Islamists and those urging respect for human rights.

It is also widely believed in the Middle East that the West, and especially the United States, largely controls the affairs of the region, and that the corrupt governments of the Middle East survive because the West needs them in order to protect its interests there. These beliefs have caused considerable anti-Western sentiment and widespread feelings of cynicism and disempowerment, which in turn have led many to conclude that Islam is the only solution.