Need Help! Middle East Essay!

[Meldread]

I need to find some good sources (liberal preferred) on the Middle East for an essay. (The teacher decided to change the topic at the last second.) The Middle East is extremely complex and I really need some good reading material.

Here is what I need to include:
1. Why is the Middle East a conflict area?
2. Are Palestinian rights being ignored?
3. What role should the US play?
4. How does religion affect the Middle East?
5. What is the future?

I want the essay to mainly focus on one, two, and three. I really need something to outline examples of how Palestinian rights are being ignored, and something that does a great job of explaining why the Middle East is a major conflict area.

If you can give me any help, that'd be great. Thanks in advance. :) :D

[Kathy in Cambridge]

1. If you focus on why the Middle East is a conflict area

you have to examine the effects of colonialism on the region.

I knw Bernard Lewis wrote a book called 'The Arabs' but I think it is more from the perspective of the colonizer and not those oppressed.

[Meldread]

3. Not really.

It only has to be two pages, but that in and of itself is hard because there is so much information to cover.

What I'm mainly looking for are web links. Articles. Opinion pieces. Anything to get my "creative juices" flowing so to speak. I know plenty enough to write the essay, I just need something to focus on when writing about each sub-topic.

[La_Serpiente]

2. WOW!!!

:wow:

That is a lot to write dude.

Good Luck :thumbsup:

[ewagner]

4. For sources of conflict

try the book A Peace to end all Peace . It's a great overview of the Colonial period and the incredible mistakes made r\during and right after WWI.....which got us into this mess!

[Don_G]

5. It's Very Complicated

But the US and the UK decided to spilt up the oil rights in the area in 1926 without the locals citizens being considered.

When that became problematic after the Jewish Refugees sought shelter in a country they've been building since the 1750's (Palestine circa 1948) the US and UK decided to do business with a Royal Family at the exclusion of everyone else.

Religion in the area plays a great role since there's not a "glut" of natural resources except for tourism between the four religions: Judasim, Islam, Christianity and the overlooked Orthodox Christianity.

Orthodox Christianity is overlooked because it's a democratic religion derived from the teachings of Jesus himself before the schism of the Roman Catholics who thought one individual can decide for all.

Well, the Roman Catholics invaded Palestine on several of "their" Crudades, the Jews were always heathens from 1750 when the Rothchild family invested money to build the area up, but it wasn't until 1948 when the European Jewish population decided to emigrate to an area they've invested in for 200 years that it became a problem.

Guys spending the better part of their lives building a house and apart from the war couldn't understand why a bunch of white guys from Treblinka would suddenly want to move in their neighborhood in 1948; after the British denied the Concentration Camps and to a people subject to every whim the SS could use to justify their brutality.

It's personal. Mohammed and the Islamic faith can deny the Jews and the Roman Catholic Crusaders, but peace in the Middle East won't occur without the Orthodox Faith who sheltered Mohammed in his greatest hour of need and "who" happens to be both seperate, democratic and somewhat related to the other three religions in the area.

I'm happy if I could confuse you; It dosen't make a lot of sense to me either.