The best thing the U.S. can do in the Middle East conflict is stay out of it. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:
International Man: The Middle East is on the precipice of the biggest regional war in generations.
What’s your take on the situation and where it’s headed?
Doug Casey: People forget that before World War I, when the Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine, there was very little ethnic or religious antagonism. There were small numbers of traditional, religiously oriented Jews in Palestine, but everybody minded their own business and got along.
The problem started with the Aliyahs. Large numbers of European Jews moved to Palestine as an ethnic/religious homeland. It resulted in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
For whatever reasons, tightly knit ethnic groups seem to want their own homelands. The Kurds, for instance, are spread among Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran but don’t have an official homeland; that’s a big problem for the future. The Rohingyas, who are currently powerless Muslims in generally Buddhist Burma, have the same problem. Many AmerIndians throughout the Western Hemisphere have growing revanchist feelings, 500 years after the European conquest. What’s happening between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not unique.
Before Israel was founded, the Jews were pretty much in the same position as the Gypsies, another tightly knit but widely dispersed ethnic group.
At this point, Israel is a real country. The Jews say, “This land was ours from way back when God gave it to us.” And the Palestinians say, “Even your own Bible says that you don’t have a homeland.”
I don’t want to get into that. It’s insoluble. But, more important, it should be irrelevant to outsiders.
Our main interest is keeping the United States out of this thing. We’re 330 million people. About 7.6 million are Jews, and 3.6 million are Arab. The rest of us don’t want to have anything to do with what amounts to a Biblical domestic dispute that could easily turn into World War 3.
On the one hand, I say “a pox on both your houses” because they’re fomenting World War 3. On the other hand, I wish them both well. It’s just none of our business. For the US to take sides is insane and can only make things much, much worse.
