I don’t expect this to persuade anybody, but I believe it like I believe the sun will come up in the morning,so here goes.
There are lots of forces in the Middle East. Some are pretty good. Some are just plain evil. Some are criminal. The ME has its own internal antipathies and struggles, and it has the one with Israel. If Israel went away tomorrow, other reasons to fight would take over. Not the least of them is the Iranian bid for power outside its borders, which many Sunni Arabs view with increasing concern.
Many, many Arabs are not particularly uncomfortable with Israel or Israelis. But over there, it’s risky to admit it because there are so many gunmen and assassins around. Some are Islamist radicals. Some are just plain criminals. Some are vying for political power and money. Some are a mixture of all three.
Arab governments are weak for many reasons, not the least of them being that the whole place is fundamentally tribal. A Palestinian is, among them, defined as a person who is a member of one of the tribes traditionally having the majority of its membership in Gaza, Israel, West Bank or Jordan, or some or all of them.
Jordan fundamentally gets along with Israel, notwithstanding that the majority of Jordanians are “Palestinians”. There is a lot more business done between Israelis and Palestinians than most care to admit, and there are actually pretty good relationships among many of them. It’s not all Hamas vs the IDF.
Those who don’t really have a dog in the political/religious/criminal fights know the area could be very prosperous but for the gunmen and the organizations that pay for them. For the western Levant, Israel could be an economic powerhouse which could benefit all. Sometimes its presence does confer significant economic benefits on the Arab neighbors. As I said, there’s a lot more trade going on than people acknowledge, and that area could be very prosperous if it had peace and the rule of law. But there is a lot more murder and outright gangland activity going on, too, than people often realize.
Things shift. This week, some organization might be accommodating. Next week, it might change. The week after, an offshoot might split out, seemingly related to the first one, but not really. Factions control neighborhoods like gangs do in the U.S. But so do tribes. Sometimes those power structures overlap and sometimes they are at war with one another. The more criminal organizations like to keep the populations impoverished in order to better control them. The tribes don’t, but are extremely jealous of their tribal structures. Some tribes have “roles” in the larger socieities, almost like “castes” in India. So,for example, a tribe that has traditionally been entreprenurial is expected to be entrepreneurial and is virtually “licensed” to deal with Israel, but not to talk about it. Others can’t do that.
Foreign money causes a lot of what’s going on. Fatah is loosely supported by Arab oil states. Hamas is virtually a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran.
Israel absolutely will not just go away. Arabs who deal with them know that. Israelis are tough and clever. But they’re also regarded as people whose word is good. Many is the “handshake deal” between an Israeli businessman and a Palestinian businessman. But the ME idea of “good faith” is a bit different from ours. Cleverness in “cheating without cheating” is often admired.
Those Arabs whose interest is commercial or industrial would like to see the gangs go away, and don’t care too much how it happens. If Israel or the U.S. or anybody else swept them away, many Arabs would holler about it, but would be pleased to see it and would love to see the result. The one thing most Arabs do not want to see is a greater Iranian presence in the eastern Mediterranean. But who is going to throw them out? There is no answer to that yet. One notices that Egypt and Jordan do not intervene in Israel’s fight with Hamas, and that Egypt blockades Gaza and Jordan will not knowingly allow Hamas activities within its borders.
Finally, it needs to be realized that the Middle East is, in some ways, a smaller place than it seems to us. Those who are in business, industry or government all know each other quite well personally, and people move around, as one might expect in an area where everyone speaks the same language. Palestinians, in particular, being well-educated and coming from a sort of entreprenurial society, are all over the Middle East. It’s fun sometimes to google an entreprenurial Palestinian family (tribal) name with which one is familiar. One finds them living and doing business everywhere. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, the Emirates, Egypt, Iraq. Just everywhere. The U.S. too. Not Iran, though.
At least we tried.