Given its global reach, the American military divides the world into various “areas of responsibility” each with its own unified command structure. Operations in Africa are thus supervised by the Africa Command (AFCOM), while troops stationed in Europe answer to EUCOM, and so forth. But due to the longstanding Arab hostility toward Israel, it was placed under EUCOM’s area of responsibility while the rest of the Middle East belongs to that of Central Command (CENTCOM). Michael Makovsky and Charles Wald argue that there is no need to maintain this irrational division of labor:

If there is to be a resolution to the conflict between the Jewish state and a putative Palestinian one, writes Jonathan Michanie, it won’t start with drawing lines on maps or restrictions on where Jews can build houses, but with the Palestinian Authority (PA) abandoning its official anti-Semitism. The PA can, in this regard, learn much from those Arab nations that have recently made peace with Israel: