Since 1948, the Arab nations’ struggle to eliminate the Jewish state—whether through conventional war, terrorism, or economic and diplomatic boycotts—has dominated Middle Eastern geopolitics, and, even more so, American perceptions thereof. No more, writes Michael Oren. And with its conclusion, many other myths about the conflict are also losing their hold:
The duration and frequency of [Arab-Israeli] clashes, and the intense media attention they received, no doubt contributed to the conflation of the Arab-Israeli conflict with all Middle Eastern conflicts in general. Iraqis and Iranians could engage in a brutal eight-year war, and the Lebanese could massacre each other for fifteen, yet the term “Middle East conflict” referred almost exclusively to that between Israelis and Arabs.
This misconception was instilled in generations of American students whose universities offered popular courses on the Arab-Israeli conflict and all but ignored other regional disputes. Not surprisingly, successive American administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, subscribed to the notion of “linkage.” This held that the core conflict in the Middle East was that between Arabs and Israelis. Resolve it and all other struggles would fall dominolike in peace.
The Abraham Accords merely dealt a coup de grace to this myth, but it had in fact been dying for decades.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/death-of-arab-israeli-conflict