[Global Times Comprehensive Report] "Israeli troops are approaching Rafah further south." According to a report by Agence France-Presse on February 6, Israel's attack on the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) continued that morning. Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border, is now where more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip has taken refuge. Since the outbreak of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict in October last year, the war in the Middle East has continued to expand, involving Middle East countries such as Syria and Yemen, Western countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, and regional armed forces such as Hamas and the Houthis. The escalation of tensions in the Middle East triggered by this round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict epitomizes the complex contradictions in the region. In addition to interference from foreign countries, religious and ethnic conflicts, competition in political ideas, and opposition between regional camps are important causes of long-term turmoil in the Middle East.
Conflicts continue between different religions and sects
Gaza is home to some of the oldest churches and mosques in the world, including the Church of St. Porphyrius, built in 425 AD and considered the third oldest church in the world. . According to a report by Qatar’s Al Jazeera on October 16, 2023, after the outbreak of the current round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the church became a refuge for displaced people in Gaza. “War does not distinguish between religions, and the oldest church in Gaza shelters Muslims and Christians.” .
In the 7th century AD, the Church of St. Porphyrius was converted into a mosque, but it was restored to a church when it was recovered by the Crusaders in the 12th century. It was renovated in 1856 and had previously been a place for Gaza's Christian community to pray and seek refuge during times of conflict. On October 19 last year, the roof of the church was blown down by Israel. The fate of this Greek Orthodox church reflects the unrest in the Middle East.
Since the mid-20th century, the Middle East has been the most unstable region in the world. The region is also a gaming ground for great powers, where the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union have all competed for their own interests. There have also been many conflicts between different countries in the Middle East and between different forces within the same country. In addition to external causes, national, religious and ethnic differences are internal causes of these conflicts.
The old feud between Muslims and Jews in the Arab-Israeli conflict is seen as the core of religious issues in the Middle East. The contradictions and conflicts between Islam and Christianity have been around for a long time. The contradictions between different sects within Islam are mainly reflected between Shias and Sunnis. The American think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issued an article in April 2023, stating that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, about 85% are Sunnis, and the remaining 15% are Shia. The British Financial Times published an article in 2016 stating that Iran is the largest Shiite country in the world. In addition, Shias make up the majority of the population in countries such as Iraq and Bahrain. In Lebanon, Shiites are not the most populous, but they have strong political influence. Shiites are a minority in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria, but the Alawites, to which Syrian President Bashar Assad's family belongs, are an offshoot of Shiites. In Yemen, the Zayed sect, a branch of Shiite sect, accounts for about 40% of the country's population. Some scholars said that the Iran-Iraq war that broke out in 1980 profoundly reflected the contradictions between different sects.
Conflicts between different sects of Islam are also reflected in Iraq. The country broadly consists of three political forces: Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish. After 2003, Shiites gradually became the largest political force in Iraq, but Sunnis still dominate some areas, while the Kurds have greater autonomy in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq.
Conflicts can also break out within the same sect of Islam. An article published by cfr stated that during the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi Shiites formed the main force of the Iraqi army fighting Iran. The Houthi armed forces are a Zaydist organization, a branch of the Shiite sect, but they fought many times against the government of Yemen's Saleh from 2004 to 2010, and Saleh also belonged to the Zaydish sect. Neither mainstream Sunnis nor hard-line Sunnis are solely focused on fighting Shiites.They have historically fought against their own sectarians, with recent examples including Egypt's ongoing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia's crackdown on al Qaeda and related Sunni armed groups.
Contradictions in political ideas
Contradictions in political ideas are also an important reason for continued regional conflicts. There are many different and competing political philosophies among the different countries in the region. There are both secularist and nationalist political concepts in the Middle East, as well as political doctrines influenced by religious political concepts. Historically, the secular Arab nationalism led by Egypt has long competed with the Islamic political system advocated by Saudi Arabia and other countries; within Palestine, the left-wing secular political philosophy advocated by the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) has competed with Hamas The religious and political ideas they upheld also competed with each other, which eventually led to a direct conflict between the two factions in 2007. Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, and Fatah continued to control the West Bank. The Palestinian political situation has since fallen into division.
Different countries have different assumptions about the construction of regional political order, and they also have different opinions on the regional political and military forces they need to rely on. For example, Saudi Arabia requires Turkey and Qatar to stop supporting the opposition camp represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, and has conflicts with Iran on regional policies. Iran and Türkiye have clear differences on the issues of Syria and Iraq.
These differences and contradictions make regional countries often adopt different policies on major issues. For example, on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, some Gulf Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia are relatively moderate and low-key. Countries that have established diplomatic relations with Israel in recent years, such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, are almost all countries that have closer relations with Saudi Arabia. Iran supports relatively radical means to resolve the Palestinian issue. Iran and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, and each side sees the other as the biggest regional threat. Within Palestine, Iran supports religious political and military groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Jihad), calling for military resistance to resolve the Palestinian issue. After the outbreak of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States and Israel have been accusing Iran of being the "mastermind" behind the regional conflict, while Iran believes that the long-standing unresolved Palestinian-Israeli issue is the most important reason for the outbreak of the conflict.
Turkey and Qatar have long supported religious and political forces in the Middle East. For example, after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, external contacts were almost cut off, and Hamas’s political institutions in the Gaza Strip fell into financial crisis. Qatar repeatedly sent Hamas Donate large sums to alleviate the financial situation in the Gaza Strip. Turkey has also been providing assistance to Hamas through various means. For example, in 2010, an aid ship organized by the Cooperation and Coordination Bureau of Turkey's religious aid agency was intercepted by Israel, resulting in the Gaza rescue ship incident, which ultimately led to the downgrade of diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel.
Multiple political forces and support agents
After 2011, multiple political forces formed in the Middle East, mainly including several Gulf Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood network centered on Qatar and Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood network centered on Iran. "Axis of Resistance" etc. According to the National Public Radio (npr), members of the "Axis of Resistance" include Lebanese Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthi armed forces, and paramilitary organizations in Iraq and Syria. As the armed forces in these regions become more and more powerful, Western academic circles use terms such as "Shia Arc" to describe these forces. As the Wall Street Journal recently published, history is always strikingly similar: militant groups allied with Iran launch devastating attacks, and target countries are busy putting out the flames of war without paying attention to the source of the fire. “For the United States’ Middle East policy to be successful, it must Effectively containing Iran is a required course for the United States in the Middle East."
npr reported that Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is mainly composed of Sunni Muslims. Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim organization that emerged from the Lebanese civil war after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. The training and funding of its fighters are "partly the responsibility of Iran," which uses armed proxy groups to expand its influence in the region. force.In addition to Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah also poses a great challenge to Israel. After a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out, Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been attacking each other on the border between the two countries.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah controls the southern region and is an important party in the parliament. It also has an independent armed force. The Houthi armed forces in Yemen have risen rapidly since 2014. The organization had been entrenched in northern Yemen for a long time. In 2014, it moved south in a large scale and occupied most areas and major cities in central, northern and southern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, and compressed the Yemeni government in the southern port city of Aden. In 2015, in order to save the crumbling Yemeni government, Saudi Arabia and other countries sent troops to Yemen, but they soon fell into the quagmire of the Yemeni civil war. Although the offensive of the Houthi armed forces was contained, countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates failed to successfully defeat the organization. Instead, the latter launched multiple rounds of attacks on oil refineries and military bases in Saudi Arabia through drones and other methods. As Saudi Arabia and Iran eased their relations in 2023, the former gradually withdrew from the war in Yemen. However, the antagonistic relationship between the Houthis and the Yemeni government has not yet ended. Some Western media, including the BBC, believe that Iran and Saudi Arabia are supporting various proxies in the Middle East. In regional conflicts, they respectively support one of the opposing parties and that party's armed organizations.
A new balance of power will emerge
The British "Economist" magazine recently published an article lamenting that 2023 should have been the year when the situation in the Middle East eased, because in March of this year, Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a joint agreement in Beijing The statement agreed to resume diplomatic ties and the former is also negotiating a tripartite agreement with the United States that would normalize relations between Riyadh and Israel. Prosperous and stable Gulf Arab states are the new center of power in a conflict-weary region, and they want each country to focus on economic growth. However, Sudan then fell into a horrific civil war, and Hamas launched an attack on Israel last October, pushing the entire region to the brink of wider violence.
Not long ago, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used ballistic missiles to attack the Israeli Mossad branch and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. U.S. President Joe Biden ordered air strikes on two facilities of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its supporting organizations in eastern Syria. These news events highlight the penetration capabilities of Israel and Iran in the Middle East.
Indeed, the complex internal situation of some Middle Eastern countries makes "all kinds of penetration" possible. The Iraqi Kurdish Autonomous Region has long been a channel for forces opposed to Iran to penetrate into Iran. Iran has long accused Israeli intelligence agencies of long-term infiltration into Iran's western border through Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region. Militants from the extremist organization "Islamic State" have also entered Iran from Syria and Iraq.
Returning to the Palestinian-Israeli issue, the different political tendencies of various countries and parties have made regional mediation more difficult. In actual mediation, the only countries in the Middle East that can maintain close relations with Israel and Hamas at the same time are Egypt, Turkey and Qatar. However, these three countries cannot mobilize enough power to influence the decisions of Israel and Hamas. , can only bridge the differences between the parties through "passing on the message". Although regional countries have made many efforts to achieve preliminary results in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas on the issue of "hostages for ceasefire", there is still a long way to go to achieve a comprehensive ceasefire.
As American international affairs columnist Thomas Friedman said in the article "Two Things Worry America About Israel and Hamas", Ukraine is trying to join the West, Israel is trying to join a new Middle East, and Russia and Iran are trying to join forces to stop both of these things. He also said that Iran-backed Hamas launched the war to prevent the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and prevent Tehran from being isolated. Friedman concluded, however, that "nothing would further isolate Iran."
The Economist magazine believes that after the current round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict breaks out, a new balance of power will emerge in the Middle East. Gulf states will work to maintain peace with Iran.At the same time, although efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have been delayed, they have not been completely derailed. Related negotiations will continue, but they will be more complicated and "quiet" than before. Before the current round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out, the United States had been discussing a mutual security agreement with Saudi Arabia. Now it seems that this may not be so attractive to leaders in Washington. The deal needs to be renegotiated, but the United States may "run out of time." (The author is Wang Jin, associate professor at the Institute of Middle East Studies at Northwest University)
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