Middle East - Anthony Ham [39]
Well, for a start, the major Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah just don’t resonate in geo-political circles in quite the same way as Jerusalem and the Holy Land, with their significance for the world’s three largest monotheistic religions. Nor have the Kurds produced anyone with the charisma to capture the world’s attention quite like Yasser Arafat – love him or loath him, the world could never ignore him. Although the Kurds have, from time to time, found favour with one world power or another, their shifting alliances and the short attention spans of world leaders have meant that the Kurds have never had a powerful backer consistently willing to champion their cause; not for nothing did John Bulloch and Harvey Morris call their 1993 history of the Kurds No Friends but the Mountains. Perhaps most importantly of all, given the chronic levels of instability already at large in the Middle East, no world leader would ever dare to suggest slicing off large sections of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria to create a Kurdish state.
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PEACE & REVOLUTION
The Middle East had reached a temporary stalemate. On one side, Israel knew that it had the wherewithal to hold off the armed forces of its neighbours. But Israel also lived in a state of siege and on maximum alert, all the time facing escalating attacks at home and abroad on its citizens from Palestinian terrorist groups aligned to the PLO. On the other side, Arab governments continued with their rhetoric but knew, although none admitted it, that Israel was here to stay. To the north, Lebanon was sliding into a civil war that was threatening to engulf the region. Something had to give.
On 7 November 1977, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made a dramatic visit to Israel to address the Israeli Knesset with a call for peace. The Arab world was in shock. That the leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation, a nation that had produced Gamal Abdel Nasser, could visit Israeli-occupied Jerusalem had hitherto been inconceivable. The shock turned to anger the following year when Sadat and the hardline Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, shepherded by US president Jimmy Carter, signed the Camp David Agreement. In return for Egypt’s long-coveted recognition of Israel’s right to exist, Egypt received back the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt did rather well out of the deal, but was widely accused of breaking ranks and betrayal for one simple reason: the Palestinians received nothing. Arab leaders meeting in Baghdad voted to expel Egypt from the Arab League and moved the group’s headquarters out of Cairo in protest. The peace treaty won Sadat (and Begin) a Nobel Peace Prize, but it would ultimately cost the Egyptian leader his life: he was assassinated in Cairo on 6 October 1981.
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As a young Egyptian officer during WWII, Anwar Sadat was imprisoned by the British for conspiring with German spies.
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Before his death, and with Sadat basking in the acclaim of the international community, one of the few friends he had left in the region was facing troubles of his own. Discontent with the shah of Iran’s autocratic rule and his personal disregard for the country’s Shiite Muslim religious traditions had been simmering for years. Political violence slowly increased throughout 1978. The turning point came in September of that year, when Iranian police fired on anti-shah demonstrators in Tehran, killing at least 300. The momentum of the protests quickly became unstoppable.
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The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, by Egyptian psychiatrist Nawal el-Sadaawi, is packed with insight and controlled anger in equal measure as she explores the role of women in Arab history and literature.
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On 16 January 1979, the shah left Iran, never to return (he died in Egypt a year later). The interim government set up after his departure was swept aside the following month when the revolution’s leader, the hitherto obscure Āyatollāh Ruhollāh Khomeini, returned to Tehran from his