A subtle, unnoticed, yet crucial change has taken place since 2011, with the inception and collapse of the Arab Spring.
Start, actually, with 2014 and the ISIS beheadings. No one, from the beheaders to the outraged citizens of the world, has linked ISIS to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
No one believes, or even considers, that if Israel and the Palestinians were at peace, ISIS and its dreams of a caliphate would not exist.
A myth of some seven decades has finally bitten the dust.
That myth, in a phrase, is, its all about Israel (the it being the Middle East and its many conflicts).
Finally, people see straight.
The beheaders in Iraq and Syria would not be stopped for a nanosecond by an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The visceral hatred between Sunni and Shiite Muslims would not recede for a moment if two states (Israel and Palestine) were in place.
The Iranian quest for hegemony over the entire Middle East via nuclear weapons; the rebellion in Syria against the brutal regime of Bashar Assad; the Egyptian ruling classes fear of and suppression of its Muslim Brotherhood; the Saudi Arabian fear of a nuclear Iran; the attempts by Qatar and other, small Persian Gulf states to get noticed by exporting aid to terrorists all this would still be going full blast if Israel and the Palestinians had long ago made peace.
Even Hamas would still want to destroy Israel if Israel and the Palestinian Authority had reached a peace agreement.
This is now so obvious to diplomats, terrorists and democratic leaders all around the world that no one any longer calls the Israel-Palestinian conflict the heart of the Middle East conflicts.
This does not mean, of course, that peace between Israel and its immediately juxtaposed population is any less desirable. But it does mean something important: No longer can pressures be exerted on Israel to compromise its security in the name of bringing peace to the entire Middle East. No longer can the other, raging conflicts in the region be ignored in the name of getting to the heart of the matter.
There is no heart of the matter in a region that embraces large parts of two continents and more than 20 countries, a host of conflicting national interests, clashing economic conditions, incompatible political systems, competing ethnicities, dueling religions, introverted tribalism and a bewildering array of languages.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
