Roots of Crisis: Why the Arabs and Israelis Fight

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Hizballah is the wild card. There is always the possibility it could try to order up terrorist attacks against Israeli and Western targets around the world. If pushed to stop fighting, the group could lash out against its critics in Lebanon, unleashing the forces of civil war that ravaged the highly sectarian country for 15 years until 1990, and creating a new field of instability even as the U.S. struggles with crises in places like Iraq and Iran. Israel's strikes against Lebanon have provoked Shi'ite radicals in Iraq, who are threatening to attack U.S. troops in retaliation. The most chilling scenario is that the Israeli-Lebanese dispute could grow into a wider war, if Hizballah's backers in Iran or Syria decide or are provoked to join the fray--a possibility that grew when Israeli intelligence claimed on Saturday that Iranian forces helped Hizballah fighters hit an Israeli ship off the coast of Beirut, killing one sailor. (Iran denies the charge.) "It will never completely cool down," says Edward Luttwak, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "When the Israelis have hit enough targets, they'll be inclined to slow down. [But] these things don't get resolved."

That dim view of prospects for peace in the Middle East is widely shared by people on all sides of the conflict. What's driving the violence, and why does it seem so difficult to tamp down? Although the current battles may have been set off by age-old hatreds between Israel and its Arab enemies, what we're seeing today is not simply a replay of hackneyed set pieces in the Middle East. With new governments in place in the three key nodes of the crisis--Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority--and fighters within the radical Islamist groups--Hamas and Hizballah--eager to assert their agendas, the region is going through a period of dramatic and in some ways radical change. The volatility has added new fuel to the motivations and ambitions that have defined why they fight. And that poses a challenge for the international community--not least a U.S. Administration already waging two wars in the Islamic world. Once the fire is started, can anything be done to put it out?

•WHY THE ARABS FIGHT