Who's responsible for the mess in the Middle East? You can go back as far as you want, of course, if you want to blame Theodor Herzl or Arthur Balfour or the United Nations or the Ottoman Empire. But if we stick to relatively recent history, the answer lies with one reckless man and a now-forgotten controversy.
In the same way that Quemoy and Matsu were famous for a while in the early '60s, the Strait of Tiran was famous for a decade or so between 1956 and 1967. Here's the situation in Israel starting with independence in 1948:
Shipments to and from Israel were blocked by Egypt from transiting the Suez Canal. Since the surrounding Arab countries had all implemented a comprehensive blockade on trade with Israel, this left them with no trade avenues outside the Mediterranean.
There was only one other option: the original UN partition of Israel had included a few miles of coastline around the town of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba. For Israel's first few years this didn't matter much: Eilat was in the far south of the country and there was no port there and no good rail or road connections from the Gulf to the rest of the country. So in 1952 Israel started building a port at Eilat.
In 1956 the port opened, and this brings us to the reckless man: Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had assumed control of Egypt a few years earlier as a saber-rattling pan-Arab nationalist. In July he blockaded the Strait of Tiran, which prevented cargo getting to or from Eilat—including oil from Iran. Israel launched a retaliatory strike against Egypt, with assistance from Britain and France, who were angry about Nasser's concurrent nationalization of the Suez Canal. This was the Suez Crisis.
The crisis ended when all three countries withdrew from Egypt and the Tiran Strait was reopened with UN troops overseeing things from Sharm El-Sheikh. Over the next few years Israel tried to negotiate some kind of agreement to allow Israeli goods to transit the Suez Canal, but eventually gave up. This left the Strait of Tiran as their only outlet to India, Iran, and the Far East.
Within a decade 90% of Israeli oil was coming through the Strait and Israel had made it clear that it considered a blockade of the Strait to be act of war. But Nasser was mercurial, seeking peace and planning war depending on his mood. In 1964 he created the PLO, and by 1967 he had been itching for some time for a war that would destroy Israel once and for all. In May he ejected UN troops from Sharm El-Sheikh and blockaded the strait in full knowledge that it would trigger a war.
It did, and by the time it ended Israel controlled both Gaza and the West Bank (and the Sinai peninsula, which provided control of the Strait of Tiran). In 1973 Egypt launched another war against Israel, and it was after that war that Israel began building settlements in earnest on its occupied territory.
The 1973 war was launched after Nasser's death, but it was the 1967 war that shaped the next half century. Israel eventually returned the Sinai to Egypt and signed a peace treaty, but Nasser's lasting legacy was permanent Israeli control of Gaza and the West Bank.
It's fair to say that Israel and the Arab world had plenty of hostility before 1967, but it's Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza that has truly made the Middle East what it is today. And that's all thanks to Nasser and the Strait of Tiran.
The evil that men do lives on long after their death.
That includes Hertz and Balfour.
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, I presume.
Not forgotten at all. I remember it quite well. I remember Nasser's expulsion of the UNEF peacekeepers, Abba Eban's speeches in the United Nations, and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. By the way, it wasn't just Gaza and the West Bank that Israel gained permanent control over in 1967, but the Syrian Golan Heights as well.
Thus gaining Israel its only ski resort!
Though, Israel needs to be careful with the argument that a blockade constitutes a valid casus belli. That makes it hard to argue that Hamas started the current war.
It’s largely a moot question because the West Bank settlements are a billion miles over the casus belli line.
The Gulf of Aqaba is geographically remarkable. So narrow (15 mi across max) yet long (100 mi).
The Middle East isn’t worth saving. Nuke the whole damn thing from Libya to Afghanistan. And south into Africa!
I’m kidding of course. But these people offer us nothing except religious fantasies, disruptive migrations, and catastrophic climate change. We’re better off without them. The sooner the better.
There are plenty of people to share the blame. Personally I would heap quite a lot on the unknown American and French officials who decided it would be a great idea for Israel to develop a domestic nuclear weapons capability.
The residents of the Middle East are themselves to blame for their misery.
Nasser was also quite successful in utterly buggering up the Egyptian economy and installing what continues to date, a military-state dominated economy.
It's strange that nowhere are the indigeneous people of Palestine mentioned here. Not as victims, as motivation to other nations, or anything.
Out of sight, out of mind has worked well for Israel over the last near century.
Nasser also once tried to merge Egypt with Syria, because obviously that was going to work.
Simplifying history is great fun but not helpful. There is no event in history that is one person's fault.
In Israel, right after the six day war there was awareness that the conquered territories would need to be given back in exchange for peace. But then settlements began and became a self reinforcing project and at some point it was too late to consider returning the core areas of "Judea and Samaria". Since the current situation.
I also don't think that the PLO was a Nasser creation. He may have been the midwife but he was not the Mom of the PLO (similarly the so called "Iranian" organizations like Hisbollah or the Houtis are not "created" by Iran, just exploited for Iran's purposes to some degree, not to mention founded on the common religion)
It is really weird driving the road from Eilat or Aqaba (the're next to each other) to Sharm El-Sheikh. The Red Sea coast is a long line of abandoned Israeli resorts that Egypt was too stupid to maintain. At least they were smart enough to keep Sharm El-Sheikh and convert the Israeli air force base there into an international airport. Other than that one minor exception Egypt has never really known what to do with the Sinai probably because they are so so centered on the 90% of the population that lives in the Nile delta. It is too bad because the diving in the Red Sea is fantastic.
Not too stupid to maintain, too constrained to maintain.
The Sinai has never been particularly stable for Egypt - the ethnic-cultural divide between Ahl Annile - the people of the Nile and the Bedouine of the Sinai is an ancient one, predating the modern state and has never been friendly.
Security in the Sinai has always been problematic.
Of course in addition the Egyptian state was saddled by Nasser with an overbearing Mamlouk economy of state-military ownership, which given Sinai is military sinecure due to its security situation, is all the more so for Sinai.
This is a little strained, it's like saying that Japan is ultimately responsible for WWI because they defeated the Russians so badly that the Czar had to be particularly bold and defiant the next time a major international incident happened.
Uh, no.
30 Years After Illegal Takeover, High Court Orders Settlers Out of Palestinian Land,
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-09/ty-article/.premium/30-years-after-illegal-takeover-high-court-orders-settlers-out-of-palestinian-land/0000018b-b4db-dea2-a9bf-f4dfdc120000