The course showed me that the Near East is much more complicated than I thought. And that the Israeli-Palestine or even Israeli-Arab conflict is really interwoven with larger power dynamics in the region, not just between Jews and Arabs but also including other non-Arab ethnic groups such as Turks and Iranians. Sunni vs. Shia conflicts also make any Muslim-Jewish contention more complicated. Inter-Muslim conflict explains why Sunni-led Arab Gulf states have been willing to normalize relations with Israel in recent years, as a counter-balance to Shia leadership in Iran, which has been exporting its Islamic Revolution abroad and sending money and weapons to insurgent groups in Sunni-run nations. Also, I never understood why both Lebanon and Syria just seem to experience endless civil wars, but the course has helped me see how intractable the conflict has become in those two nations because warring factions are fairly equally balanced in power, largely due to support from abroad, whether the US, Europe, and Israel, or, on the other side, Russia and Iran.
