Crisis combination in the Middle East

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By Jeremy Bowen Middle East Editor, BBC News

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to broker peaceThe US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has flown back to the Middle East in her latest attempt to broker peace in the region.

But with the conflict in Iraq now four years old, prospects of reaching agreements among the various factions in the Middle East appear remoter than ever.

You hear a lot of talk about war in the Middle East at the moment.

There was so much of it when I was in Beirut last month that it started me wondering. Was this what it felt like to be somewhere like Prague in about 1934?

Most Israelis I have talked to believe they will have to go to war again with Hezbollah Surrounded by people whose stomachs get tied in knots when they think about the future, caught up in events that they cannot do anything about with the sinking feeling that things may be bad but, by God, they can get much worse.

Before we get too carried away here, let us remember that the Middle East always has something bad going on, so crisis is normal.

So normal, in fact, that human beings are quite good at getting on with their lives despite it.

But I started wondering about Prague or Warsaw or Budapest in 1934 or 1936 because a lot of the people I had been meeting recently across the Middle East think that what is different now is the combination of crises that are raging, bubbling steadily or slowly smouldering.

Mutual fear

Most Israelis I have talked to believe they will have to go to war again with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement that fought them to a standstill last summer.

They are worried that Arabs might lose their fear of the Israeli army if they do not.

And Hezbollah is backed by Iran, which many Israelis believe would like to eliminate their country.

The bus bombs in Lebanon earlier this year targeted civiliansIn Israel, the former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has been explicit about it.

He looks at the bombastic anti-Israeli rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and says it is now 1938 and Iran is Germany.

That strikes a deep chord in Israel but Arabs I have spoken to are just as concerned about the future, though for different reasons.

Here are a few snapshots from the last month or so.

The Iran question

While I was in Beirut, I spoke to senior people from all the main sectarian groups - Shias, Sunnis, Druze and Christian - and they all shared concerns about what they saw as Israel's aggressive plans.

But they also talked a lot about the risks of another civil war inside Lebanon.

In Saudi Arabia, a prince told me that he had heard an Arab leader saying that once Iran had a bomb, then everyone in the Arab nation should get one too It is now accepted wisdom there that street disturbances in February took the country to within hours of all-out sectarian conflict.

In his elegant appartment overlooking the Mediterranean in Beirut, a well-known politician told me that he thought the outlook across the Middle East was as bad as it had been in his lifetime.

He was also worried about, what he believed, was Iran's desire to get nuclear weapons and how America's methods of trying to stop them could make matters worse.

Iran's nuclear plans, which Tehran says are an entirely peaceful and lawful attempt to generate electricity, alarm conservative Arab leaders.

In Saudi Arabia, a prince - a brother of the king - told me that he had heard an Arab leader saying that once Iran had a bomb, then everyone in the Arab nation should get one too.

He also said he knew how that leader would get the bomb but he would not give names or details.

And then there are the forces of religious conservatism which many secular Middle Easterners see as a cause of conflict.

Impact of Iraq

Much of the fear of the future comes from the impact of the invasion and occupation of Iraq In Damascus a Western ambassador talked about how members of the secular elite in Syria were blithely assuming that they would not be affected.

"I go to parties here", he said, "and they tell me that Syria is secular and staying that way. Sometimes I think there is a 'fin de siecle' feeling about it all as if it is the end of something."

In Bahrain, a journalist who works for the country's only independent newspaper, told me how she wished the future was secular and feared that it was not.

She was wearing clothes that would have looked good in the fashionable corners of London or Paris but in Bahrain she saw others retreating into their own religious identities and turning their backs on people who were different.

Much of the fear of the future comes from the impact of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It has set off a series of shock waves that will rumble around the region for a generation at least.

Two of them are already urgent: the exodus of Iraqi refugees, which is the biggest movement of people in the Middle East since the Palestinian refugee crisis after Israel was established in 1948, and the sectarian war in Iraq which is increasing tension in Shia and Sunni communities from Lebanon to Pakistan.

This survey is very unscientific and I have not got room to go into the fears that Iranians have about the intentions of the US and its friends or Palestinian problems, or any of the other crises that are on the horizon or here already.

I hope the future is not as dark for the Middle East as it was in Europe in the 1930s, but for most of the 20th Century, conflict in Europe poisoned the rest of the world.

Seven years into this new century, the Middle East is showing every sign of doing the same.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 24 March 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the <a class="inlineText" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3187926.stm">programme schedules </a> for World Service transmission times.