Arab-Israeli Conflict
The details and instructions on formatting are below. Please follow them precisely; failure to adhere to the instructions will result in a delay of grading of your exam, at best, and possible grade of “incomplete” that will take through next academic quarter to resolve.
EXAM INSTRUCTIONS:
Your ability to follow them reflects on you as a student, and therefore can influence your final grade. “You will be asked to respond to the exam prompt by using resources from the course — that means anything directly/indirectly sourced from lectures and the reading. You may use outside sources, but I DO NOT ENCOURAGE IT.” Everything you need to answer the prompt in full can be sourced from lecture and the reading. You may, however, and are encouraged to refer to anything discussed in class, including documentary videos.
If you are citing something from lecture or the book (and I expect that you will), please use parenthetical citations. For lecture material, simply use “(Lecture, Date)” as the format; for the book, use “(Author)” — you don’t need to provide the page number, just the name of the individual author for the section you are referencing. And please note, “Lust” is the name of the editor of the text, not the author of each of the sections; do not cite her as a source — I need the specific author for that section.
Lastly, please note that there will be no “right” or “wrong” answers for the exam, only good and less-than-good answers. The better ones will serve as model answers for the rest. Answering the prompt will not be difficult — the challenge is answering it well.
THE QUESTION:
Ever since the first Palestinian intifada — if not sooner — many believed that the key to solving the Middle East’s many problems was to bring about an agreement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Create a Palestinian state, the thinking went, and everything else will fall into line.
However, the developments following the Arab Spring and subsequent rise of ISIS call this theory into question. More than ever, it is debatable whether addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict first will have a positive “spill-over” into other critical areas like sectarian violence, institutional dysfunction, and political and economic underdevelopment.
So: If you had to choose one conflict to address first, would you make it the Arab-Israeli conflict? Tell me why or why not, and support your answer by going through the different conflict types — and specific cases — and demonstrating how they may or may not tie in with the Arab-Israeli conflict.