Summary of Intern Lecture by Dr. Michael Hudson
For the Record, No. 227 (1st of 4 in Series) / 25 July 2005

Over the last half-century, the largest impediment to a successful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been that "the primary actors...are numerous and changing," argued Dr. Michael Hudson, Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Citing the complex interaction between state and non-state influences, Hudson noted that negotiations often revolved around "Great Power" interests without consideration of those groups more directly and locally affected by the conflict. 

Speaking at the 2005 Intern Lecture Series, entitled "In Pursuit of Peace: Dialogues on Final Status," at the D.C. based Palestine Center on 12 July 2005, Hudson said that since the mid-1960s, the growth of Arab nationalist sentiment against "Zionist implantation" and the increasing primacy of the conflict in global public opinion have turned the debate over Israel into one that "statesmen around the diplomatic chessboard" cannot solve.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, territorial disputes were largely framed within the growing conflict between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, which were each vying for influence in the Middle East.  With time, explained Hudson, this simple paradigm was compounded by the growth of Jewish nationalism under the guise of Zionism on the one hand, and a growing sense of Arab, Levantine and Palestinian nationalisms on the other.  Hudson added that while the Palestinian national consciousness began to articulate itself during this time, it was not yet sustainable or fully organized as a movement until after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

According to Hudson, there were two main groups with vested interests in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after 1948.  One group consisted of local parties directly affected by the creation of an Israeli state: Palestinian refugees, early Jewish settlers, and Arab governments sharing borders with Israel.  The other, which would dominate the peace process for the next several decades, consisted of the United States and the Soviet Union.  The Middle East, said Hudson, became one of the most important stages for Cold War confrontation, and this international attention elevated the Arab-Israeli conflict to the forefront of world politics during the 1970s and 80s. 

With strategic oil and security interests on the one hand and domestic political support for Israel on the other, U.S. diplomacy came to resemble "a kind of juggling act," said Hudson. Domestic political considerations, particularly the strength of the loosely-termed American Jewish lobby, played a partial role in shaping U.S. diplomacy. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, which had given Israel initial support because it believed Israel to be a potential socialist ally in the region, came to oppose it opportunistically as a way of undermining American dominance in the region.

In addition to these "Great Power" considerations, Hudson argued that the adoption of the Palestinian cause by groups in developing nations, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, further complicated resolution of the conflict. He said that animosity toward the establishment of the state of Israel became a "holy cause" as ideological support for Palestinians began to seep into the public mindset. Nationalist leaders such as Gamel Abd