Macalester International Volume 23 The Israeli-Palestinian Impasse: Dialogic Article 8 Transformations Spring 2009 Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century Juan Cole University of Michigan Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl Recommended Citation Cole, Juan (2009) "Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century," Macalester International: Vol. 23, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl/vol23/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Global Citizenship at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester International by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century Juan Cole Iraq and Israel/Palestine may on the surface appear to be very dif- ferent societies with little in common. Iraq has its Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites, and its modern history has been a struggle over monarchy, republicanism, and the one-party state. Israel and Palestine are Jew- ish, Sunni Arab, and Christian Arab, and their central struggle has been over the shape of the Zionist state and the question of Palestinian statelessness. Iraq is a hydrocarbon state, while Israel and Palestine have diverse economies. The two can fruitfully be viewed through the same prism in two ways, however. On a comparative level, they share much in common, being multi-ethnic states with a background in Ottoman and British colonial administrative practices. Their fragil- ity and ethnic instability have driven both internal civil wars and wars with neighbors.