Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict would not solve the region’s other fundamental problems

Evidence

But assuredly it remains the most visible and the most audible of the prob­ lems of the region, the one which attracts and receives the most attention, to the extent that some have even claimed that this problem is the key to all the others, with the bizarre corollary that if this problem could be solved, all the others would miraculously disappear. It is possible, nowadays with very little effort of imagination, to conceive a situation in which there is peace between Israel and the Arab world. It is even possible, with somewhat more imagination, and evoking a more remote and complicated contingency, to imagine a situation in which there is peace between Israel and the pro-Arabs. But if even that could be attained, the fundamental problems of the region would surely still remain; they would be no nearer solution. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1600