[pmulcahy11b]

I'll have to go with Law on this one. The Middle East, and in particular the "Holy Land," is perhaps the bloodiest region on the planet -- as one of our "Cradles of Civilization," they've been slugging it out over there thousands of years before there were any Muslims and Jews. Neither the Arabic peoples or the Jews can say they were there first -- because neither one of them were. All the people in that area most likely came to settle there from somewhere else -- and they've been slugging it out ever since.

But I only partially agree with Law. Once the oil runs out (or hopefully, we have enough alternate energy sources to make oil superfluous), nobody's going to give a rat's ass about the Middle East anymore. Even Israel is going to become irrelevant to most of the world; it's primarily value to the Western world is as our one strong ally in the Middle East (Turkey's becoming less and less reliable by the day). The OPEC countries don't have any more foresight than the fossil fuel industry -- they'd be smart to invest in alternate energy and become energy companies and not just oil companies.