After World War II, the Allied powers created a Zionist state known as Israel to serve as a homeland for the millions of disfranchised (property-less) Jews throughout the world. Israel was proclaimed an independent nation by its people on May 14, 1948. The land for the new country was carved out of the British-controlled territory known as "Palestine." Although the Jews agreed to the settlement, the local Arabs refused to acknowledge the Israeli state and launched frequent attacks along its borders throughout the year 1949. The attacks eventually escalated into a full-scale conflict known as the "Suez-Sinai War."

The British and the French joined in on the side of the Israelis, presumably to punish Egyptian president Gomar Nasser for claiming control of the Suez canal, a manmade waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Only by decisive action on the part of the United Nations was the conflict resolved. During the fighting, Israeli forces managed to capture the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza strip, but relinquished the territories at the urgings of the United States and other United Nations members.

In response to their defeat at the hands of the Israelis, the Arabs began to unite with a common anti-Israel objective. An Arab attack force that gathered along Israel's borders prompted Israeli nationals to launch another offensive in 1967 which came to be known as the "Six-Day War." Backed by Western powers (primarily France), Israel succeeded in destroying the Arab forces and claimed the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank from the neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.

In 1973, Arab forces led by Egypt and Syria retaliated. Attacking on "Yom Kippur," the holiest of Jewish holidays, the Arabs were repulsed but nevertheless succeeded in impressing the Soviet Union. Backed by Soviet technology, the Arabs renewed their efforts against Israel. Furthermore, to punish the Western powers for aiding the Israelis, the Arab nations abruptly halted oil exports to countries such as the United States and the Netherlands. Although the Israelis-Arab conflict was eventually resolved with the help of the United States, the economic impact of the cutoff of Arab petroleum was extensive. Panic by western nations led oil prices to be greatly inflated. "Long lines at the gas pump" is now a phrase understood in America to describe the lack of gasoline in the United States due to rationing of limited petroleum imports during the 1970s.

A map of the modern-day Middle East Map courtesy The Virtual Tourist

There were more oil scares throughout the next two decades. When the shah of Iran was deposed during a revolution in that country, petroleum exports were diminished to virtually negligible levels, causing crude oil prices once again to be raised by an exorbitant amount. Further, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the 1990s also inflated oil prices, albeit for only a short time. These disturbing trends perhaps reinforce the world's dependence on Middle Eastern oil and argue for the development of new energy sources not tied to any particular geographic region of the planet.