Asia and the Middle East examines crisis areas in the nations of the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. This set applies a broad definition to "Middle East" to encompass the predominantly Muslim nations of both the eastern Mediterranean region and North Africa. This definition corresponds closely with the U.S. State Department's definition of "Near East." The thirty-four articles in World Conflicts: Asia and the Middle East are updated versions of articles that appeared in Salem Press's World Conflicts and Confrontations. Two of the articles cover broad regions (Middle East and Asia); the rest cover individual nations. Designed to meet the needs of students, faculty, and others seeking clear explanations of and background to what has been going on in the region's many troubled countries, the set identifies the "hot spots" and offers in-depth analyses of the countries facing difficult and dangerous problems that are of vital concern to the entire world.

In a timely reminder of how the past informs the present, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal offer an authoritative account of the history of the Palestinian people from their modern origins to the Oslo peace process and beyond. Palestinians struggled to create themselves as a people from the first revolt of the Arabs in Palestine in 1834 through the British Mandate to the impact of Zionism and the founding of Israel. Their relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel has been fundamental in shaping that identity, and today Palestinians find themselves again at a critical juncture. In the 1990s cornerstones for peace were laid for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, including mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, and the establishment for the first time of Palestinian self-government. But the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a reversion to unmitigated hatred and mutual demonization. By mid-2002 the brutal violence of the Intifada had crippled Palestine's fledgling political institutions and threatened the fragile social cohesion painstakingly constructed after 1967. Kimmerling and Migdal unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.