The obama administration is on the right track in the Middle East, dealing as evenhandedly as it can with Islamic radicalism across the region and Jewish radicalism in Israel. Islamic radicalism is, of course, a far more pervasive and complex problem, encompassing Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Uighurs, Malays, Indonesians, Nigerians, Somalis, and others. Yet, the Muslim-Jewish divide over the future of the Palestinians and a Palestinian state is the centerpiece of what Samuel Huntington rightly called a Clash of Civilizations in his 1994 book of that title. There is a resonance from this dispute that has echoed around the globe since the creation of Israel in 1948 and especially since the conquest of the West Bank by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.
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