What you have around the Mediteranean is large population densities with extremely depleted environments, where deforestation and cultivation over the millenia have led to the loss of bio-mass and bio-sphere.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire presented the European nations with an opportunity to establish colonies, and this process continued to World War 2. Indeed, the existence of Israel itself is representative to some degree of this colonization. And it is this that has caused the turmoil in the Moslem world and the current warping of Islam.

The ground truth is that there are some 6 million plus Israelis and 6 million plus Palestinians. They'll either live together or they'll die together. Given the tensions about the only way I can see to ensure that they live together is the use of UN troops to separate them.

EP