Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger is author of “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”
Since 1948, unrelated to Israel, about 11 million Muslims have been killed in intra-Muslim wars and terrorism from Pakistan and Afghanistan, through the Middle East to the Horn of Africa, North and Central Africa, compared to 100,000 Muslims killed during Arab-Israel wars. In fact, Refik Turan, Head of the Turkish Historical Society claims that 12.5 million Muslims have been killed in intra-Muslim wars since 1993.
These Intra-Muslim wars have yielded mega-millions of displaced Muslims. For example, 20 million refugees during the Syria and Iraq civil wars, 10 million refugees resulting from the Pakistan-Bangladesh war, 8 million refugees in Africa’s Sahel region, etc.
Since the 7th century, and irrespective of Israel, the absence of intra-Muslim peaceful-coexistence – religiously, ethnically, tribally, geographically and ideologically- has been a chronic and structural feature of the Middle East. It has fueled terrorism and wars among the Muslim “believers,” against the Sunni/Shiite “apostates” and against the Western “infidel,” especially “The Great American Satan.”
The intra-Muslim wars and terrorism have not been driven by despair, but by ideology and religion, transcending “money talks” and diplomacy.
Examples of the Toll of Intra-Muslim Conflicts Since 1948 include:
- Sudan civil wars 1955-present: 2,600,000-3,000,000 killed
- Afghan civil wars 1978-present: 1,500,000-2,000,000 killed
- Bangladesh-Pakistan war 1971: 1,500,000 killed
- Bangladesh post-independence civil war: 150,000 killed
- Iraq-Iran war 1980-1988: 1,000,000-1,200,000 killed
- Syria civil wars 2011-2025: 600,000-700,000 killed
- Yemen civil wars 1962-present: 600,000-700,000 killed
- Somali civil wars 1991-present: 500,000-850,000 killed
- Iraq-Kurdish wars and civil wars 1961-present: 500,000-750,000 killed
- Iraq-Syria Islamic State wars: 100,000-200,000 killed
- Algeria civil war 1991-2002: 100,000-200,000 killed
- Lebanon’s civil war 1975-1990: 100,000-150,000 killed
- Sahel Jihadist terrorism 2009-present: 100,000-150,000 killed
- Iran’s executed dissidents 1979-present: 100,000 (at least 30,000 in 2026)
- Chad civil wars 1966-1990: 40,000-100,000 killed
- Pakistan-Balochi civil wars 1948-present: 45,000-80,000 killed
- Pakistan-Jihadist clashes 2004-present: 70,000 killed
- Turkey-Kurdish war 1984-present: 40,000-50,000 killed
- Nigeria-Boko Haram wars 2009-present: 35,000-50,000 killed
- Libyan civil wars 2011-present: 25,000-50,000 killed
- Libya -Chad-Jihadist wars 1978-present: 10,000-30,000 killed
- Iran-Kurdish skirmishes 1979-present: 30,000 killed
- Mali-Jihadist wars 2012-present: 15,000-30,000 killed
- Jordan’s “Black September” civil war 1970: 10,000-2 5,000 killed
- Egypt-Jihadist battles in Sinai, 2011-present: 10,000 killed
And there’s more.
The aforementioned intra-Muslim reality is critically relevant to US policy in the Middle East – including the pursuit of negotiation and peace – an area which has always been jerkily spiral, violently intolerant, unpredictable, tenuously shifty, fragmented and ruthlessly non-democratic.
The absence of intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence has been underscored by the litany of intra-Muslim conflicts, accompanied by a multitude of negotiation cycles, on-again and off-again tenuous ceasefire agreements and peace accords. This violently capricious reality showcases the Middle East as a region where negotiation is a tactical pause and an extension of warfare by other means, bolstered by Islam-sanctioned Taqiyya (dissimulation) .
Moreover, accords with enemies, and certainly with “infidels,” cannot be less tenuous than the regimes and their policies. These accords are profoundly inspired by the Prophet Muhammed’s 628 AD tactical treaty of Hudaybiyya, which has enshrined victory over enemies through temporary agreements, to be abrogated upon achieving military superiority.
The intensity of the 1,400-year-old intra-Muslim wars and terrorism reveals that negotiation and accords are considered by radical Middle East entities (e.g., the Ayatollah regime, Hezbollah, Hamas) as a tactical pause, functional-not-covenantal, a Hudna (temporary ceasefire) – a means to bring enemies to submission, not peaceful coexistence – lacking a shared commitment to durability.
Furthermore, Middle East powerful entities do not negotiate with weaker entities; they trounce and subjugate them. Therefore, an initiation of negotiation in the Middle East is perceived as insecurity and weakness, which emboldens rogue entities.
The 14-centuries-old intra-Muslim wars and terrorism have been a Middle East fixture, while negotiation and accords have been Middle East variables.
This reality has intensified Israel’s 78-year-old existential national security challenges, which must be assessed according to the violent Middle East reality, rather than the convenient Western-manufactured alternate reality.
The overriding significance of the intra-Muslim wars and terrorism highlights the reckless proposal for Israel to trade its most critical national security component – the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria (fixed assets), which dominate 80% of Israel’s infrastructures and population – for “normalization”/”peace” accords (variable assets).
Israel’s strategic posture has served as an indispensable anchor, and the most effective force-multiplier and dollar-multiplier for the US, deterring rogue entities, and constituting the most reliable “life insurance agent” of all pro-US Arab regimes in the face of existential threats by the Ayatollah regime and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Furthermore, Israel’s posture of deterrence has induced six Arab countries to conclude peace treaties with Israel. It has also prompted additional pro-US Arab countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia) to enhance defense, technological, agricultural and irrigation cooperation with the Jewish State. Israel has been a uniquely reliable, effective, democratic and stable ally of the US – commercially, technologically, scientifically, agriculturally, medically and militarily – in a region which is top heavy on non-democratic, unstable, violence-prone, unreliable and strategically elusive entities.
The ferocious magnitude of intra-Muslim conflicts, exposes the simplistic worldview which considers the Arab-Israeli conflict as if it were “the Middle East conflict,” and the Palestinian Arab issue as if it were the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a cause of regional turbulence and a crown jewel of Arab policy makers, ignoring the Arab view of Palestinian Arabs as the role model of intra-Arab terrorism and treachery.
Hence, the failure of dozens of Western-initiatives to solve the Arab-Israel conflict, including the Palestinian Arab issue. In fact, the immensity of the intra-Muslim carnage dwarfs the regional and global significance of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian Arab issue.
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