Turkey's massive Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), which aims to irrigate large areas of southeast Turkey, includes damming the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and the flow of water in these rivers to Iraq and Syria has already been drastically cut, forcing them to abandon their own irrigation projects. Israel is also taking the lion's share of water from the Jordan River and the West Bank aquifers, putting pressure on the Palestinians and Jordan. Israeli control of the Syrian Golan and southern Lebanon allows Israel to obtain water from the Yarmouk and Litani Rivers, and also allows Israel to prevent Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon from using these rivers for irrigation, power, or drinking water.
Far from being a region with no interaction with the rest of the world, the Arab world derives a great portion of its income from economic interaction with the international community. While many states, especially those on the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, depend on oil sales, many of the less-wealthy countries derive income from workers abroad. Others generate income from the sale of other commodities to the rest of the world, and still others, such as Egypt, derive most of their income from the tourist industry. Several Arab states have beaches and resorts which cater to tourists from all over the world, as well as historic and cultural sites from all periods of history.
While there is a large degree of modernization and westernization in the Arab world, the region is in many ways still very traditional. Even in the most secular countries, Islam still informs the daily life of the people and still permeates the social system. The family remains the most important social unit in the Arab world, and the old Arab notions of upholding family honor still guide the interactions of most Arabs. For most Americans, Islam remains the key to understanding the region, its people, and its politics. Seen by many as a religion of war and violence, Islam is actually a religion of peace which abhors violence. The root of both Islam and Muslim, S-L-M, means peace in Arabic. Violence is only to be used as a last resort to defend the community from attack, and jihad, or religious struggle, is to be performed first in the self, to assure pure motives and submission to the will of Allah—the Arabic word for God—(known as the greater jihad, al-jihad al-akbar), before engaging in the struggle to defend Islam (known as the lesser jihad, al-jihad al-asghar). Many "Islamic" movements which use violence are merely cloaking themselves in religion in an attempt to make their grab for power appear more palatable and more legitimate.
The final common stereotype about Islam is that women have no rights. This could not be farther from the truth. In Islam, women have more rights than they do in most other world religions, including Christianity. When the religion of Islam was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the 600s AD, it was incredibly progressive in the area of women's rights. Women have the right to own and retain property, and their money and property cannot be mixed with that of their husbands. Women also have the right to write whatever they want into their marriage contract, which is a legally binding document. The provisions in Islam allowing multiple wives required absolute equality for all wives and limited the number to four, a great improvement from the pre-Islamic customs. The provision, which was meant to protect and help provide for widows of the early Muslim warriors and martyrs, has been nullified in the Arab countries today, where men are limited to only one wife at a time. The modesty rules, which many interpret to force women to be secluded or completely covered, in fact call on both women and men to be modest and cover their ornaments. In many Arab countries, one will find a women in a wide variety of attire, from traditional Arab dress to completely covered to western miniskirts. Women work outside the home in large numbers in most Arab countries, in occupations ranging from doctors and engineers to university professors and factory workers.
All of these influences combine to create a very diverse Arab world, currently divided politically into twenty-two different states which are members of the Arab League. All are independent states except for Palestine, which has been represented since by 1974 by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), declared the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab League summit at Rabat in the same year. The League of Arab States, as it is officially known, was founded in March 1945 and is the world's oldest international political organization, predating the United Nations by several months. The League, headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, had as its purposes helping the other Arab states attain independence and safeguarding the rights of the Palestinians. As the remaining Arab states gained their independence and joined the League, its focus shifted towards promoting Arab unity and cooperation and towards supporting the Palestinians economically and politically. Since the Arab League dealt with the Palestinians as a full member state and no other international body did so, the League or its member states often served as a gobetween for the Palestinians and other bodies. The League has twice been divided by crisis, first when Egypt was suspended in 1980 for making a unilateral peace with Israel, and secondly when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 pitted Arab against Arab and divided many states. The League has struggled since 1990 to regain its unity and prominence in the post-Cold War, post-Gulf War world. The rapid changes in the international system since 1989 have caused the League to reevaluate its role and its positions.
The League consists of several standing committees, ad hoc committees, and affiliated organizations, similar to that of the United Nations. Committees deal with everything from political issues and cultural concerns to economic cooperation and educational policies. The League's day-to-day operations are carried on by the Secretariat, which is headed by the Secretary-General. The current Secretary-General is Esmat Abd al-Meguid of Egypt, and many of the Secretaries-General have been Egyptian, reflecting Egypt's guiding role in the Arab League. The League Council meets at least once a year, and can meet on several levels (foreign ministers, prime ministers, heads-of-state, and the like). Meetings of League Council on the head-of-state level are called Arab League Summits. The Model Arab League conferences reflect the actual League's structure and deal with similar issues. Currently, the Model consists of the Economic Affairs, the Palestinian Affairs, the Political Affairs, the Security Affairs, and the Social Affairs Committees, and each deals with topics of current concern in the Arab world within its area.