Overview
The take-home final exam for this course consists of the following two essay questions covering the reading assignments from the second part of the course in Mehran Kamrava’s The Modern Middle East and Fouad Ajami’s The Dream Palace of the Arabs. Each of your essays should include an introduction with a thesis statement that provides a response to the essay question, specific evidence from the assigned readings in support of your thesis, and a brief concluding paragraph that sums everything up.
Your responses to these questions should be your own work, written in your own words, and based on the assigned readings and our discussions about them in class. Do not consult any outside sources for this assignment. I want to see reflected in your responses your own engagement with the material we studied this semester, not what you might be able to find online or generate using an AI tool. Responses that are not your own will not receive credit.
Essay #1
“One of the most vexing problems in the political history of the modern Middle East...has been the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians” (Mehran Kamrava, The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War, p. 299).
Drawing upon your reading of Kamrava’s The Modern Middle East and Ajami’s The Dream Palace of the Arabs, write an essay in which you identify and discuss the most important causes of this conflict and the major obstacles standing in the way of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. (Please note that the main reason is the occupation itself and the establishment of the israeli occupation in 1948)
Essay #2
An enduring theme in the history of the modern Middle East is what Fouad Ajami calls a “Sisyphean quest for modernity” (The Dream Palace of the Arabs, p. 232).
Drawing upon your reading of Kamrava’s The Modern Middle East and Ajami’s The Dream Palace of the Arabs, write an essay in which you identify and discuss the main obstacles in the Arab world to political and economic modernization.