This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
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Notes -
The Syrian rebels were able to break up UAR with ease precisely because there was a whole-ass country between Egypt and Syria.
If you mean the existence of Israel stopped Nasser from being able to march troops into Syria to crush dissent, then sure, but the actual reason the UAR collapsed was because Syrians felt the Egyptians had turned their country into a colony under Egypt's control and not into an equal partner. The existence of Israel is a logistical hurdle to the formation of a united Arab/Muslim state, but the real obstacle to such a state is that nobody wants it, and those who experienced it for the briefest moment discovered that they hated it.
Gaddafi tried to create a unified state with Tunisia as well, on the same theory of Islamic unity. It fell through because Algeria's secular, Arab nationalist government threatened to invade Tunisia if the union materialized. Israel had even less to do with that failure.
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