Professor Ziad Abu-Rish talked about how the modern map of the middle east came into existence right after World War II. Many of the states that are now currently there, didn’t exist prior to World War |. These states were created in 1 of 2 ways. The first way was the state powers that occupied territories deciding upon themselves how to divide the lands. The second way was that borders were decided by local rebellions. Because the majority of the population belonged to tribes prior to the creation of the states some people make the claim that “these states in the middle east aren’t real”. Therefor these people are not with the program in which nation state is the focus of political identity. Professor Abu-Rish however disagrees saying “every state was created once”. The fact that they were created after World War | does not make them any less real. Most of the middle east was under colonial rule starting after WW | until the end of WW ||. After World War || you would find 4 issues/ the questions people constantly debated over. All four issues surrounded the question “now that we have our independence what are we going to do with it?” These for questions where: The social question (mass impoverishment), the economic question (what kind of development strategy), the national question (incomplete independence), and lastly the political question (political institutions being unresponsive to the needs of people). In these debates you could see two very clear camps forming: the status quo camp, and the reformist camp. The reformists won by the help of military coups, in the 50s 60s and 70s, and you could see a major shift in everyday life of people with the coming of state led economic development. In the 1980s this began to change, governments began to move away from these types of development plans for multiple reasons. It’s really important to recognize that in the history he explained that these people really believe