So much of the nationalist struggle in Syria, Palestine and Iraq, as well as Egypt, revolved around challenging and dismantling European colonial pluralism that held that only European power could keep allegedly antagonistic native communities in harmony.
I found this quote to me demonstrable of essentially every western action in the middle east. Carve up some of Afghanistan here, make Israel a child state here, go to war with Iraq for oil there, etc, etc. Furthermore, it follows that like South Africa with Apartheid, the contemporary history of the middle east will be and is one of resistance against the western metropole as a whole.