Reminds me of the story I read about the flood of raw sewage the Palestinians experienced that drowned several civilians. The UN knew there was more population than the sewage storage facility (which the UN had built) could support, and had given the Palestinians the materials needed to expand its capacity. But the Palestinians instead used the provided pipe to make missiles to fire at Israel, so their children drowned in sewage. What a dysfunctional culture.

If you would permit me, I think a better title would have been “I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousin, I, my brother and my cousin against the foreigner,” (if there were no space limitations).

I recently read “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” by Philip Carl Salzman which describes the Arab tribal culture, especially its nomadic version, as central to the lack of development in that area. He opines that the culture is based on a “balanced opposition” of various and varying population segments which engage in what is basically a zero-sum societal game which is augmented by the culture’s fixation on its “honor/shame” component.