Ever since the first Palestinian intifada — if not sooner — many believed that the key to solving the Middle East’s many problems was to bring about an agreement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Create a Palestinian state, the thinking went, and everything else will fall into line. However, the developments following the Arab Spring and the subsequent rise of ISIS call this theory into question. More than ever, it is debatable whether addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict first will have a positive “spill-over” into other critical areas like sectarian violence, institutional dysfunction, and political and economic underdevelopment. This is the debate I want you to address for your final exam. So: If you had to choose one conflict to address first, would you make it the Arab-Israeli conflict? Tell me why or why not, and support your answer by going through the different conflict types — and specific cases — and demonstrating how they may or may not tie in with the Arab-Israeli conflict. I am trying to answer this question by addressing sectarian and institutional conflict in Egypt