In November 1992 I accompanied the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Donald Robinson, to the capitals of the Middle East. He was representing the then Australian Council of Churches in a post-Iraq War ‘people-to-people’ diplomatic initiative. I was his political adviser.

In Israel, our government-provided escort got into a discussion with the Archbishop about modern Israeli history. Here is how this devout Jew explained the miracle of the modern, democratic Israeli state to the visiting Archbishop: ‘We agreed to the 1947 partition, but God hardened their hearts. They attacked, He gave us the victory, we won more than we had originally agreed. We offered to work out peaceful borders. But in 1967 God hardened their hearts again. He gave us the victory, more territory and Jerusalem itself. But we offered to negotiate peace again. God hardened their hearts …’

You get the picture. Who could explain the stupidity of Israel’s enemies? How to explain their determination to ‘never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity’ for peace and prosperity (what a profound judgment that aphorism provides), except through some miraculous intervention by Yahweh!

Today, looking at the Middle East, the disastrous state of Arab and (local) Muslim politics, I recall that conversation. The failure to take peaceful advantage of the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the victory of Hamas there – surely another example of God hardening hearts? The recent intemperate call by Mahmoud Abbas to stop Jews visiting the Temple Mount by ‘all means necessary’. His reiteration that Jerusalem must be the ‘eternal’ capital of any Palestinian State, a ‘state’ with shallow claims to any historic legitimacy – surely his heart has been hardened so as to allow further strategic creep by settlers into the West Bank?

From a hard-nosed balance of power perspective, Israelis must give thanks daily for the triumph of clan, tribe, dictatorship and myopia on the Arabian peninsula. As a supporter of Israel, I am relieved that there is no current concerted Arab threat against Israel. Israel’s reprise will continue so long as the various emirs, sultans, kings, dictators and would-be caliphs scheme and fight amongst themselves. The cost in human life, the lost opportunities for development, for ordinary Arabs, is of course unbearable – but Arab leadership is to blame for it.

It’s not just Arab disunity that gives Israel breathing space and tactical advantage. There is the Sunni-Shia religious divide. Israelis probably don’t give thanks for the Sunni-Shia schism that so helpfully divides and weakens its enemies. But as the Iranian-Iraqi war once did, an Iranian-Saudi cold war (so long as it does not go nuclear) and an Iranian-ISIS hot war do keep the madmen at each other’s, rather than Israeli, throats.

The Sunni-Shi’ite war has only been underway since 656. Muhammad’s disciples couldn’t agree on who amongst them should rule in his place. Only imperial power – Christian, Ottoman – has provided ordinary Muslims respite from the power struggles of their religious and political elites since.

When Christian religious and political leaders were fighting to the last drop of their adherents’ blood, over life-and-death issues like papal infallibility and whether to baptise children, they were forced by exhaustion to create the Peace of Westphalia. That settlement in the mid-17th century helped Christians put an end to internecine slaughter through a begrudging commitment to religious coexistence. There appear to be no clever Sunni or Shi’ite diplomats or statesmen capable of forging a similar settlement.

Israelis no doubt pray that one day a couple of Arab or Persian Abdurrahman Wahids will arise to help transition the Middle East into peaceful pluralism and co-existence. Abdurrahman Wahid was the Indonesian Muslim religious scholar, community leader, politician, and President of Indonesia at the turn of this century. ‘Gus Dur’, as he was known to Indonesians, drew on deep spiritual self-assurance and political wisdom to guide Indonesia’s transition into one of the largest democracies in the world. Such self-assurance and wisdom appear totally lacking amongst Muslim leaders in the Middle East. God continues to harden their hearts.