Hi

I was looking for some information on the Middle East in the 2070's, particularly the Israel/Palestine conflict. I've had a look through the 6WA but couldn't really find much apart from a small map in the Arabian Caliphate section. From that, it looks like Israel has taken the whole of the Sinai peninsula from Egypt but also seceded control of Jerusalem (though it could just be that the borders aren't accurately drawn). Where could I read up on this? It's an interesting situation and I wondered how it panned-out Shadowrun-style
I'm also not really sure at what point it was when Shaowrun diverged from history.

I don't know canon, but as a rule of thumb i always assume that somewhere in the middle east is involved in some kind of conflict, no matter the period of history. It's usually a fairly safe bet

There's a good chunk of info from 3rd edition if you're willing to update it for yourself.

Off the top of my head, try Shadows of Europe, Year of the Comet, Loose Alliances...

Canon: Two-states solution with a wall and little mutual contact. Palestine controls the northern part of the Siani, Israel the southern part. Palestinians are angry at Islamists because of bad things they did during the 2033 Great Jihad, which made them eventuially tenatively side with Israel (and Israel abandon Erez Israel politics and give tehm Gaza and West Bank nearly entirely. Lots of wishful thinking in this writeup). Jerusalem is UN-mandated territorry and full of bizarre magic. Israel is nearly a theocracy run by orthodox rabbis and affiliated parties, Palestine is a crappy Arab state. Ares practically owns Israel's industry; IWI is Ares' premium brand. Palestine is pretty poor and has no megacorp presence to speak of, if I am not mistaken. Source: Shadows of Asia, the only canonic source on Israel with more than a few throwaway lines.

Loose Alliances has a bit on Mossad and Shin Bet, who are basically running around assassinating people left and right, so it's Clancyverse espionage there.

Actually SOA says most Palestinians took sides against the Alliance for Allah pretty much right away, because they wanted to be independent from everyone, Israeli or Arab. Yep, lots of wishful thinking..and Kabbalah uber-magics

As for SHadowrun breaking from history, some people would say "From twenty thousand years ago", while others will say "2000".

Me?

I use 1989, when the first edition was published, as where it breaks from reality to Shadowrun. Gives a nice lil' buffer in there. Spy Games has some late 90's-upwards history, if you want to see where it all comes together from.

SNAFU.

Actually, Shadowrun's alternate timeline is laid out pretty well in the Almanac. 1989 is a good breaking point if you disregard SR's strange prepaleolithic history.

Just to clarify, when I said 'I'm also not really sure at what point it was when Shaowrun diverged from history', the 'was' was the Middle East situation, not the year of divergence. I see now that this wasn't very clear

What I meant was that a lot has happened in that region recently (in the last year or 2) and I wasn't sure what the situation was like at the point when the timeline diverged.

I've had a look through Shadows of Asia though and that's got some really good info in Thanks. For some reason I assumed it would be mostly pacific rim stuff.

Conspiracy Theories moved the line to 1987. It has George Bush resigning from vice-presidency because of his involvement in the Irangate. And so did Michael Dukakis win the 1988 election.

Why would you do something like that? It serves no practical purpose and gives rise to a tidal like butterfly effect of alternate history.
Which I guess they haven't considered in the least...

Really! Okay, I totally missed that. It makes the decisions of the SR Supreme court a lot harder to explain though, whcih look like the court was staffed with several clones of Ron Paul.

And I think they did it FOR the tidal wave of alternate histoy that is the Shadowrun timeline.

It's one thing to write about the future, then have that future become the past that never happened. At that point, the story may aswell remain the same.
But going back and rewriting events that had already happened by the point that the books were written?
That's just asking for a brain numbing amount of extra work. Considering that you had the opportunity to let people assume things were the same until recent history.

edit:edit:edit: My grammar is kinda off today, should be atleast readable now.

After checking, The Neo-anarchist Guide to North America (published in 1991) already introduced one early change, with Chief Justice Warren Burger not retiring until 1994 (instead of 1986). In the 1992-2000 period, the president was Jeffrey Lynch instead of Bill Clinton. He appointed three new Supreme Court justices between 1993 and 1998, including "outspoken conservative law professor" Terence Ordell as a replacement for Burger.

Lynch appointment of a conservative judge and his policies (privatizing US Postal Service, Weather Service, Forest Service, Amtrak, "and half-dozen other public services," while the Congress that "quickly fell into step behind President Lynch's programs" was "trimming or eliminating many social services programs") somehow makes me think he was the Republican candidate in 1992.
In this case, a serie of events that lead to Bob Dole losing to Dukakis and the Republican taking back the White House in 1992, makes as much sense as incumbent president Bush not getting party nomination in 1992.

So in SR, the Tea Party came into existence in 1992 already. Any word in canon whether Dukakis actually became president, or maybe someone else did (I like, uh, Rev. Al Sharpton)?