[svandamme]

Well, everybody was fighting everybody in that region, and it's only natural that it centered around nowadays Israel, since that was the only part that was fertile.. the rest was mostly desert... Except maybe the Nile Delta, where they fought pretty often as well
Nothing to do with culture or religion, that's just a power struggle for land,
No different from the Greeks fighting amongst eachother and neighbours, then the Romans ...

They all fought, those who didn't, did't make it