Brave Article

Submitted by Alex (United States), Nov 21, 2006 at 14:13

At a time when the US President who brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel is releasing a book entitled, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," it seems appropriate for a REAL Middle East analyst like Dr. Pipes to question the wisdom of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in light of recent developments.

I would add to Dr. Pipes' analysis:

-the ascent of Islamism nearly simultaenously with the Camp David accords (1979 was also the year of Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution)

-the role of the Sinai Peninsula now as a land bridge for jihadis from Europe and North Africa into Iraq

-the legitimzation of anti-Semitism in Egypt by removing Jews from Sinai (by Ariel Sharon--the same man who brought us the Gaza fiasco in 2005)

-and the differing roles and use of Cold War-originated US military aid to Egypt and Israel--with Israel obeying the US wish to "keep quiet" in exchange for technological "deterrence" and Egypt sapping up every last drop of military technology from North Korea to the US that it can access in order to harm a US ally

Also, I fear that the territories disputed between Israel and Arab countries since the 1967 war could now move to a state-sponsored version of the assymetric strategies that the Palestinians have employed in Gaza and the West Bank and that Hezbollah has employed in Lebanon since the late 1980s. Will Bashar al-Assad submit the Golan to an Iranian-sponsored and Islamist insurgency, perhaps allowing for the current near-civil war in Lebanon to spill over into the Golan theatre? Could the Sinai even go this way? I hope not, but the mullahs in Iran and the jihadists share an interest in destabilizing these regions to get America bogged down in as many places as possible, and Bashar and the Arab states have an interest in deflecting Sunn--Shi'a strife away from their own regimes anmd toward the US and Israel.

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