ARABIC NATIONS POSITION FOR SURVIVAL,
MODERATES CRYING FOR PEACE AND SAFETY,
AS THEY BEGIN TO FALL IN LINE WITH RADICALS,
IN THE EVENT ISLAMIC JIHAD EXTREMISTS PREVAIL,
IN A MIDDLE EAST WAR I SAY WILL START BEFORE 2015!
MODERATE NATIONS WANT TO END UP ON WINNING SIDE,
FEARING RETRIBUTION IF EXTREMISTS DEFEAT ISRAEL IDF!
December 27, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin 4 Excerpts from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Daily Alert
Excerpt 1 from Commentary
Assad Returns as the Strong Horse
Michael J. Totten
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri just spent two days with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad in Damascus. Hariri went to Damascus with Hizbullah’
s bayonet in his back. Assad’s regime assassinated Saad Hariri’s father, Rafik, in 2005. There is no alternate universe where Saad Hariri is OK with this or where his generically “positive” statements at a press conference were anything other than forced.
I was invited to dinner at Hariri’s house earlier this year. Trust me: the man is no friend of the Syrian government or Hizbullah.
His political party, the Future Movement, champions liberalism and capitalism, the very antithesis of what is imposed in Syria by Assad’s Arab Socialist Baath party regime and the totalitarian Velayat-e Faqih ideology enforced by the Khomeinists in Iran and in the Hizbullah-occupied regions of Lebanon.
Hizbullah and its sponsors in Tehran and Damascus have forced Hariri to surrender to its continuing existence as a warmongering militia that threatens to blow up the country again by picking fights with the Israelis. The national army isn’t strong enough to disarm Hizbullah.
At the end of the day, Hariri has to do what Hizbullah and its friends say unless someone with a bigger stick covers his back. When Hariri went to Damascus, everyone in the country understood it meant Syria has re-emerged as the strong horse in Lebanon.
Now that the U.S., France, and Saudi Arabia are bringing Assad in from the cold, his influence, naturally, is rising again, in Lebanon and everywhere else. That’s good news for Hizbullah and Iran.
It’s bad news for the Lebanese, the Americans, the French, the Saudis, and the Israelis.
None of this was inevitable, but – in Lebanon, at least – it was predictable. (Commentary)
Excerpt 2 from Jerusalem Post
Domino Effect Seen in Lebanon
Jonathan Spyer
Although the Obama administration has hesitated before rushing headlong into renewing relations with Damascus, it has undertaken a series of gestures that have demonstrated that any real policy of isolation is over. This goes hand in hand with the broader regional stance of the administration of attempting “engagement” with the Iranian regime. Far from signaling to Middle Eastern powers that a new world of cooperation is about to commence, what this U.S. stance conveys to friends and foes in the region is that Washington no longer has the stomach for holding fast against the bid by Iran and its allies
for regional hegemony.
The actors, therefore, move to make their accommodation with the changed reality. The small dominoes are falling, like Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who visited Damascus last week in a ritual gesture of supplication to Bashar al-Assad. The writer is senior researcher at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, IDC, Herzliya. (Jerusalem Post)
Excerpt 3 from Weekly Standard
The Murdered Fathers Club: Washington’s Allies in Beirut Are Now Bowing to Damascus
David Schenker
Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, the leaders of the Cedar Revolution, whose fathers were all but certainly killed by Syria, are paying homage to
Damascus. Perhaps the leading factor in the March 14 leadership’s decision to return to Damascus appears to be Saudi Arabia’s equivocating. To mitigate the threat posed by Tehran, Saudi Arabia is attempting to pry Syria away from its 30-year strategic ally, and
the first Saudi down-payment in this ill-advised gambit has been its Lebanese allies. At least in part, this dramatic change in policy is related to the perceived U.S. weakness on Iran.
Absent Saudi confidence that Washington will prevent a nuclear Iran, Riyadh is hedging. The writer is director of the Program in Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Weekly Standard)
Excerpt 4 from New York Hudson Institute
Shh! Mubarach is building a Wall
Khaled Abu Toameh
For years, the Egyptians have been strongly condemning Israel for erecting the security fence in the West Bank.
But now Egypt is quietly building its own wall along its border with Gaza and does not want to hear any complaints.
The Israeli barrier was built with the chief goal of halting suicide bombings and other terror activities against Israelis.
The Egyptian fence, on the other hand, is being constructed to stop Palestinians living in Gaza from entering Egypt.
Israel does not want to reopen its borders with Gaza and that is regrettable
and painful, but also understandable. But what one cannot understand is the negative attitude of the Egyptians and the rest of the Arab regimes toward the misery of their Palestinian brothers. The Arab rulers want Gaza to remain Israel’s problem alone.
The ironic part is that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is now defending Egypt’s right to build a separation wall. This is the same Abbas who, for years, has been condemning Israel’s “Apartheid Wall” and urging the world to force Israel to tear it down. (Hudson Institute-New York)
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