Saturday, February 16, 2008

the Palestinianization of Sinai and the Lebanonization of Egypt

Lee Smith writes in SLATE in "The End Of Pax Americana" here
"................A more troubling scenario, for both Israel and Egypt, is with Palestinians and others heading into Egypt. Egypt's state-security apparatus will do everything in its power—even "breaking legs," as the Egyptian foreign minister warned—to prevent Islamist fighters from going south, especially to Cairo.........The Egyptians say they want to add another 750 troops to their contingent in the Sinai—a plan backed by Washington and resisted by many Israeli officials—otherwise, they say, they have little control over what happens in Sinai, just as the Lebanese government can't rein in Hezbollah. .......The Israelis are only a little more open about their fears of Iran than the Sunni states are.............The White House never quite recovered from the winter 2006 Palestinian Authority elections that resulted in a victory for Hamas. That unwitting empowerment of a terrorist organization helped create the world's first Muslim Brotherhood state, an Islamic emirate on the Eastern Mediterranean, which is making the decades-old Pax Americana seem vulnerable."

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