As always, the Middle East, where I live, is full of “interesting” news. The most important item, in my view, came a few days ago. The United Arab Emirates decided to make a normal peace treaty with Israel. The two sides are formalizing relations and looking into various mutually beneficial trade , commerce, and health agreements. Rumor has it that other more distant Arab regimes may soon follow suit. The people whose nose is out of joint are: first and foremost, the Palestinians. Right behind them comes Iran. Add the Gaza strip terrorist regime in Gaza and the Hizbullah (read Iranian) controlled Lebanese.
Lebanon is still reeling from that terrible explosion in Beirut. Talk in my neighborhood says that there were government officials who knew about the unsafe storage situation but were just holding out for a bigger bribe before selling the chemicals as fertilizer. Diplomatic efforts are going on to solve the crisis, but anything that looks even remotely like the present arrangement won’t make a real change. The problem is still the Hizbullah Shi’ite minority veto. Add to that the Hizbullah militia that is stronger than the Lebanese National Army, and a do-nothing UN force committed to recording “violations” of agreements, but not allowed to really do anything about them.
That brings us to the third arena of violence. Qatar has been quietly supplying millions of dollars to people in Gaza with the Israeli governments permission. Those payments are going to stop next month. The Hamas regime in Gaza is unhappy. Their leader went to Qatar to plead his case. The Qataris, it seems, prefer to support the (temporarily) ousted leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, who lives under their roof. Don’t ask the Gazans whom they prefer. It’s a case of one corrupt gang leader versus another. Either way, terrorists in Gaza have gone back to launching rockets and sending incendiary balloons into Israeli territory. Predictable, stepped up Israeli air strikes that destroy buildings without harming people have had no effect. The open question is whether the Israelis will continue to tolerate this behavior, and what steps are they willing to take to make it stop. Bear in mind that a major military operation may not be a good answer because there is no clear view of who, or what, will replace Hamas if they are removed.
If the Israel-UAE arrangements prove satisfactory they could become a model of how to solve similar problems in the region. Mohammed Ben Zayed of the UAE is an absolute ruler, He’s just not a tyrant. His country is rich enough that he does not need to resort to corruption. That means he can actually focus on things that create a better way of life for his citizens. In the end, that’s what I thought all ruling bodies were supposed to do.
Wetherhorn 