Ali Salim: The Religious War in the Middle East
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3766/religious-war-middle-east
The proposal of the United States for a Palestinian state and a joint Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli policing mechanism in the Jordan Valley seems like a pipe dream. That sort of suggestion, disconnected from reality, clearly indicates a dangerous lack of awareness concerning the increasing militant Islamic aggression toward Israel and the West.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been doing a lot of soul-searching these days. He has been assessing his options and those of his terrorist organization and wondering about the outcome. Despite his usual smug boasts, in his last speech he could not quite hide his fears, even though he was being recorded deep in his bunker in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahia.
Nasrallah is worried. Even though the forces of the Syrian regime, supported by armed Iranians and armed gangs of Hezbollah operatives, continue to slaughter their Sunni citizens using poison gas to realize local achievements, as in the city of Al-Qusayr, he is worried. Despite the state-of-the-art arms Russia recently presented to the Syrian regime, some of which are supposed to be delivered to him as well, he is worried. Despite victory propaganda spread by the Syrians and their collaborators, the man radiates pessimism
Apparently Nasrallah, Iran’s indentured servant who sacrificed his men and all Lebanon on the altar of Iran’s foreign interests, has finally realized that even if the Syrian regime survives and conquers the rebel strongholds and their supporters in the Syrian cities, and even if the Syrian resistance is obliterated, the defeat of the Syrian regime is approaching, as is the defeat of the Hezbollah operatives fighting for it, their deaths and massive defeat in Syria cannot be prevented, and the conflict between Shi’ites and Sunnis will worsen and spread.
All of what Nasrallah has finally realized came through loud and clear in his most recent speech broadcast by Al-Manar. As usual, his speech was rife with incitement and contempt for the “plots” of Israel and the United States to take over Syria and Lebanon, destroy the “resistance” led by the Assad regime and thereby prevent the total destruction of the State of Israel and the “liberation” of Palestine. This time, however, his hysterical attacks against the gangs of takfir (Muslims who accuse other Muslims of abandoning Islam and being infidels) exposed genuine fear.
Terrified, Nasrallah called the operatives of Al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham –all acting aside the Free Syrian Army fighters opposing the regime, and against Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon — dangerous gangs of takfir. He knows that they accuse Shi’ites, Alawites and Druze of having abandoned Sunni Islam, and that for the takfir, they are worse than infidels and should be put to death.
These gangs of takfir currently operating in Syria at the side of the Sunni rebels against Hezbollah are, in fact, genuine rivals of Nasrallah; he is more afraid of them than of Israel. The bloody confrontations in Syria cut through the boundaries between Sunnis and Shi’ites more than they did in Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain, and are approaching a religious explosion the likes of which has never been seen in the Middle East.
In the meantime the Muslim Brotherhood, not to be caught napping, has declared Hezbollah — warring with Assad against the Sunnis — an enemy of Islam that has “shown its ugly face.” In Tripoli the Lebanese Sunni sheikh al-Rifa’i declared jihad on Hezbollah, and the Sunni Muslim leader close to Muslim Brotherhood circles and Hamas, sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in a sermon from Doha, called for every Sunni to join the battle against Assad and his collaborators. The leader of radical Sunni Islamic opposition group Ahrar al-Sham recently declared that the united Islamic state of “Greater Syria” (Alsham), to be established in Syria and Iraq, will eliminate Hezbollah and Iranian presence in the Middle east and expel Russia from Syria, depriving it of its warm water ports.
The signs that things were getting worse were clear in Hezbollah’s Lebanese strongholds along the Syrian border. Last week the Syrian rebels launched two rockets at the outskirts of the plains of Brital in east Baalbek and Nahle on the Bekaa in Lebanon. In addition, 16 rockets and mortar shells were fired at the Baalbek region. The Grad missiles launched at the Hezbollah stronghold in Dahia in Beirut were part of the escalation, as were the bloody confrontations between Shi’ites and Sunnis in Lebanon, in which Hezbollah is specifically designated as an enemy of the Sunnis. The Lebanese demand for Hezbollah to disarm is growing louder. And it is now, as Assad, Iranians and Hezbollah operatives massacre Syrians and Palestinians in the Al-Yarmouk refugee camp, that Nasrallah’s worries are multiplying.
Apparently even the Israelis consider Hezbollah’s Iranian-inspired slogans about the liberation of Palestine, about the Israeli threat to Syria and Lebanon and about the historic role of the Assad regime in the anti-Israeli and anti-American resistance to be empty and pitiful. The slogans represent the fraud Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas perpetrate in the name of destroying Israel, liberating Palestine, ending American hegemony in the Middle East and glorifying Syria as the main axis in the fighting — all for the purpose of completing the Iranian nuclear bomb project. In the past Nasrallah’s speeches created solidarity with Iran and Hezbollah, drawing the Gulf states’ attention away from the Iranian nuclear threat.
That particular concept is collapsing like an old worn-out tent in Syria and Lebanon. Desperate, Assad is considering declaring war on Israel as a way of evading being remembered by history as slaughtering his own people and being too much of a coward to face Israel. He represents his threats against Israel as the desires of the Syrian people, and blames Israel for giving military support to the rebels — possibly hoping that such a confrontation will close the Syrian ranks behind him and force the rebels to join him. Apparently the Middle East is girding its loins for a full-scale, no-boundary war. Past conflicts and current internal frictions based on sectarianism, religion and ideology will join to crumble the artificially-created Arab states which until yesterday seemed perfectly stable.
Given the ongoing chaos in the Middle East and the collapse of the artificial Arab states based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the proposal of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for the creation of a new Palestinian state and a joint Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli policing mechanism in the Jordan Valley seems like a pipe dream. That sort of suggestion, disconnected from reality, clearly indicates a dangerous lack of awareness concerning the Middle East past, present and future, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia optimism and romanticism which allows him to ignore the emergence of the increasing militant Islamic aggression toward Israel and the West. All that is left is to hope that somewhere in Washington people are really paying attention and preparing to deploy for the real, first priority inevitable battle against Iran and its satellites, with their capabilities dramatically to influence world peace.
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