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The Demise of the Middle East's Borders

(Israel Hayom) Dore Gold - Should the fragmentation of Syria combine with the Balkanization of Iraq, what will the Middle East look like? The Sunni Arabs are the likely candidates to look for mergers with their neighbors. If they are politically dominated by the same branch of al-Qaeda, then the emergence of a new Afghanistan in the heart of the Arab world might be the result. If more moderate forces among the Iraqi Sunnis emerge, then it should not be ruled out that they might consider some federal ties with their western Sunni neighbor, Jordan, which would give them an outlet to the Red Sea. But however the political systems in Syria and Iraq evolve, it is clear that the map of the Middle East is likely to be very different from the map that the colonial powers fixed during the First World War. There is only one boundary in the Middle East that Western diplomats have become rigidly obsessed with. It is not even formally an international border under international law, but only an armistice line from 1949 - what is inappropriately called the 1967 border. While a solution to this territorial dispute must be addressed, the final borders drawn between Israel and its neighbors will have to take into account the dramatic strategic shifts being witnessed elsewhere in the region. The writer, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2013-05-27 00:00:00
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