The Jordan Death Penalty Conundrum and Israel

 

Jordanian law has a very strict, irreversible, strident punishment for any Arab or Muslim who dares to sell land of any sort to a Jew. The punishment for committing such an act of daring-do is death. Where Palestinian courts have sentenced an unknown number of Arabs for selling land to a Jew, also referred to as ‘the enemy’ in another law; there are the Jordanian laws, which change usually becoming more stringent, as well as laws passed by the Palestinian legislators who have made any number of laws which have referenced selling lands, homes, apartments, facilities, and other references to properties which all carry a sentence of death. Often an Arab brought to trial for selling land to a Jew, the enemy, a middle man making a purchase for a Jew, any non-Palestinian and whatever other laws they can find even to accuse them of blaspheme guarantees that a death penalty will be sentenced for multiple offenses. The catch is that even after the courts have sentenced an individual to death, the penalty cannot be legally carried out until the President, currently Mahmoud Abbas who is serving in the eleventh or twelfth year of his four year term, has to approve the execution. Thus far it is assumed that President Abbas has never approved an execution though the BBC claims that he has approved three executions. What is beyond ridiculous is that Israel has refused to apply Israeli civil law and has left the areas of Judea and Samaria under military law but has at least annexed and applied Israeli law to East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has, along with many in the international community even beyond the Arab and Muslim worlds including many European nations, the European Union and beyond, refuses to recognize Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem. This means that in East Jerusalem Jordanian laws no longer applies and an Arab is permitted to sell land, an apartment or any property to anybody they choose. The drawback is that the Palestinian Courts will still hold a trial and convict you sentencing you to death and send that order to Abbas for his approval. The truth is that once one is even suspected of selling property to a Jew, even if only because an investigation has been opened, they are at a much higher risk of non-judicial execution, often at the hands of the Palestinian Security Forces who in many ways are the police as well as the supervising authority. We here at BTC have no doubt that at some point, should things continue as they have over the past fifty years, then soon the Palestinian courts will be convicting Arabs who have lived in Israel and are and have been Israeli citizens all their lives as the Palestinian Authority does claim that all the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to them, the entirety of the 22% of the British Mandate lands which were not granted to Jordan for the initial Arab state in the Palestinian territories under the British Mandate. Why does Israel allow the continued application of such prejudicial law which targets Jews solely for exclusion from property transactions?

 

The entirety of this discussion and the institutionalized bigotry at the United Nations, within the European Union and many of its individual nations and throughout the NGO’s professing to be human rights enforcers extreme who have found that all of human suffering and every single human rights violations are perpetrated by Israel depends on a single premise, that being that before November 29, 1947, nothing existed and the world as we know it and all the nations of the Earth came into being at that time just as the United Nations was violating Article 80 of their own Charter and all the laws, treaties, conventions and other international forums which it recognized and made inclusive within the United Nations framework and took the proclamations made by the League of Nations resolving the results from World War I and identifying national borders throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. The reason that the world has to begin on November 29, 1947, is because on that date the United Nations took the remaining 22% of British Mandate lands and divided it in what they called an even patrician with half for the Jews and half for the next Arab State carved from the original British Mandate after the 78% land grab where the British issued the Churchill White Paper which tore that land from what would have been the Jewish State to satisfy a promise to the Arab Hashemites to a homeland in return for their assistance in World War I. The White Paper left the Jewish State to be founded on the lands west of the Jordan River but that was unfair cried the Arabs. The Jews are taking all of our lands, we demand more. So the United Nations took a strong stand and insisted that the Arabs settle for half of the remaining land and allow the Jews the remainder which was divided so the Jewish lands was predominantly Negev Desert (see map below). The Arabs took one look at this United Nations General Assembly Resolution, a suggestion which is only valid if accepted by both parties, and immediately rejected it protesting that it was unfair, they wanted it all, period. They swore they would annihilate the Jewish State the moment dawn broke on its first day of existence.

 

UN Palestine Partition Versions of 1947 and included within UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 which was rejected by the Arab League negating the UN Resolution as
if either side rejects such a UN Resolution which is non-binding, it invalidates the entire
agreement rendering it mute from that point forward. Jerusalem was to be managed by a
corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) set up consisting of an international groups
most likely to be rotated. This offer was accepted by the Zionist Congress but having
any General Assembly Resolution accepted by one side and rejected by the other is
simply one hand clapping, useless.

 

Their threat was real and over half a dozen Arab armies and militias invaded Israel the morning of May 15, 1948, at dawn, the first sunrise over the Jewish State. Because the Arab League and all representatives for the Arab people rejected the compromise put forward by the United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 181 was voided as if it had never existed. The above map is now always flashed by Arab League members as the actual borders and that Israel attacked the Arabs and gained lands in 1948. The reality is that the World War I decisions which were validated and made enforceable by the United Nations, an obligation and not a suggestion, are the rules which apply and have applied since the start in the 1920’s and is the reason everybody starts in 1947 or even 1948 proposing a lie. The reality is Israel was the Jewish State west of the Jordan River and Jordan was the Arab State east of the Jordan River (see map below). This made the Gaza Strip captured by Egypt as well as Judea and Samaria (West Bank) captured by Jordan were both illegally held lands as they were gained by a war of aggression. Israel responded to the massing of armies on her border by Egypt and Syria in late May and into June of 1967 by attacking a day before intelligence reported the attack was scheduled by President Nasser. Lebanon joined almost immediately and Jordan began a debate and mobilized their forces while Israeli leaders pleaded for them to reconsider telling them the reports on television and radio by Egypt and Syria of great advances towards Tel Aviv were false, lies, and propaganda and that they were being decimated on all fronts. Jordan ignored and assaulted Western Jerusalem forcing Israel respond by diverting troops headed for the Sinai Peninsula and Jordan was pushed back beyond the Jordan River. Israel had liberated the Gaza Strip as well as Judea and Samaria (West Bank) while also gaining the Golan Heights and the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula gaining one bank for the Suez Canal. As these territories were gained in a defensive reaction to impending massive attacks on three borders, the lands gained could be legally retained or a good amount retained providing a case can be made that the new borders would provide greater defense for the nation. Israel used this to annex the Golan Heights from which Syria used to train snipers by having them shoot farmers working in their fields in the Israeli Galilee north. Israel could have retained the entire Sinai Peninsula as the Suez Canal would make for a good defensive front or they could have retained half the Sinai Peninsula holding the mountains and the passes through them. Instead, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula in its entirety in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt while Egypt refused to request the Gaza Strip. Israel offered Judea and Samaria to Jordan who refused the area ceding it to Israel. That should have been the end and the map below would have been the result but the world demand that Israel be made to fall all the way back to the original 1949 Armistice Lines which were the line defining Israeli borders before the June 1967 Six Day War. This is unheard of for any nation other than the United States in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Somehow it is doubtful the United States would want to keep the areas of Europe and the Pacific and Asia they fought within during World War II. Israel would be well served in retaining the lands up to the banks of the Jordan River.

 

British Mandate as prescribed division between Arab State of Jordan and Jewish State of Israel

 

The first cry which comes from every front is to repeat the big lie that Israel retaining all of Judea and Samaria is impossible because then Israel will have to choose between being Jewish or being Democratic. The added population would only become a threat in twenty to forty years depending on growth rate of populations which you choose, and if you take the most recent and have trends continue one finds that Israel remains Jewish into the foreseeable future. Some claim that this creates a problem because the Arab refugees in the camps who have languished there since 1948 would be left in these camps indefinitely and must be relocated into Israel. This is the reason these Arabs have been kept in these camps which resemble apartment blocks more than refugee camps with tents. These unfortunate people have been retained in the camps for the reason of overwhelming Israel with these refugees and their descendants. The Palestinian Arab refugees are the sole refugees in the world whose status is passed on to their children and their children and their children presumably forever. What has been forgotten is that there were almost one-million Jews forced from the Arab and Muslim world between the founding of Israel and 1960 who relocated into Israel where they were moved into the general population as rapidly as was possible. These Jews now make up close to half the population of Israel and makes another claim a lie. We hear the Jews need to return to Russia and Europe where they all came from. Well, what about the other half who came from Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait and other Arab and Muslim nations. Does anybody honestly believe that these nations would take their Jews back? When they refuse, then where do the Jews they rejected and their children go? And those Israelis who have one parent from European or Russian lineage and the other from the Middle East or North Africa? Have a lottery sending half to Europe and the other half to where when the Arab and Muslims refuse them? The Palestinian Arab refugees were being absorbed by the nations where the camps are located but when the PLO was founded in 1964, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas with the rest of the leaders as well as the Soviet Union all demanded these Arabs be returned to and kept in camps so they could be used to inundate Israel and vote the Jews into the sea.

 

The last item that everyone ignores is that the terms of the Mandates and all the other treaties, conferences et. al. demand that while the Jewish State, Israel, must respect the property rights, the right to work, education civil and religious rights of their Arab peoples, they do not have to extend political rights to the Arab population. That means they do not have to make them full Israeli citizens and could allow the Arabs to have semi-autonomous regions where they rule themselves but Israel retains the right and responsibility for security and defending those lands. The Arabs could be given rights in places to participate in local elections but not in national elections. There are numerous solutions all of which start with applying Israeli law over all the lands and put an end to using Jordanian laws. This would allow Arabs to sell their land and seek a new life possibly with relatives in Canada or relatives in Egypt or anywhere between. This would bring to an end the enslavement of the Palestinian Arabs by threatening their lives if they wish to sell their lands and move. As things stand now, every Palestinian Arab can and many are being forced to remain despite desiring to sell their lands, even if they were to sell to another Arab as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas both desire having as many Arabs remain within what might eventually become Israel as a deterrent against Israeli efforts to purchase much of the lands from Arabs eager and willing to sell and start a new life elsewhere. This freedom to relocate is denied them by leaders who are stealing their future in every way conceivable. Spread fair laws, allow people to use their lands to their best advantage and get the terror fronts off their necks. The worst deprivation in the Arab world outside Syria and the war zones is the life-crippling internment of Arab Palestinians just to spite Israel and their leadership’s willingness to deprive them of a better and free future through imprisoning them in camps or in neighborhoods where cronyism and embezzlement are standards of governance. Even with these problems, the Palestinian Arabs have one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world, though their standard of living is far below that of Israeli Arabs. How often have you heard those truths? You do not hear that the Israeli Arabs have a good life and the Palestinians are all but enslaved by their own people and their own dictatorial leaders. In Syria Bashir al-Assad first used nerve gas on a Palestinian camp and first used barrel bombs on that same Palestinian camp. The Palestinian camps in Syria were bombarded for week after week and in most cases little was left standing. These camps which consisted of cement apartment blocks were levelled almost to the ground and made Aleppo look like a nice place to live at those times. Now nowhere in Syria seems like a nice place to live outside some Druze mountain villages. Even the Kurdish regions have become an intolerable war zone with the Turkish Air Force and Army doing everything in their power to murder even the youngest of the children and destroy all of the Kurdish lands. That is how Turkey is fighting in Syria, telling the world they are fighting the Islamic State when they are making the world safe for the Islamic State as the Kurds were one of the most effective groups fighting the Islamic State. Just another little black and white lie printed in your morning newspapers. Just another brick knocked from in the wall.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

The Only Way Out of Current Impasse

 

Recognize Gaza as the Palestinian State and annex Judea and Samaria. That is the solution in a nutshell. Simply allow the next attempted coup by Hamas, as allowing it to survive for just short of a week, say five days, as in five days any credible coup will remove the hierarchy of Fatah, decapitating the Palestinian Authority (PA). This would be the start of a bloodbath of fighting with much of the PA Security Forces, the same forces, which though trained by United States General Dayton and his cadre in Jordan, lost to Hamas in Gaza in just under a couple of weeks, resulting in their losing badly again. Any decently planned Hamas coup attempt would likely place one third of the PA Security forces against another third of the PA Security Forces while the remaining third would run to Jordan seeking asylum. The hue and cry from those selfsame United Nations Security Council which just passed a resolution all but demanding that Israel flee back from Judea and Samaria, if not jump straight into the Mediterranean Sea, would be blaming Israel for the Arab on Arab fighting and demanding that Israel dispense sufficient IDF force to save the Arabs from the other Arabs. This is where Israel points out their solving this problem, which will have all the appearances of Syria redux, comes with a price, Judea and Samaria, and that the world had best find someplace for these newly made refugees to be taken in and coddled, perhaps around Turtle Bay in New York.

 

The first step Israel should take when such a scenario of a Hamas coup explodes in Nablus would be to secure Area C and make sure everybody knows Israel is simply following through on providing security and protection for all people residing in Area C as per the Oslo Accords. Israeli leadership could produce numerous copies of the agreement if the world demands so and it will reveal that Area C security, both militarily and politically, falls to Israel and Israel alone while Area A is purely PA security and Area B is shared when necessary. On that note make sure to inform the world that Israel is carefully overseeing the security potential for problems in Area B and if the PA proves not to be up to the task that there are contingencies for the IDF to provide security in Area B as per the Oslo Accords. Israel would need to issue Hamas a stern warning that Israel takes a very dim and critical view of their activities in this coup and as Israel remains powerless to aid the PA, Israel will not allow any actions against Israeli forces, citizens or lands to go unchallenged and no such actions will be ignored. All this in place, Israel should monitor the situation, offer to secure Area B if the PA would so request and otherwise wish the PA well with their electoral problems and pretend they are finally holding those long overdue elections.

 

As the world begins to press Israel about the fighting in Nablus and much of Area A, Israel should simply point out that the world just demanded Israel honor its commitments to the Palestinian people and their government and that is exactly what Israel intends to do. We should invite the United Nations to send peacekeepers if they feel such is required in Area A but warn that once peace is restored that Israel expects to be included in any further governance other than the PA being reinstalled. If Hamas performs anywhere near to their past history, reinstalling the PA would necessitate new leadership and potentially the parties who should have had the power all along, the ruling clans who have lived under dire threat with the PA in charge, would regain their positions. With each town and village ruled by their clan elders things can become manageable and perhaps a peace could be forged. Of course, again, there would be a price for permitting these clans to have some form of autonomy where they could expect to rule without terrorist groups cutting the heads of leadership of the public body, both figuratively and actually. Israel could simply make a deal where the IDF rules the area keeping the boogie men at bay allowing semi-autonomous rule of the Arab enclaves by the local Arab clans with the international and national security provided by Israel. In exchange these clans would permit all of Area C, the Jordan Valley and the overlooking Heights to be annexed by Israel to further facilitate providing complete security for these clan leaders.

 

This ends the claims of from the river to the sea all Jews must be eradicated and in its place implants Arab rule over Arab peoples and room for both to expand and Israeli sovereignty over all of Israel as defined by countless conferences, treaties, articles in charters, white papers and just about every conceivable form of Internationally recognized legal proceedings. These clan leaders will also submit that their education system can be either handled completely by themselves with their curricula supervised to remove any instigation, they could hand the entire responsibility to Israel who would then run the necessary schools within their area for a reasonable fee or the two could collaborate and form a partnership. The final compromise would likely serve well and Israel taking their school system and incorporating it into the regular Israeli system would provide a high level of education and a promising opportunity for these students. The most difficult task will be the deprogramming of those swayed or involved with terrorism and those deepest in its clutches may require a deprogramming followed by an intense reeducation experience required to give them maximum normal education in an extremely abbreviated timeframe.

 

Many will claim that this is completely unfeasible because the PA is too powerful for any inferior Hamas force to contend against. If this is so, then the PA will continue, possibly wounded, but continue and things will only affect Area C which will still be locked down under the demands of the Oslo accords. If the world is going to pretend that the Green Line is the result of the Oslo Accords, then perhaps Israel should act exactly as demanded by the Oslo Accords and secure Area C. Such security would preclude any building by the European Union or any European government or NGO. When we speak of Area C we are speaking of the general areas defined within Area C and not any of the roadways beyond those required for access to and from Israel and Jerusalem. Securing the areas which the Oslo Accords favored Israeli retention of lands, Area C, and offering and potentially securing the shared responsibility and lands where the debate over who owned what was presumed to be negotiated, Area B, Israel will have reinstated the realities of the Oslo Accords. Should the debate by AK-47 in Area A between Hamas and the PA devolve into a Syria-like mire of horrific levels of hell on earth, Israel should offer to protect the areas which the world, especially the Western World, hold dear such as Hevron, Bethlehem, Jericho and other special religious sites which include but are not limited to Joseph’s Tomb, Rachel’s Tomb and all locations within the city of Jerusalem and immediate suburbs (see map below). There would therefore be some alterations but should the PA accept such terms, even after any coup attempt, these could be the final peace. The understanding would be that absolutely no terror activity which could be traced to PA instigation or having received rewards or special recognition by the PA and all such activity would not be tolerated. This must be an absolute sworn to before the world as witness and thus enforceable by both parties. Be assured that Israel does not desire to rule over Arab parties who desire semi-autonomous self-rule. These areas would be given sufficient autonomy to police their own areas, collect taxes, limit entrance if desired, and run their own governmental agencies. The understanding is that the IDF and Israeli security forces would be permitted to operate within these areas in order to combat terror and to secure the lands from outside threats, a duty taken over completely by Israel. Any electricity, water, sewage treatment and other necessary utilities would be provided by Israel if desired but must be paid for as received or face termination of service as would any other customer. As a part of being semi-autonomous such utilities could also be billed as is done in Israel but once again bills must be paid for continued service.

 

Map of Proposal for Peace with Palestinian Authority

 

After any coup destroyed the local governance and after Hamas is defeated, then the Arabs residing in Areas A and B will be granted an opportunity to choose whether they desire local rule by chosen clan leaders or other tribal means, attempted inclusion within Israel after meeting a series of educations and understandings, or a return to rule by the PA or by Hamas. These choices will take place as voted under Israeli and outside observers from the United Nations, European Union and the United States along with other interested parties. Should the majority choose self-rule in semi-autonomous clanship ruled enclaves, then the PA will be dissolved and such governance as chosen will be set by another election held soon thereafter. This would result in a two state solution with Gaza as the second state ruled by Hamas, at least for now. What the lying political appointees and elected officials claiming to favor a two state solution are either making the choice for a three state solution with one under Hamas rule and the other under PA, unless they are admitting that they are already aware that should the PA be granted any form of governance, it would inevitably provide Hamas the high ground overlooking the Israeli center and the major developed lands both industrial and residential after they once again would route the PA in a mano-a-mano fight. Israel cannot and will not allow Hamas such ground with which to destroy the heart of Israel, and as such, Israel will never surrender our holiest sites to further ruin as has been the case with such sites in Syria and already perpetrated on our holiest grounds, the Temple Mount. As difficult as it might be for the world to admit, placing the Palestinian Arab people under clan and tribal rule would improve their lives immeasurably and far improve their opportunities for advancement. It would also remove from their shoulders the yoke of PA leadership’s embezzlement and oppressive and borderline criminal rule and the crony system by which a select few get unfathomably rewarded and the poorest find providing their family with food difficult.

 

What the world has proven through their actions supporting the PA kleptocracy and refusing the Palestinian Arabs honest governance by their own representatives and chosen local leaders in favor of the homicidal maniacs instigating a horrific injustice by instigating terror, is they support the destruction of Israel and the Jewish State even if the Palestinian Arab areas must suffer depravations only exceeded by Syria. This terror war is spreading now beyond Israeli shores into Europe, America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and virtually every place on earth with the exception, thus far, of Antarctica. France has been heavily struck as has Germany with both nations facing climbing criminal complaints with an unbelievable increase in sexual assaults. These increases can be directly tied to the social shock of attempting to incorporate one culture into an existing older order which one has a differing sense of order and moral behavior while the newer system believes in taking any woman who is not protected by law or criminal enterprise. Their governance has been largely corrupt and could not care less about their rights. In these mixtures, not all lives are created equal and the power appears to rest with the few at the top and the rest make do however they are capable. Such is a poor excuse for governance, especially when one realizes the last held election was approaching past a decade ago and that Abbas has been serving a four year term since 2005. There is no representation of the people or their interests within the PA. The PA operates for the special treatment of the select few and their armed protectors and in return the protectors provide the security in the same manner as the power is distributed. The entirety of the PA is as corrupt as one can imagine and is under the sway of the Iranians. As such it should be viewed with suspicion that they are working towards the destruction of Israel through subversion. Once routed out this time, it will be necessary to keep them out permanently. That is the sole path to peace.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Islamic Hierarchy Should be the Target as Well as ISIS

 

Is Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or al-Qaeda offshoot) honestly that horrific a threat and challenge that it should be treated as an individual threat needing a solution before any further assessment can be conducted? If you were to make this an inquiry of the United States State Department, they would answer in the affirmative and probably make Islamic State the sole terror threat requiring attention. Pose this same question to the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their answer would place Islamic State as the immediate threat but would follow that up with a litany of other threats hiding in the background, in the darkest of recesses. So, which assessment is the most accurate and which should be utilized to address future actions. Obviously the Pentagon assessment is more in depth while the State Department takes a mere cursory glance seeking the least invasive path and the least need for involvement having a minimal footprint. This demands further explanation more as to why the Pentagon explains a path which is far deeper and requiring greater invasive solutions and the State Department leaves most of the problem unaddressed and untouched. The reasons are simple and would be obvious to any observers. The Pentagon is funded by the width, depth and breadth of a threat and gains funding and importance through greater involvement. The State Department gains funds by having obscured threats which it can assign staff to investigate and report threats in such a manner as to allow them to linger, requiring greater inspections over the longest time frame. Thus any military assessment should be judged knowing their report will make the threat the greatest potential possible while State Department assessment should be realized to define the situation calling for minimal involvement in order to preserve the situational threat generating further investigations. The best path would more often than not be somewhere between the two assessments.

 

So, what do these realities have to do with Islamic State? A fair analogy would be somebody waking one morning feeling poorly and upon looking in the mirror they notice there are red blotches all over their face and further checking they find more such red blotches all over their bodies. Reacting to these skin lesions they make an appointment with a physician. The question becomes what type of physician they should call. The initial assessment is the patient has a skin condition so they might make an appointment to visit a Dermatologist and treat the skin ailment while ignoring the underlying disease. The result is the patient will remain ill and would need visit the dermatologist repeatedly while if they had visited an Internal Medicine Doctor they quite possibly would have been admitted to a hospital and undergo a more rigorous cure than they would receive from a Dermatologist but would also be cured. Simply put, if you have the measles you do not visit a dermatologist, you visit a doctor of Internal Medicine. The State Department is the Dermatologist and the Internal Medicine Physician would represent the Military. So, the military will present a harder path with the greatest potential challenges you will be presented with and some painful choices need to be made. The State Department provides for a simple and immediate repair of a situation while leaving the underlying problems churning away and no difficult choices would be necessitated. So, the path you choose will likely be somewhere between the two, which one you follow more closely will dictate the level of curative actions and their lasting effects.

 

Making war on Islamic State is a requirement of immediate urgency, President elect Donald Trump will need answer the riddle of how far does he wish to peel back the onion. A fully committed military campaign to destroy Islamic State presence in Syria and Iraq could be executed taking no longer than three or four months. The time it would take would depend on how ruthless and how close to barbarism the military forces will be permitted by their Rules of Engagement (ROE). The obvious problem with such tactic is that such a solution does little to permanently change the situation. When choosing civility while fighting barbarians, one makes leaders and financiers unaffected, they will just wait for the opportunity and start right up anew. The sponsors must be made to pay a price, even to threats on their lives, before anything will change. This was proven in all theaters of World War II where German leaders needed to be hunted down even to the last bunkers in Berlin and the Emperor of Japan had to be convinced the allies could utterly destroy his nation without losing any of their military forces. This has also been proven in the current “War on Terror” where we are treating the rash and ignoring the disease.

 

By now most Westerners realize the problems caused by terrorism and the threat posed by Islamic State. Where many fall down is in linking the two problems and realizing that these two problems though often unrelated directly, both have a root cause and any logistics, funding, know-how or other support for both are derived from the same pool of sponsors. The source for both terrorism and Islamic State come from the various wealthy and powerful governing entities throughout the nations of MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and the infrastructure put in place utilizing the tribal make-up of the society often pitting one tribe against another tribe in order to procure additional power and a broader area from which to operate. Should one trace the cash flowing into the coffers of Islamic State one would see a trend that the same monies also fund the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, al-Qaeda and other Sunni terror masters and their operations. Much of the funding originates in or by those close to the Saudi Royal family as well as graft skimming funds from government funding by Egyptians and other Sunni ruled nations supporting the Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood, forces worldwide. There also exists an extensive Shiite terror networks which is not quite as expansive but still a very real threat. These groups are financed, organized and run by the Iranian government and the Grand Ayatollah (Arabic:آية ‌الله العظمی) and Supreme Leader of Iran. The leadership of these terror forces controlled by Iran starts with the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) who incorporate the leadership of Hezballah and oft time Hamas as well. The reach by Iran is not as diffused as are the disparate Sunni terror forces. Much of the reason behind this is simply numbers. The Sunni make-up slightly over four-fifths of Muslims worldwide while the Shiites find themselves around a mere 17% of Muslims worldwide thus Shiite power structure by necessity must be more centralized and rigid while the Sunni can easily create anywhere from three to five separate groups.

 

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC

 

What people in the United States need know is that the current fighting between Islamic derived forces and the Western forces, particularly in and around the Mediterranean Sea is just the latest stage in the war with the Barbary Pirates. Truth be told, the European interests back to around 632 onto the current age have felt constant rumblings of discontent filled by dreams and desires to return to their ages of conquest and swallow Europe as they have tried before only to meet a standoff or complete defeat as was Andalusia, as was Spain. Much of the march of Islam colonizing the entirety of MENA has been accomplished by Sunni though there have been Shia heroes through the ages. Still, this fight to choose the ultimate ruler, the single Caliph who talks the talk but all are curious if one can be found who additionally walks the walk. Despite gaining a sizeable following and demanding he be recognized as Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will not become the Caliph restoring the Caliphate as the requirement is a vast stretch of lands which are individually owned and most have real air power which would decimate any ground assault not possessing sufficient air cover, something which likely plagues al-Baghdadi day and night and he likely dreams of having sufficient fighters and the people to launch adequate air support. The Arab and Islamic worlds are far too tribal and fragmented each refusing to particularly perform feats of great valor and have somebody outside your team ending up with all of the glory. The tribal overriding thought power need be abandoned should Islam ever desire to become great again and have yet a second sense of glory and accomplishment. Such an accomplishment will take a true Caliph, one such as the last Imam, the one who leads the final conquests leading to an Islamic World running under Sharia, the Islamic Code of Laws as preached by Mohammad and the original force.

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and into Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

There are realities which must be faced and faced immediately. Before there can be progress the new President already has a large pair of conflagrations he need work out a solution which will probably require a fair number of military service personnel. A President Trump must use all the forces at his disposal in order to remove Islamic State from the picture. After this has been accomplished the next task will be forming a governance or set of governances such that Libya becomes a normative entity capable of trade with the world which will bring wealth to these governing bodies and the people as well. Once Libya has been resolved and returned to viability it will become time to deal with Russia and do similar for Syria. Russia will press for the entire area be returned to Bashir al-Assad while the remaining “rebel” forces will protest loudly and just as vehemently as they have all along. Meanwhile, a refuge for the Kurdish population will necessarily be needed while Turkey and her President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are edging towards conquest and taking lands formerly belonging to both Syria, a lifelong enemy, and Iraq, whose Saddam Hussein had stashed thousands of barrels of nerve agent and other chemical and nuclear weaponry in an attempt to evade justice. Erdoğan’s hopes and dreams of reestablishing the Ottoman Empire will be muted. Once again all these solutions do little to nothing about remedies for the tribal alliances and primitive culture which keeps the nations of MENA suffering while other nations quite distant as in the Horn of Africa and as far east as Pakistan and Afghanistan are all experiencing national traumas from forces at the tribal area. These problems were exasperated by the imposition of the Sikes-Picot Agreement of 1916 which set arbitrary borders, making self-rule all but impossible. Sikes-Picot ignored tribal alliances and clan structures splitting these entities between three nations in some cases and two at others which simply added wood to the fire. Sikes-Picot also redrew the maps of Eastern Europe breaking up the Austria-Hungarian Empire. All of this eventually led to World War II and has set in motion the potential for a third shooting war, World War III. The problem is amplified with the knowledge that Eastern Europe is also facing economic distress along with threats from Russia to incorporate them back under soviet style land and they wish to remain free.

 

These areas are powder kegs just waiting for the fire from a mistakenly tossed match or misread of any situation to have the entirety of these places to sheepishly huddle under Russian wings. The United States lack of influence throughout the MENA area as well as the entirety of the globe for the last eight years has left foreign policy in such turmoil as to provide room for threats from all sides and levels. The world, and the United States and allies in particular, are facing an invigorated Russia, a China willing to manufacture Islands in order to further their goal of taking certain Islands which they claim as have other nations. These threats are backed by a new and proficient fleet China is building, a worthy blue-water fleet. Add to this the dual threat of a nuclear armed North Korea who has already developed and tested a number of nuclear warheads and appears to be attempting to manufacture an EMP device to knock out the power grid in North America thus neutering the United States military and causing widespread death. Along with North Korea we also will be facing a nuclear armed Iran who has the missiles with advanced guidance and range capabilities with which to deliver them. Once Iran is confirmed to have nuclear weapons one can safely assume that Saudi Arabia will call in their markers for their financing of the Pakistani bomb thus instantly becoming a nuclear armed nation as well. After this the proliferation across all of MENA will likely occur with blinding speed. From that point the rest of the world will be rapidly acquiring nuclear weapons and from there to annihilation of the human race is a short trip and it all might take place in a blink of an eye. It is truly sobering realizing how so very close we are from slipping beyond the cusp into a reality even Hollywood was unable to imitate believably.

 

The race now is to educate and bring the third world somewhere even with the advanced world. By this we mean to teach them from our mistakes such that the world benefits. These newly acquired nuclear capabilities must be impressed not to use them for the sake of humanity. At the same time the world need share its many secrets and the desire to go into space beyond just the solar system but to other star systems even beyond our cluster setting out to truly become a space-born people. That need be our goal if we plan on being a long lived species. I guess we will soon know if the Earth will become the origin of a truly enlightened space based society or will the Earth need await the next great catastrophe to rid it of a stagnant humanity so another intelligence reaches senescence and go off into space and be the long lived Earth born species.

 

Beyond the Cusp