26.03.2011                      20.Adar ll, 5771

Achtung!

Middle East under construction

Popular uprisings and internecine hostilities will lead to the redrawing of regional maps, which will be a far cry from those underlying the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement and other accords

The struggles for survival of Libyan Col. Muammar Gadhafi, Syrian President Bashar Assad and their counterparts elsewhere herald the last days of the Sykes-Picot agreement from World War I, which in effect divided the region of the Middle East into separate states. Now it is apparent that maps drawn in the coming years will show new or renewed independent states such as South Sudan; Kurdistan; Palestine; maybe also Cyrenaica in eastern Libya; the Western Sahara, which will no longer be in Moroccan hands; reconstructed Southern Yemen; and Gulf states that will separate from the United Arab Emirates. It's even possible that there will be a split in Saudi Arabia between "the state of the holy sites" in the Hejaz and the petroleum powers in the east, and of Syria into Sunni, Alaouite and Druze states. The basis for these divisions will be implementation of the principle of self-definition of nations and tribes, which until now unwillingly and without any alternative have been wrapped up together in the same national package with their foes….