Daniel Pipes: America’s shiny new Palestinian militia

With Israeli permission, these troops have deployed in areas of Hebron, Jenin and Nablus. So far, this experiment has gone well, prompting widespread praise. Sen. John Kerry calls the program “extremely encouraging,” and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times discerns in the US-trained troops a possible “Palestinian peace partner for Israel” taking shape.


LOOKING AHEAD, however, I predict that those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider their likely role in several scenarios...

A Hizbullah statement released late Monday said Nasrallah informed Jumblatt that Syria "will overcome" what happened in the past and open a new page. It added that Syrian President Bashar Assad will receive Jumblatt in the near future.

Jumblatt's harshest verbal attack against Assad came on February 2007 when he told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters that Assad was a "snake" and a "tyrant" and called for revenge against him....