by Gayle Plato-Besley, M. Ed.
Sitting in Phoenix, the Arab-Israeli conflict along the Gaza Strip seems constant and doesn’t even blip on the radar of the average American. Why should it?
Because we’ve a chance to see the parallels of our borderland conflicts. We must stop the exponential growth of warring organized crime now becoming a political stronghold at our doorstep.Whether Phoenix, El Paso, Tucson, or Tijuana, all borderland states’ populated cities are part of the drug cartel super highway bleeding out over the Mexican border. Crystal Meth is liquid gold for Mexico. In fact, there is a growing middle class, community infrastructure, and a war-lord feudal state reaching a political tipping point. We may jabber on about the cheap labor taking over our cities or the funds we spend on social programs for illegal aliens, but we are missing the real issue. Look to Gaza- Hamas, the former PLO, Israeli and American push-me/pull-me politics with the Gaza Strip, and see how a borderland goes ballistic.
One of the most accurate and insightful experts about Gaza and the crisis upon the region is Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Prime Minister and current Likud Party Leader. He often explains the dire consequences of the 2005 Israeli pull-out of Gaza. He said then that the region will become a puppet entity of Iran, and he was right. Hamas is backed by Iranian extremism, private Saudi funds, and international Jihadist Evil ( thats with a capital E).
Hamas started in February, 1988, in the Gaza strip as a counter movement to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Their charter states that their focus is to keep Palestine in Muslim hands and to wipe out Israel. They profess daily to keep up the Muslim Jihad . But the layers of Hamas are ignored often by the Western media. They are not a one-dimensional entity. Hamas has a branch that funnels money into the community too, grooming loyalty of the locals. Gaza has been a crowded world of Muslim, Jewish, and Christians. They were cheap labor, and worked fertile soils of organic foods for instance. Gaza went back to Palestinian control and all Hell broke loose. While Hamas promised a peace with Israel, it didn’t happen. See Mr Netanyahu speak on Hannity and Colmes here:
While, we are not a small nation like Israel, carved out of a political region just 60 years ago. We cannot deny what our borderland might become. Drugs are a growing business and the beginning of political process:
“Cartels can challenge — and supplant — governments. Between huge amounts of money available to bribe officials, and covert armies better equipped, trained and motivated than national police and military forces, the cartels can become the government — if in fact they didn’t originate in the government. Getting the government to deploy armed forces against the cartel can become a contradiction in terms. In their most extreme form, cartels are the government.” (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/geopolitics_dope)
Startfor.com defines the future dilemma I see as a critical facet of out REAL border battle. The local politicians and criminal justice operatives of all U.S. Border states need to come together, and push to problem-solve. A prophetic take by political analyst and writer, George Friedman is detailed here:
“The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product — drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo.
It will also destabilize the U.S. Southwest while grandpa makes his pile. As is frequently the case, it is a problem for which there are no good solutions, or for which the solution is one without real support.”
author’s original posting:
