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While Europe suffers, Islamists face setbacks in Middle East

From the Times of Israel:

As France grapples with terror, back in the region jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood, and Iranian camps are actually weakening, which may be a factor in the devastating export of extremism.

... the past few months in the region indicate that we may be witnessing the rise of a “new Middle East,” and that not everything that happens here is bad for the civilized world or for Israel.

Even as France is grappling with an unprecedented series of terror attacks, the map of the Middle East is changing, and some familiar states that presented a serious threat to Israel’s security, like Syria and Iraq, no longer exist as coherent entities.

At the same time, several new trends in the Middle East may produce quite a few opportunities to make progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict. First and foremost, of the four camps in the contemporary Arab world, the three problematic ones for Israel have been weakened substantially — the jihadists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Shi’ite-Iranian axis.

Meanwhile, the fourth, more moderate camp, grows stronger. The advance of the jihadist camp — al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra — is slowly being halted. The international and Arab coalition, along with local actors like the Kurds, have made IS much less threatening than it was six months ago. In Iraq, the international coalition is recording significant achievements in the war against IS, which is in a difficult bind.

In Syria, the Islamic State’s progress has also been slowed, but it is hard to see the end of the civil war on the horizon. The jihadists, it should be noted, have been halted beyond Syria and Iraq as well.

In places like Libya and the Sinai Peninsula, they are absorbing painful blows. These setbacks, as this correspondent noted earlier this week, are likely to lead to intensified efforts to carry out acts of terrorism in Europe.

Interesting analysis. GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

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