Israel Matzav

What could go wrong?

The next time the West wishes to impose sanctions on a terror-supporting country's banks, it may be a bit more difficult. Lebanon, which is controlled politically and militarily by Hezbullah, and Syria, which houses such terror superstars as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are joining their banking systems with Islamizing Turkey, whose hopes of joining the European Union seem to be fading, and 'westernized' Jordan. The result will be that the 'good' countries will prevent the imposition of any kind of meaningful sanctions on the bad ones (Hat Tip: Joshua I).

Turkey will sign a regional cooperation agreement in the field of banking with three of its southern neighbors with whom it envisions establishing a single market, an example of regional economic cooperation that many say is the Middle East version of the European Union, the head of the country's central bank said on Monday.

Central Bank of Turkey Governor Durmuş Yılmaz addressed bankers from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey at a conference titled “Enhancing Shamgen Banking: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan” in İstanbul yesterday. “As a result of this agreement, trade and investments between these countries will be supported and facilitated,” he said, adding that the planned agreement will also complement free trade and visa-exemption agreements signed earlier between the four countries.

That may well be the case, but when Hezbullah and Hamas have bank accounts in all four countries, will the 'international community' sanction all four of them? And the four make clear that this is the start of something bigger.

The countries’ aspirations to establish the planned single market in the Middle East are interpreted as the sign of the rise of an EU-like regional economic integration. Even the name of the conference proved how appropriate those interpretations are. The word “Shamgen” is a combination of “Sham,” the way the name of the Syrian capital of Damascus is pronounced in Turkish as well as in Arabic and with the meaningless “gen” to make it sound like the Schengen area, which comprises the territories of the 25 European states that act like a single state when it comes to international travel without internal border controls and visa requirements.

So terrorists can travel freely between all four countries and - if Turkey is ever admitted to the European Union - into and around Europe as well.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Jordan, Lebanon, Shamgen banking, Syria, Turkey

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:59 PM