A few yards away

They are already here, just beyond the border, only a few yards away. Operatives from the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida offshoot in Syria that is fighting the Assad regime, have seized positions near the Quneitra crossing, yards from the Israeli border. They are waving the group's black flag in our faces. As if Hamas green in the south and Hezbollah yellow from the Lebanese border were not enough. A "new Middle East" has indeed sprung up: The Arab states are disintegrating and being replaced by flourishing terrorism. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Only a surrealist reality like that of the Middle East could cause us to feel pity for the Iraqi or Syrian soldiers who are taken captive by the Islamic State group (ISIS), as we saw Thursday in a video the extremist Sunni group distributed after it trapped Syrian troops in an air force base in the north of the country, and slaughtered them like sheep. Lately there is no limit to the horrors in our region. Assad might be surviving in Damascus, but Syria's territorial unity is not. The crisis in Syria could even bring ISIS to our border. They, unlike the Nusra Front folks, will not agree to share positions with more moderate organizations as happens today. In other words, things could get worse. By the way, the U.N.'s entire buffer zone, which has been in place since 1974, is falling apart along with the Syrian Army.

Today, the Arab nations might regret that in Khartoum in August 1967, after the Six-Day War, they refused to accept Israel's offer to negotiate on territory for peace. Instead, we got the famous "three noes" of Khartoum: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Today, 47 years later, where have Arab leaders led their countries? To collapse and being taken over by terrorist organizations.

A peace deal with Israel, like the one proposed in 1967, would probably have given Syria new horizons, too. But Syria, like the rest of the Arab states, thought the day would come when it would defeat Israel, and even boycotted the Khartoum Conference, although it sent the foreign minister as an observer.

Today, terrorism is beating Syria, if not yet Assad. The problem is that we, the neighbors, are being pulled into this whirlpool. We just had 50 days to realize that terrorism cannot be defeated in a one-two punch. And in a very murky global age, that plague is only growing stronger. As if that were not enough, the problem for us is twofold. Not only is terrorism getting stronger, the blind West also views Assad and Iran -- both well-known supporters of terrorism -- as allies in the war on it. Only in a world in which the West sees Qatar as the one that can put out fires could something like this happen.

Meanwhile, the jihadist black flag is waving in the breeze across from our blue and white one. Not pleasant at all.

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