Rumour has it that Egypt was invited to join, and declined the offer. I commend and support its decision. Such an alliance can only breed animosity and create polarisation. Our relations with other countries would have to conform with the pattern dictated by the pact. Thus we would become the enemies of Turkey's enemies, such as Greece, and Cyprus, and our relations with Iran would deteriorate - not to mention the other Arab countries we would have abandoned in favour of Israel and Turkey.
Pacts are an anachronism today.
This is the age of economic integration, not political polarisation. We should be looking instead at how to achieve economic integration at the regional level. A very bad deal US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross ended another fail tour to the region last Friday after a serie of fruitless meetings with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu. The US is not an honest broker, and Israeli more concerned with developing its military arsenal than with making peace. He believed that the Palestinian would never accept his proposal, because it is a mockery of their expectations.