On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. has come to “an understanding” with the Taliban, which he expects will soon result in a signed agreement and a withdrawal of American forces. Michael Rubin, citing as precedent the extensive negotiations with the Islamist group in the late 1990s—during which Washington received repeated assurances that Afghanistan would not become a safe haven for terrorists—is skeptical that the newest agreement will achieve its desired effect:

Here are the basic problems with the Taliban deal: the withdrawal [of U.S. forces] is not calibrated to the success of intra-Afghan dialogue; . . . there is no mechanism to prevent the Taliban from playing good-cop, bad-cop by simultaneously holding out an olive branch while ordering supposedly rogue units to attack—a tactic Iran has used for 40 years.

Worst of all, the agreement ignores Pakistan and its continuing efforts to undermine an elected Afghan government at peace with itself and its neighbors.

Meanwhile, adds Rubin, the Financial Action Task Force—an international body for combating money-laundering and terror finance—recently decided, at Washington’s urging, not to sanction Pakistan:

Rather than taking action against designated [terrorist] groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba—which calls Pakistan home and is responsible for a number of bombings and massacres, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks [on a hotel and Jewish center]—the Pakistani government instead sought to win exceptions for Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front groups. Rather than incarcerating terror leaders from Lashkar-e-Taiba, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and the Haqqani Network, it simply created revolving-door justice, slapping sentences on them to appease foreign diplomats and to collect billions of dollars in aid, but then quietly letting them go just months later.

Pakistan looks at such actions and concludes that not only can it get away with murder, but that it can simultaneously get the Trump administration to pay it to do so. If Pakistan can host Osama bin Laden—and never hold any of its officials accountable for that duplicity—and support groups responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and still face no consequences, then Islamabad has no incentive to stop supporting terrorism and extremist groups.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.