A Ray of Sunshine, or Maybe Realism

When good news, however attenuated, arrives from the Middle East, it is worth celebrating. Commentary Magazine reports the results of an ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller (Public Relations Agency) Arab Youth Survey, conducted in each of the past seven years, surveyed 3500 young Arabs in face-to-face interviews held in 16 Arab countries.

This year, defying a long tradition of blaming all the Arab world’s problems on Israel, only 23 percent of respondents cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the region’s main obstacle. In fact, the conflict came in fourth, trailing ISIS (37 percent), terrorism (32 percent) and unemployment (29 percent). Given that respondents were evidently allowed to choose more than one of the 15 options (the total adds up to 235 percent rather than 100), it’s even more noteworthy that only 23 percent thought the conflict worth mentioning.

What the poll shows, in a nutshell, is that young Arabs have reached the same conclusion Arab leaders made glaringly evident at the last year’s inaugural session of the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate: Israel simply isn’t one of the Arab world’s major problems anymore, if it ever was.

Israel needs this good news since all they've heard from the President and his minions has been bad news.