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Arab youth, cold realism and ‘deal of the century’

Ran Porat
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Published: 14 May 2019

Last updated: 4 March 2024

Religion plays too big of a role in the Middle East; religious institutes in the Arab world are in need of reform; and the Arab world’s religious values are holding back the Arab world.

These were a few of the finding of the 11th annual ASADA’A survey that explored attitudes among Arab youth in 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

ASADA’A, an independent agency based in Dubai, commissioned international polling firm PSB Research to conduct 3,300 face-to-face interviews with Arab men and women in the age group of 18 to 24. The interviews were completed in Arabic and English.

The complete breakdown of the participants is not available but it  is clear  that almost all survey takers were major city dwellers and Sunnis.

Sixty-six per cent agreed with the statement that “religion plays too big of a role in the Middle East”, 79 per cent want reform in religious institutes in the Arab world, and 50 per cent think that “Arab world’s religious values are holding the Arab world back”. It must be noted, however, that religious people are less likely to take part in such surveys, and the conclusion is that most participants are possibly less religious compared to other segments in their respective societies. Finally, most respondents reported buying products online, consuming information from social media and being heavy users of internet and mobile technologies.

In a nutshell, the population sampled was of young Arab, mostly Sunni, less religious, city folks, internet savvy, connected and informed.

The report analysing the survey concluded that the respondents were making “a call for reform” in the Arab world. But what kind of reform?

It suggests that for young Arabs, the economy is the biggest problem facing the Middle East - rising living costs, unemployment and growth. They expect governments to first and foremost take care of their security, and then education, healthcare, energy and housing needs. They are also critical of the internal political divides in the Arab world. Almost half of respondents wished they could live in the UAE (consistently ranked first since 2012) and about one in five wished their country would emulate a Western country such as Canada and the US. The attitude towards the latter is ambivalent, with 60 per cent defining the US as an enemy (up from 50 per cent in 2017).

Notice something missing? Basic freedoms of speech, protest and political expression, human rights and rejection of oppressive governing systems were almost nowhere to be found in the survey. Only about one in four participants saw the lack of democracy as a problem in the Middle East. They would like to live in the UAE dynastic monarchies, because of their wealth and employment opportunities. There was not a word about the inability of almost all citizens in the Arab world to participate in power.

Why was that? It could be a design flaw of the survey or a conscious choice made by the researchers. Another plausible explanation stems from the type of agreement between Arabs as citizens and their Middle Eastern rulers, most of whom are either tyrants (Assad), kings (Jordan, Gulf states) or authoritarian presidents (Egypt, Syria, Turkey).

To describe this forced deal between subjects and those in power in the Arab world, Maher Mughrabi, a senior editor at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, refers to the metaphor from a poem by the  Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, who “compared the world of the Arabs to a ‘furnished apartment’, where no one could say ‘no’ to their landlord”.  In this political environment, citizens are reduced to powerless spectators while the benevolent sovereign takes care of all the material needs of his subjects in exchange for their freedoms; protecting them from the opposition, which is composed of  “terrorists” and from the “real” terrorists in the region, such as ISIS. This is a classic mafia style relationship between the violent criminals and the helpless “clients” who must pay “protection money” or perish.

The last attempt to challenge this power structure was the Arab Spring at the beginning of this decade. However, calls for a revolution were hijacked by extremists (such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) or violent sub-state actors (factions in Libya and Syria for example) and have since been repelled by most rulers - be it a particular ethnic group, a family, or a senior army officer – who regained their stronghold on government. Arab youth  today, suggest the survey  findings, have come to terms with the return of the new-old realities of the “furnished apartment”, abandoning (at least temporarily) discourses of human rights and freedoms.





The so-called “deal of the century”  a plan to resolve (or manage) the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, was devised by senior Trump administration officials together with the kings, princes and presidents of the Middle East, as well as with the Israeli government. The few details leaked to the media about the plan suggest that - from a Palestinian point of view - it is  where excessively generous amounts of Gulf countries’ petro-dollars will be injected into the ailing Palestinian economy in exchange for a relaxed and watered-down version of Palestinian sovereignty and nationhood, a statelet, which would preserve the power structure where Israel is strong and independent and the Palestinians are relatively weakened and dependent.

The similar type of powerplay was forged over the past few months between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In this case, Qatari money is being channelled into the strip to (hardly) sustain the basic needs of the Gazan population and oil the militants and their apparatuses, in exchange for a “tolerable” low volume of violence towards Israel. The formula is in effect “hush money” purchasing relative quiet while Israel semi-recognises the debilitated sovereignty of a terrorist organisation over a disenfranchised population.

In both arenas, nationalism, human rights and power sharing are out of the equation in the quest for either short-term or long-term stability. How would Arab youth judge this deal?? You may be surprised. The  ASADA’A survey, which  included a few hundred participants from the West Bank and Gaza, hints that they can live with such a formula, unlike the automatic rejection of the deal by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and of Hamas, even before it was introduced.

This is not to say that human rights and freedoms discourses are irrelevant. Or that  nationalism and religious perspectives are no longer important for Arab youth.

However, in their view, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not considered THE major problem (as was claimed by the Arabs in the past), and it was not ranked among the top three concerns facing the Middle East since the beginning of the decade.

The  survey implies is that the young people of the Arab world are less ideological and more practical than previous generations. It may be that after the disappointment of the Arab spring and the chaos that ensued, security and stability leading to jobs and growth are at this stage favoured over rights and overarching narratives. Nationalism and human rights are not abandoned, just sidelined for now.

Some would judge such an attitude as cold, non-ideological pragmatic realism, centred on security and financial stability.

However, thinking of the framework of the “deal of the century” - what if both Israelis and Palestinians chose such an approach to the conflict? Would this jumpstart negotiations between the two sides, as the first step on a new pathway forward on the long and convoluted road to peace? Time will tell.

 

About the author

Ran Porat

Dr Ran Porat is a published analyst on the Middle East and Israel, Iran's nuclear program. An expert on the Israeli diaspora in Australia, he is currently writing his book about Australian extremists. Ran teaches Israel studies and Middle Eastern History at Melbourne University and at Monash University, where he is a Research Associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. In addition, Porat is a Research Associate at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Research Fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya.

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