The Greater Middle East is a Ticking Time Bomb

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.

The region’s most apparent powder keg, namely the risk of a regional conflagration between Israel and Iran—which could drag the United States and the region’s countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and the Gulf states into the conflict—is foremost on policy and opinion makers’ minds. So is the war in Gaza with its devastating humanitarian fallout.

Yet, simmering on the surface in Gaza and across much of the Middle East and North Africa is social, economic, and political anger and frustration that could erupt at any moment but may not immediately manifest publicly. Even so, scholars and analysts suggest that anger over the Gaza war could reverse youth disengagement from politics after two waves of mass anti-government protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, and Sudan of the 2010s failed to produce real change.

Middle Eastern youth attitudes toward temporal and religious authority mirror youth approaches toward material concerns. The younger generation’s world focuses on the individual, rather than the collective—on ‘what’s in it for me?’ instead of ‘what’s in it for us?’ It is a world that is not defined by ideology or politics and does not see itself reflected in the values and objectives espoused by elites and governments. In their world, the lingua franca differs substantially from the language they were raised in.

“Arabs know what they want and what they do not want. They want their basic needs for jobs, education, and health care to be attended to, and they want good governance and protection of their personal rights,” concluded James Zogby, an Arab-American pollster with a decades-long track record in the Middle East and North Africa.

Nothing to look forward to: Palestinians in Gaza wait for critical aid to be airdropped

Autocratic Middle Eastern rulers bet on economic development and transformation, producing vibrant and resilient economies that cater to youth aspirations. However, transitions are seldom a straight shot and are more often than not a process of two steps forward and one step back. In addition, there is no guarantee of success.

The consequence of failure “is truly daunting: a lost generation that feels some combination of disaffection and desperation, unable to escape stagnant economies, smoldering on the humiliation of losing both security and status from childhood,” said Middle East scholar Jon Alterman. He warned that in much of the Middle East and North Africa, “conditions may get worse before they get better.” He also noted that countries forced to turn to international lenders for help would have to limit subsidies to already hard-hit middle classes.

Similarly, it is only a matter of time before wealthy Gulf states will have to reduce incentives intended to persuade youth to seek employment in the private sector rather than the government.

“The growing frustration among the Arab public against the injustice facing the Palestinians and the increased capabilities of the Iranian-backed non-state actors are the perfect recipe for chaos to erupt across the Middle East,” said Kuwaiti sociologist Mohammad Al-Rumaihi.

Generations in war-wracked Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and bankrupt Lebanon have little, if anything, to look forward to. Similarly, discontent is mounting and could explode anytime in countries like Jordan, Egypt, and Iran.

Palestine is a pressure cooker and often catalyzes the expression of unrelated discontent elsewhere in the region. Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, and Israel’s response have returned the Palestinian cause to the top of the region’s—and much of the world’s—agenda and mobilized civil society in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to Iraq. In doing so, Palestine threatens to reignite anger and frustrations that have been building up for years.

“The region has failed to respond to the demands of its younger populations. This has left younger Middle Easterners more frustrated, angrier, and readier to reject the parameters of incremental change, growing more vocally towards complete upheaval and regime change, even with the failed uprisings of 2011 behind them,” warned political and development consultant Hafsa Halawi, more than a year before the Gaza war began.

Youth in Gaza has known little other than two decades of wars, blockades, and sieges. Beyond the trauma of the latest Gaza war, the Strip’s next generation is likely to experience at least a decade of a slow rebuilding of their lives that were shattered at birth.

“What will become of Gaza? Will we go back to work?... How will Gaza be rebuilt? Is the destruction too great? How long will it take? Will we live the rest of our lives without education and healthcare?” asked Gazan journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer.

“Not a single university is left in Gaza. It will take years to rebuild the education system,” a senior UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs official noted.

Amer’s questions go to the core of mounting Gazan criticism of Hamas for provoking the Israeli assault that has devastated Gaza and reduced its 2.3 million inhabitants to destitution. The criticism, despite Hamas’s efforts to suppress expressions of dissent, does not mean that widespread support for armed struggle against Israel has diminished.

Nevertheless, Hamas felt compelled in March 2024 to issue a lengthy statement apologizing to Gazans for their suffering. The group thanked Gazans for their resilience and acknowledged their “exhaustion.” It said it was trying to alleviate the “difficulties” Gazans faced by, among others, attempting to impose “price controls,” but its capabilities were limited “because of the ongoing aggression.”

Prices in Gaza have shot up astronomically. For example, 30 eggs that cost $2-3 before the war began selling for $35-40. However, prices have begun to drop with the recent increased flow of food into Gaza.

Hamas said it was discussing ways to “resolve the problems caused by the (Israeli) occupation,” with other armed factions, popular committees, and “families”—a reference to clans that Israel has sought to engage in creating an alternative post-war governance structure for Gaza.

At the same time, the statement reiterated that the war would ultimately achieve Palestinian “victory and freedom.”

The statement suggests that criticism in Gaza has reached a level that worries Hamas, even if it is difficult to gauge public sentiment accurately. The Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research produces what may be the only credible regular public opinion polling in Gaza and the West Bank.

Fifty-two percent of Gaza respondents to the Center’s latest survey in March 2024 said they favored a return to Hamas rule as opposed to an administration by the West Bank-based, internationally recognized Palestine Authority, an Arab peacekeeping force, the United Nations, or Israel. The Center’s polling suggested that Gazan public opinion was split on Hamas but left assessments of the strength of anti-Hamas sentiment to anecdotal evidence.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an anti-Hamas Palestinian-American who hails from Gaza, keeps close contact with the Strip and says he has lost 31 relatives in the seven-month-old Gaza war. He describes the complexity of evaluating the evidence:

“So many Gazans are forced to use aliases and hide their true identities when speaking out against Hamas & the horrendous impact of life under the Islamist group’s violent and authoritarian rule […] Conformity is strictly enforced; differing views and alternative opinions will not be tolerated and could result in harassment, attacks, delegitimization, and even violence,” Alkhatib said.

AlKhatib’s portrayal likely speaks to the fear Hamas has instilled in Gazans since it took control of the Strip in 2006. While the group may be able to lash out at some critics since the war erupted, it’s hard to see how it can effectively impose its will while under Israeli assault and siege and hiding in underground tunnels.

Gazan hopelessness threatens to be the lightning rod for widespread social, economic, and political discontent across the Middle East and North Africa and the translation into militancy of despair and perceived double standards of not only the West but also their rulers.

The Palestinian issue touches many across the Greater Middle East. Israel and the world’s inability or unwillingness to help Palestinians secure their rights, as well as Palestinians’ sense of not being accorded the dignity and respect enjoyed by others, mirrors their quest for recognition and dignity.

Syria “is sinking into poverty, and many ordinary people are desperate. ‘There is no light at the end of the tunnel,’ they say. It has become normal to see families sleeping in the street and others digging food out of rubbish bins, while in other areas, a high-class lifestyle reminiscent of the swankiest parts of London or Paris continues unchanged,” said BBC journalist Lina Sinjab after returning to her home country in 2024 for the first time in more than a decade.

Grinding poverty keeps thousands of children out of school and forced to work in northwestern Syria. Across Syria, more than 43 percent of children do not go to school, raising the specter of a generation left behind.

Eleven-year-old Ahmad Amro and his family of ten fled the city of Aleppo in 2016. Since then, their home has been a tent in Syria’s northwestern Idlib countryside, a region with an 88.74 percent unemployment rate ravaged by war and a 2023 earthquake.

Ahmad dreams of “wearing school clothes to go to school.” Instead, he and his older brother, Abdo, who has never attended school, struggle to make ends meet by helping their father sell daffodils. With children like Ahmad and Abdo across the Greater Middle East staring at a bottomless abyss of despair and hopelessness, the question is not if but when and how simmering frustration and anger will boil over.

“The Gaza war is stirring up every radical movement across the Middle East. Its recruitment potential against the US and Israel is enormous & will have repercussions for decades,” tweeted Middle East scholar Joshua Landis.

Landis noted that Osama Bin Laden first conceived of the September 11th, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in 1982, when he watched U.S.-built F-16 fighter jets carpet bomb Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

For now, much of the threat of renewed revolts and militancy may be more bluster than real. Iranian-backed Iraqi militants asserted in April that they stood ready to arm 12,000 fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Jordan that would open a new front against Israel.

Abu Ali al-Askari, a Kataib Hezbollah security official, suggested Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s assessment that all Jordanian militants needed was access to weapons inspired the offer. There is no evidence of an Islamic fighting force in tightly controlled Jordan. This holds true despite mounting public anger at the Gaza war, a limited number of border incidents, and indications of attempts by Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas, and Iran to exploit the fury, and in some cases smuggle arms from Jordan into the West Bank.

Against the backdrop of 22 percent unemployment, Jordan’s Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Action Front, hopes that escalating pro-Hamas protests in Jordan will favor the Front in general elections scheduled for later in 2024.

Earlier, Kataib Hezbollah said it would work with partners in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to enable militants to strike at “any point in West Asia where the Americans exist.”

Jordan, a close U.S. ally dependent on its economic and financial aid that also has a peace treaty with Israel, walks a tightrope with more than half of its population of Palestinian descent. Jordanian participation in the April downing of a barrage of Iranian drones and missiles fired by Iran at Israel has increased the tightrope’s tension.

Similarly, Hamas leaders have sought to capitalize on pro-Palestinian sentiment and Jordan’s vulnerability.

“We call on our brothers in Jordan, in particular, to escalate all forms of popular, mass, and resistance action. You, our people in Jordan, are the nightmare of the occupation that fears your movement and strives tirelessly to neutralize and isolate you from your cause,” said Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida.

Senior Doha-based Hamas official Khaled Mishaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Amman in 1997, told a women’s gathering in Jordan in a video address that “Jordan is a beloved country, and it is the closest to Palestine, so its men and women are expected to take more supportive roles than any other people towards the land of resistance and resilience.”

While Jordan is unlikely to emerge as a significant venue for militant resistance against Israel, escalating Baloch and Islamic State violence in Iran and the adjacent Pakistani province of Balochistan is an indication of potential explosions of popular discontent and/or militancy.

Wealthy Gulf states see the writing on the wall. They worry that simmering public frustration and anger in much of the Middle East threaten regional stability, and, with it, their economic diversification and development plans.

“Islamist groups want to benefit from (the ongoing protests in Jordan) [...] and reproduce the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions again,” warned Saudi journalist Hassan al-Mustafa. “Volatility in Jordan would pose a direct threat to Saudi Arabia’s own national security,” said Abdulaziz Sager, head of the Gulf Research Council and a scholar with close ties to the Saudi government.

Signaling Gulf concerns, Salah Al Budair, the Medina Grand Mosque’s imam, asked God in a Ramadan prayer to protect Muslim countries “from revolutions and protest.” Wealthy Gulf states may be better positioned to pacify their populations but are not immune to the region’s undercurrents.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to bolster Saudi national identity to cushion the impact of rapid social change that has sparked concern among some conservatives and those who fear they may be left behind.

“Whilst there is widespread support for the Vision, there are concerns about the pace of change, as well as the perception that to date, there has been an over-emphasis on elite interests,” said Mark C. Thompson, a Saudi-based social scientist and recent convert to Islam, who has long tracked the evolution of Saudi youth attitudes towards bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic diversification and development plan.

Thompson noted that “the significance of Saudi Arabia’s two primary identity narratives, namely, Islam and family, have only changed incrementally regardless of post-2030 transformations […] The danger is that Vision-related transformations might be weak in the face of much stronger traditional values, and, consequently, the rapid social changes could vanish just as quickly precisely because they have not become deep-rooted within Saudi communities.”

The social scientist cautioned that most foreign Saudi watchers based their analysis and conclusions on interactions with members of the Saudi elite, who would have the most to lose if social change were to falter. Thompson quoted a Western-educated Saudi consultant saying that most Saudis “would not be affected greatly” if the entertainment sector failed.

The fact that Saudi elites are the greatest beneficiaries of bin Salman’s reforms means that most Saudis, concerned primarily about jobs, cost of living, affordable housing, and healthcare, often only partially benefit, at best. To benefit more fully, they would have to have what the elite has: wasta or clout and connections. The risk for bin Salman is that the reforms widen the Kingdom’s already yawning income gap, cast further doubt on the integrity of the crown prince’s anti-corruption campaign, and undermine widespread support for his vision.

In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises and their employees feel they are often excluded from participation in Vision-related projects, which favor large and well-known family enterprises. As a result, young Saudis with lesser family backgrounds and education become drivers rather than executives when they migrate from the provinces to the cities.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may be one-man-ruled autocracies, yet their leaders are sensitive to public opinion to varying degrees. “I know that the Saudi government under MbS (Mohammed bin Salman) has put in a lot of effort to actually do its own public opinion polls […] They pay attention to it […] They are very well aware of which way the winds are blowing on the street. They take that pretty much to heart on what to do and what not to do […] On some issues, they are going to make a kind of executive decision [...] On this one, we’re going to ignore it; on the other one, we’re going to […] try to curry favor with the public in some unexpected way,” said the late David Pollock, a Middle East scholar who until recently oversaw the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s polling in the region.

The problem for rulers like bin Salman and bin Zayed is that their rule’s moorings could be called into question by a failure to deliver public goods and services that offer economic prospects. At the same time, social reforms needed to bolster development go hand in hand with undermining the authority of religious establishments. Increased autocracy that turns clerics and scholars into regime parrots has fueled youth skepticism toward political elites and religious institutions.

For rulers like the Saudi crown prince, the loosening of social restrictions are only the first steps in responding to youth aspirations. This all-around easing of social constraints has thus far included the disempowerment of the Kingdom’s religious police, the lifting of a ban on women’s driving, less strict implementation of gender segregation, the introduction of Western-style entertainment, and greater professional opportunities for women, and, in the UAE, a degree of genuine religious pluralism.

Determined to contain public sentiment, Saudi authorities, in contrast to the UAE and Qatar and despite official condemnations of Israel’s Gaza war conduct, have cracked down on expressions of solidarity such as the donning of keffiyehs, the checkered head scarf symbolizing Palestinian identity, T-shirts with Palestine emblazoned on them, and the waving of Palestinian flags.

In the same vein, Egypt, a nation that perennially pulls back from the brink of economic disaster with the help of band-aid foreign financial injections, has largely banned public protests and criticism of the country’s ties with Israel.

Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi fears that pro-Palestinian demonstrations could expand into domestic protest, as has happened in the past. The ban was imposed after pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square—an icon of the 2011 popular Arab revolts that toppled four leaders including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak—reverted to chanting the uprisings’ common slogan, ‘Bread, freedom, social justice!’

“The Palestinian cause has always been a politicizing factor for Egyptian youth across generations,” noted Hossam el-Hamalawy, a prominent Egyptian journalist, photographer, activist, and author of a weekly newsletter.

“In fact, for many Egyptian political activists—whether those who led the (2011) revolution or were involved in earlier protests—their gateway into politics was the Palestinian cause. The 2011 uprising in Egypt was literally the climax of a process that started with the second Palestinian intifada a decade earlier […] The more this war (in Gaza) drags on, the more likely it is that something might happen,” El-Hamalawy added.

An end to the Gaza war may lower the temperature and take the immediate sting out of public anger, but the drivers of discontent throughout the Middle East, including the quest for dignity, remain unaltered. Even worse, the fault lines have hardened. The Middle East and North Africa are populated by the harshest rulers the region has witnessed since its various constituents became independent. Repression in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates is at an all-time high. The Gulf states go to great lengths to ensure that others in the region mirror their suppression of any form of dissent.

Despite a worldwide clamor for a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state, hardened Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians mirror Arab crackdowns on dissent.

Israel has moved from a de facto recognition of Palestinian rights to outright denial, even if it perceived them as incompatible with Jewish rights, and was for decades willing to go through the motions of a peace process.

Storied former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was brutally honest when he spoke in 1956 at the funeral of an Israeli farmer, brutally murdered by Palestinian militants.

“Let us not cast blame on the murderers. For eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes, we have been transforming the lands and the villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate,” Dayan said.

“Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is inflaming and filling the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs living around us. This is our life’s choice—to be prepared and armed, strong, and determined, lest the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down,” Dayan added.

Dayan’s comments frame UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s statement seven decades later, saying that Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel did not happen “in a vacuum,” particularly considering Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967.

The comments also frame the disregard that Hamas displayed for human lives—be it of Israeli civilians, its own combatants, or innocent Palestinians facing the full weight of Israel’s retribution. Similarly, they lay the blame on Israel for its relentless devastation of Gaza at enormous human cost, and its failure to prioritize the release of hostages held by Hamas.

As an unnamed Arab human rights activist said: “Gaza is the pinnacle of the Middle East’s disdain for life and the dignity of individuals. It’s disregard on a massive and unprecedented scale. It’s disregard that underwrites autocracy in the region. It’s disregard that ultimately will spark an explosion, even if it’s impossible to predict when, where, and how.”
 

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