"The honor-shame culture of the Arab and Islamic worlds doesn't give way easily, but I think they'll come around within a century."
Beirut, November 8 - Residents of the Levant and beyond, who have absorbed more than a century of propaganda accusing Zionists of aiming to take over the entire area, voiced their impatience once again this week that such a development has not occurred, noting that Israeli control would, given the evidence to date, improve their lives in every imaginable way.
Interviews with citizens of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and parts of Turley and Libya revealed that deteriorating conditions and entrenched government incompetence, corruption, and authoritarianism in their respective countries have led them to realize that fears of Zionist colonization and occupation of the Middle East, around which national consciousness and policies have formed for the last hundred years across the region, must give way to an embrace of that prospect, because there's no way things could be any worse under the Jews, and they might even be better.
"Just look at life expectancy and other indicators among Palestinians," argued a Cairo bus driver. "Once the Jews took over, those numbers started getting better, while the rest of the region has lagged behind in every aspect: quality of life, overall health, economics, you name it. At first, we were all like, yeah those evil Jews can't be allowed a foothold here or they'll destroy everything, but after a while, it's become pretty clear giving them control would be a net good for us. Can't happen soon enough, if you ask me."
Official appeals to Islamic, Arab, or national pride still stir emotions that militate against outright offers to let Israel take over, however. "It'll take some time for the visceral pull of us-them to weaken," acknowledged an Iraqi pollster. "The honor-shame culture of the Arab and Islamic worlds doesn't give way easily, but I think they'll come around within a century."
"I see Lebanon going first," predicted an Iranian analyst. "That will take the wind out of the Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian anti-Zionist sails, and by then most of the Palestinians will accept the fait accompli they've been fighting since Balfour. If things go well, or even don't result in complete disaster - which, let's face it, is where things are right now anyway, so nowhere to go but up - then the rest of the region will clamor for Zionist hegemony."
"The problem is the Zionists don't seem serious about imposing it on the region," he lamented. "They've had chance after chance, but keep choosing to stick with their so-called 'ancestral homeland.' We'll just have to keep fighting them till they change their minds."