World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [114]
But first, the undisputed facts—and there are not many of these when it comes to the Middle East. There are roughly 5.2 million Jews in the Middle East, almost all of them living in Israel. By contrast, there are over 221 million Arabs in the region. In terms of per capita wealth, Israel is starkly more prosperous than all of the neighboring Arab countries. According to the World Bank, in 2000 Israel’s per capita income was roughly $16,700, compared to $7,230 in Saudi Arabia, $1,710 in Jordan, $940 in Syria, and $370 in Yemen. Per capita income is of course not the only measure of development. In 2000, Israel’s infant mortality rate was roughly 5.5 per 1,000 live births, compared to approximately 43 per 1,000 live births in the rest of the Middle East. Also in 2000, 4 percent of Israel’s population over the age of fifteen was illiterate, compared to 44 percent in Iraq, 45 percent in Egypt, and 54 percent in Yemen. In addition, Israel has a sophisticated welfare state, a powerful military said to have nuclear-weapon capacity, impressive infrastructure rivaling the Western nations, and a high-technology sector competitive with Silicon Valley.
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In stark contrast, large portions of the Arab Middle East are characterized by poverty, squalor, and mass frustration despite the region’s enormous oil wealth. In Saudi Arabia, writes Seymour Hersh, “Saudi princes—there are thousands of them—have kept tabloid newspapers filled with accounts of their drinking binges and partying with prostitutes, while taking billions of dollars from the state budget.” Meanwhile, the male unemployment rate is estimated at 30 percent (women are prohibited from working in all but a few occupations), and 25 percent of the total population is illiterate. Jordan too, writes Stephen Glain, considered a “bright spot” in the Middle East, “has the same problems as the rest of the Arab world: hordes of disenfranchised, unemployed, hopeless young men susceptible to poaching by extremist groups.” In the still poorer Arab countries of North Africa, conditions remain primitive in many regions, comparable to Indonesia or Bangladesh, with no potable water, electricity, or sanitation among vast portions of the population.
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Egypt is an especially tragic case in light of its optimistic, modernizing trajectory in the fifties and sixties. In A Portrait of Egypt, journalist Mary Anne Weaver describes two trips she took to Cairo, one in 1977, the other in 1993. In 1977, Weaver recalls living “on the tony island of Zamalek” with its gracious if slightly shabby Edwardian mansions:
[W]e sat on well-appointed terraces overhanging the Nile, and looked across the water at the slum of Imbaba; we speculated on its lifestyle. Its population density was 105,000 people per 2.2 square miles; an average of 3.7 people lived in every room. On our side of the Nile, the level of literacy was the highest in the world; in Imbaba, the average income was thirty dollars a month. Here, four languages were normally spoken at dinner parties, served by candlelight; rooms were filled with books. There, hidden away in the alleys, far from our understanding or view, sheep, goats, and children drank from open sewers, and after dark, some neighborhoods yielded to packs of wild dogs. I remember one evening in particular as I watched with friends the flickering lights of a funeral procession passing through Imbaba. The next morning, we read in the newspaper that two children had been eaten alive by rats.
Fifteen years later Weaver found that,