Obeisance to the sacred cow of Palestine First sparked resentment-tinged disdain for Palestinians whose cause always overshadowed the truly-important issues affecting the Middle East and the Arab world.
Ramallah, May 25 - Shifting geopolitical considerations have wrought noticeable change in the priorities that Middle East nations and governments give to the issues they must address, with recent studies pointing to an unfamiliar place in the rankings for partisans of wiping Jewish sovereignty off the map: instead of registering in the top five, among heavy-hitters such as the price of oil, political stability, and phony elections, where the issue reigned for decades, most Middle East leaders, decision-makers, and governments now see pushing the Jews into the sea as somewhat more important than addressing athlete's foot but somewhat less important than those stupid pieces of plastic that hold new pairs of socks together that you need scissors to take apart but always end up losing a tiny, sharp portion of the plastic inside the garment and stabbing yourself when you put them on the first time.
Surveys of, and interviews with, high-ranking officials throughout the region in the last several years have borne out the change, which experts attribute to rising concern over Iran's hegemonic pursuits; realization that reflexive opposition to Israel's existence and security have only hurt them; and resentment-tinged disdain for Palestinians whose cause always overshadowed the truly-important issues affecting the Middle East and the Arab world and short-circuited any initiatives that might improve lives across the region because of insufficient obeisance to the sacred cow of Palestine First, instead of the issues rightful grouping with discovering only once you're already soaking wet in the shower that the shampoo bottle is empty and you have to get out and drip water everywhere, including all over the clean towels, to find a new bottle.
Observers began to notice the shift more than thirty years ago when, amid a series of US-brokered agreements on Palestinian autonomy and Israeli withdrawal. The prospect of addressing Palestinian grievances and mitigating an issue that had dominated Arab discourse at the expense of facing other crucial challenges made many in the region eager to tackle those other challenges - corruption, inefficiency, restive populations, lack of education, women's rights, internal violent dissent - only to find that Palestinian leaders and their enablers in the international community refused to cede dominance of Arab discourse despite occupying the center of regional attention for decades. Regional leaders soon discovered that downgrading the Palestinian issue had no discernible effect on their ability to conduct their affairs; in the years since, Palestine has slipped from the top five in 1990 to perhaps the top twenty in 2000, between "American cultural pollution" and "one day we might run out of oil," to only the 4,775th-most-important challenge facing the Middle East, in a cohort of ten issues that also includes bad-quality hair dyes from China, office paper shortages when suppliers are closed on weekends, stubbing one's toe while wearing sandals, and when the towel has been used by too many people already and you can't dry your hands well enough to prevent the water from getting on the next thing you handle, which is like really annoying, especially when it smudges the ink on something you needed to read.