A columnist in Asharq al-Awsat, Saleh Qallab, is very upset. He asks, unbelievingly, "Palestine is not the top priority for Arabs?!" He calls the results "surprising and frustrating" and calls this development "dangerous."
It is inconceivable to this editorialist that the wall-to-wall coverage of a people who have nothing to do with the day to day lives of ordinary Arabs has made them sick of the whole topic - especially in light of the Hamas/Fatah split, which turned off a lot of previously supportive Arabs. If Palestinians can't get their act together, they are saying, why should we beat our heads against the wall for these babies?
Qallab allows that Arab nations have other concerns that may appear more pressing, like the war in Yemen and the situations in Iraq and Somalia and the Sudan and fears of an Iranian nuclear bomb and intra-Arab terrorism. Even so, he continues to claim - without any supporting evidence - that the Palestine issue is the "core of conflict in the region," as if those other issues would vanish once there is a Palestinian Arab nation.
It shows once again that ordinary Arabs tend to be far wiser than their intellectual and political leaders. They don't buy the fiction that Palestinian Arabs are the most important issue in their lives, despite being brainwashed to that effect for generations. And more than a few are actively angry at Palestinian Arabs.
The first comment to the op-ed is interesting. An Iraqi now in Sweden writes:
On the issue of Arabs and their problems with Israel, I say why didn't the Arabs will agree to the United Nations partition in 1948? And why did they not give the Palestinians the West Bank and Gaza Strip when it was under their control before 1967? I say to myself, an Iraqi, why would you want me to support the people who applauded the criminal who killed my people, who still have his picture in their homes and who they now they see as a martyr? Do you think I have suffered blindness? The Palestinians do not deserve me, not even a fingernail, and never will!Apparently, "linkage" is believed more by the Obama administration than it is by the Arab world whose leaders harp on that very fiction.
(h/t Ali for finding the poll.)