Even as the proportion of Christians among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs has shrunk, the Jewish state’s Christian population has been steadily rising due to an influx of foreign workers and refugees from the Philippines, Eritrea, Sudan, and elsewhere. Abandoned churches have been restored to use, clergy have begun to conduct services in a variety of languages, and Catholics have even begun to celebrate Sunday mass on Friday and Saturday mornings to accommodate the Israeli work week. Sara Toth Stub writes:

The influx of Christian migrant workers from places like the Philippines is not a phenomenon unique to Israel; it is occurring across the Middle East. Of the ten countries in which Christianity is experiencing its most rapid growth, six are Muslim states in the Middle East. . . . In places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the number of Christians is expanding at a rate of more than nine percent per year due to the influx of migrant workers. . . .
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In places like Saudi Arabia, where there is no freedom of religion, migrants are forced to gather in secret to worship. But in other countries, like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, officials have allowed the construction of churches in certain places. This is all happening as other places in the region, mainly Iraq and Syria, have seen continuing violence against Christians that has driven out entire communities. . . .

In Israel, this influx has resulted in a fusion of identities, especially among those migrants who have been here for many years. It is even more pronounced among their Hebrew-speaking children.

Take, for instance, Gina Canlas, a Filipina who met her Turkish Muslim boyfriend in Israel and is raising their son as a Catholic:

Canlas, who has temporary residency status in Israel, speaks mainly Hebrew with her boyfriend and son. She said she feels comfortable as a Catholic in Tel Aviv. “In Israel you can do what you want,” Canlas said. “I don’t feel oppressed. It’s a liberated and open country.”

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.