Reflecting on recent travels in Lebanon and Israel, Andrew Doran explains why Arab hostility toward the Jewish state is beginning to crumble:

First, since the Arab Spring, regional leaders came to see that their people are not so easily manipulated by scapegoating resistance narratives that project domestic problems onto a distant and somewhat abstract enemy. Anti-Zionist ideology has been a useful governing tactic, but it’s done little to address the real challenges of urbanization, unemployment, economic modernization, education, food security, and access to water.

Second, it’s nearly impossible to hide from citizens the economic success of Israel’s pluralistic society and democratic spirit. Every country that develops trade with the tiny Jewish startup nation enjoys material benefits. And those that punish their citizens for contact with Israeli markets necessarily stagnate.

The third reason is sheer exhaustion. Arab nationalism and Islamism have failed. People want competent administration, not perpetual conflict. . . . The people of the Middle East see the rest of the world passing them by—and now, with the Abraham Accords, they see states in the region coming to terms with Israel’s existence.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.