While the roughly 2,000 Jews currently living in Tunisia are but a fraction of the population of over 100,000 that was present at the end of World War II, they nonetheless constitute one of the largest and most secure Jewish communities in the Arab world. Given their small numbers, it is difficult to believe that they have much influence over the country. Tunisia’s president, however, seems to think otherwise, as Edy Cohen writes:

Ten years after the so-called “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia, that country is in the headlines once again. A series of violent demonstrations have taken place there against a backdrop of economic hardship. The Tunisian president Kais Saied, troubled by the demonstrations, employed the traditional means of gathering support and deflecting complaint away from himself: he blamed Israel and the Jews.

President Saied . . . stated on a recent visit to a Tunis suburb that the Jews are nothing but thieves. “We know very well who the people are who are controlling the country today,” he said to a crowd in a speech that was captured on video. “It is the Jews who are doing the stealing, and we need to put an end to it.” The accusation of theft is a well-known anti-Semitic slur that has been used against the Jews for centuries.

Saied was elected two years ago on campaign promises that he would maintain no ties with Israel, that normalization with Israel constitutes treason, and that he would bar Israelis from visiting the country. That being said, Saied has not issued any criticism of the four Arab states that signed peace agreements with Israel in recent months.

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.