Press Room
AAI in the News
Arabs Say Lack of Jobs Trumps Palestinians as Concern
By Judy Mathewson
Bloomberg
Posted on Wednesday December 7, 2005
The Zogby International poll found that jobs, health care, corruption, education, terrorism and civil rights were more important to the 3,900 Arabs interviewed across the Middle East, mostly in cities. The October poll measured opinions in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a summary accompanying the findings.
Ending corruption and nepotism, a choice that was not on a comparable 2004 poll, ranked third, after improving health care, the summary said. Fighting ``extremism and terrorism’’ ranked fifth on the list of 11 issues, after improving education. ``If you go to many Arab countries, particularly Egypt or Syria, you’ll see that unemployment and joblessness are the major political issues,’’ Samer Shehata, a Georgetown University professor of Arab culture, said in a telephone interview from Cairo, where he is on leave. ``In this country the official unemployment rate is 10 percent, but nobody believes that, and I’d say unemployment is at least 25 percent, and 40 percent among recent college graduates.’’
Concerns close to home trump regional issues that used to be more prominent, the researchers found. More Arabs connect their identity to their country, rather than to religion or ``being Arab,’’ compared with answers given three years ago, according to the Zogby poll.
Work, Women
Majorities in Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco assessed job opportunities as ``not promising’’ in the survey.
The poll found that ``significant’’ majorities among those questioned in all the countries accept women in the workplace, including 84 percent of the Egyptians and 57 percent of the Saudi Arabians who were surveyed.
The findings primarily reflect the views of urban dwellers. In Egypt, for instance, the pollsters conducted interviews in Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor, a Nile River town that benefits from tourism to ancient sites. In Saudi Arabia, questions were asked of people in the port city Dammam, the capital Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca. In Morocco, the pollsters worked in the capital Rabat, and in Casablanca, Marrakech and Tangier, three of the North African country’s biggest urban areas.
When Arabs look beyond their region, it is Asia rather than Europe or the U.S. that draws the most admiration. China is the country viewed most favorably, and India has gained a higher standing since 2002, when those countries are matched against the U.S. and Russia, the survey found. In each of the six Arab countries at least 60 percent of those questioned viewed the U.S.
unfavorably.
Views of U.S.
About 89 percent of the Saudis who were surveyed had unfavorable views of the U.S., compared with 87 percent in 2002. In the UAE and Lebanon, the percentages of those with unfavorable views of the U.S. had gone down slightly.
The war in Iraq was the most important determinant in views about the U.S., according to the pollsters.
``More often than not, on Arab TV screens in the evening, there are pictures of Iraq, and the chaos that has ensued in that country since the war, and not of Palestine,’’ Shehata said.
The summary of the poll results was prepared by James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. Utica, New York-based Zogby International is run by his brother John.
In each of the six countries, households were randomly chosen from different ``social neighborhoods,’’ the report said. All respondents were assured of the confidentiality of the information, it said.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 or 4.5 percentage points, depending on the country, except for the UAE, where the margin of error was plus or minus 10 percentage points, the summary said.
