JNS.org – In days past, the demographic question was perceived as the key to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Everyone remembers the words of Yasser Arafat, who said the womb was the Palestinian national weapon to facilitate a majority between the river and the sea and the end of Israel. Those days have long passed, however, and it appears the Jewish majority is stronger than ever, among other factors because of immigration from Russia and Ethiopia, and rising birth rates in the Jewish sector.

Over the past decade, the discourse in the Middle East has reverted to demographics and counting births, deaths and emigration. This time, though, it no longer revolves around the Israel-Palestinian conflict, rather the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict and the clash between Iran and Arab countries, which has become a central component of the regional agenda. Demography plays a critical role in this fight, and when the need arises, the Iranians and their allies don’t shy from “engineering” the demographics to serve their hegemonic regional interests.

In Syria, where Sunnis represented some 60% of the general population on the eve of the country’s civil war, compared to President Bash Assad’s Alawite sect, which comprised just 12% of the population, a deep transformation has occurred. This transformation is the work of the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, which carried out an ethnic cleansing during which nearly one-third of the country’s residents—some 8 million people, the vast majority of whom were Sunnis from the rural areas—were either expelled or fled. Some 10 million Syrians currently reside in the territory under the Assad regime’s control, and the percentage of Alawites in those areas has just about doubled to around 25%, if not more.

In Iraq, too, a shift has taken place in the wake of the American occupation, which led to the removal of Saddam Hussein, who similar to his predecessors was a Sunni. The percentage of Shi’ites, who rule the country, has grown to some 65%, with the remainder comprising the Kurds and Sunni Arabs—who have been relegated to secondary status and many of whom have fled to Jordan, and even to Syria prior to the civil war.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.