Last week, Europe was hit by a heat wave the likes of which even the continent's elders do not remember. Italy and Spain have broken records with temperatures about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius higher than average for this time of year. The heat disrupted daily life, paralyzed economic activity, scared away tourists and, worse, left dozens of casualties.
These join more than 60,<> people who have died so far across Europe, according to estimates, during last summer's and this summer's heat waves. Exceptionally high temperatures were also recorded in the United States, China and Southeast Asia, and finally in Israel. But for us, and indeed for the advanced Western world, it is a question of entering an air-conditioned space and drinking plenty of water to avoid dehydration.
But this is not the case throughout the Middle East around us. In the Gulf states, Iraq and Iran, temperatures have been recorded approaching the temperature threshold that the human body can withstand. It turns out that temperatures in our region have climbed up over the past few decades much faster than in other parts of the world. Such a reality, if it persists and becomes, as experts fear, a permanent phenomenon, could render large areas of the Middle East uninhabitable.
But the heatwave is just the tip of the iceberg. The evaporation of the water reservoirs due to the extreme heat, and following severe droughts the likes of which the region has not known in the past thousand years, leads to an acute shortage of water for drinking and irrigation, and in any case to the collapse of agriculture, which sustains most of the region's residents. The desert and wilderness are therefore returning and occupying areas that were inhabited by humans, a reversal of the trend in the region over the past few centuries.
Add to this the fact that the population in our region continues to grow rapidly. It is now estimated at 500 million people, five times the number of people in the Middle East 50 years ago. It is estimated that it will continue to grow to about 750 million people by 2050.
Even under optimal conditions, the countries of the region will find it difficult to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, not least when it comes to countries that are backward, lack economic and technological infrastructure, and what is worse, countries ruled by dictatorial and corrupt regimes, which are engaged in struggles for survival at home and quarrels with their neighbors.
The climate crisis is therefore no less an existential threat to regional peace than Iran's nuclearization, and it could be the final nail in the coffin of the Middle East and condemn its residents to a life of poverty and distress, a constant shortage of food and water, and therefore also a reality of political instability, conflicts and endless wars.
Even the wealthy Gulf states will not escape such a fate, both because of the extreme weather conditions that will prevail in them and because oil, which is the basis for their existence and prosperity, will lose its importance and weight in the global economy.
Israel has knowledge and experience, as well as advanced technologies through which it can contribute and even save its neighbors from the disaster that will befall them. However, many of the countries in the region – Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Libya – have already collapsed or are in an advanced process of collapse, and in any case they are still preoccupied with past wars rather than future challenges.
Europe, which must worry on Israel's side about the consequences of the climate crisis for the Middle East, is already dealing unsuccessfully with waves of migrants, which will only increase. The riots that have struck France in the past month are proof of the failure of the European effort, and certainly the French one, to integrate the immigrant population, including members of the second and third generations, into the fabric of life in the countries of the continent, and it cannot be assumed that this reality will change in the future.
Thus, the Middle East will continue to export its problems to the world around it, waves of hopeless migrants for a better future that provide a tailwind for Islamic extremism and terrorism.
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