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Pulitzer prize winning journalist reporting on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, Karen Elliott House, describes the changes in Saudi society and politics against the backdrop of the changes in the Middle East. Her exceptional reporting and insights provide a look into the Middle East at a time when young people make up the largest demographic and are looking for jobs and economic opportunity, with political structures lagging far behind in meeting the growing aspirations. The larger backdrop of the region extends into South Asia, with large Muslim populations unable to make the right choices for freedom and economic progress because of internal divisions, widespread illiteracy and lack of education of the rural population, and poor leadership. The lag affects western society in different ways, including the threat of terrorism, sporadic involvement in the region's conflicts, and a sense of not being able to do the right thing by its own ideals.

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Israeli public officials believe the poor socio-economic conditions and the need to keep foreign aid and investment will be deciding factor after presidential elections in Egypt, regardless of who wins. The Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi is also likely to keep the Israel-Egypt peace treaty for this reason, even though differences with Israel remain.

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Referring to the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, Israel's ambasador Michael Oren says Assad's Syria, which has close ties with Iran, is not good for Israel. He says the devil that Israel knows in Syria is worse than the devil we don't know.

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President George Bush said in 2005, that if someone wanted to get a glimpse of how he thinks on foreign policy, he should read Nathan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy." Sharansky was an aide to soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. Here he is interviewed by David Feith of the Wall Street Journal. His outspoken activism in favor of the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate got him 9 years in the Soviet Gulag. He was released from prison in 1986, with the strong support of President Reagan. He emigrated to Israel and served in ministerial posts and in the Israeli parliament. Sharansky says the recent protests in Egypt prove his fundamental points. That there are limits to how much you can control people through the use of fear, and that all people, regardless of religion and culture, desire and want freedom. This is a very human message, it showed its power when the Berlin Wall fell, and it is true today in the Arab world. He says the fear that this endangers the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is not well founded. Over the last 30 years the border with Syria has been quiet, because it is really Israeli deterrance that is responsible for this and the quiet border with Egypt. He adds there is no justification for Mubarak remaining, as it only creates hostility in the Arab world against the US and Israel. And he says that Mubarak was no friend of the Jewish people, because even as he made peace with Israel, he continued to let anti-Semitism thrive and used Jews as the enemy to enhance his control. Sharansky says Gaza and Hamas control after the election was an unusual situation because of the corruption of the people around Arafat, so that even Christian villages supported Hamas. And he says the longer a dictatorship is in place the worse the situation becomes in creating more hostility to all those who support the dictatorship, including the US and Israel. For Sharansky, the Obama adminstration's response to the Iranian protests after what is seen as a stolen election in Iran, were one of the greatest betrayals of freedom in modern history. To prevent a one time, one person, one vote, Sharansky says the democratic institutions have to take root and this will take more than 8 months, so guarantees need to be put in place that this is not allowed to happen. Safeguards put in place to ensure that whoever is elected cannot survive if democratic institutions and reforms and democracy building does not occur. Dissidents like Mr Ibrahim and others should enjoy the ability to build trade unions and women's organizations. Sharansky says this is a real chance, a chance for the US and the free world to become a partner in change. In change that will help Egypt pass the town square test. Can people freely protest and express their grievances in the town square. And move from this fundamental change to establishing democratic processes and institutions. ...

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The Egyptian military government projects foreign currency reserves will drop to $15 billion in January 2012, with $5 billion for prior obligations. The $10 billion only covers 2 months of imports. This is expected to lead to a further devaluation of the currency and rise in prices.

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Since 2011 democracy protests Tunisia's unemployment rate has increased from 13% to 18%, with an estimated 750,000 people unemployed. About one third of the unemployed are college graduates. By 2015 about 100,000 new college graduates will be looking for jobs each year. Tunisia's economy contracted 1.8% in 2011 with a 30% drop in tourists, according to the World Bank, which predicts 2.2% growth in GDP in 2012 and 4.6% by 2014. The democracy struggle in the Middle East started in Tunisia and demographics in Tunisia are similiar to that of the rest of the Middle East, with a surging number of young people and college graduates looking for jobs.

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Kirkpatrick and Erlanger's interview with Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi. He says successive U.S. governments used taxpayer money to buy the dislike and hatred of peoples in the region by backing governments run by corrupt dictators who suppressed popular opposition. Morsi calls for a new attitude from the American people and Arab people of mutual respect of each other's cultures, and recalls his own days studying engineering at the University of Southern California.

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The largest part of the protest movement in Egypt is led by people under 30 years of age. This is a striking new face of the student protests and the opposition in Egypt to continued rule by dictators from the armed forces. A leader of the April 6 Youth Movement says most of the people he has signed up for protests via the internet- numbers reaching 90,000- were under 30 years. Ibrahim Issa, El-Baradei, Muslim Brotherhood leaders of an older generation, are all respecting this fact, and working with student leaders and young people to bring in a new transition based on the needs and concerns of a new generation of Egyptians.