As Israelis look at developments around them, they have reason to be concerned. Hezbollah in the north is arming itself, while Hamas in the south is a constant threat. Bashar al-Assad is butchering his Syrian countrymen, and one wonders whether it’s worse for such a bloody dictator to remain in power amid a fragile stability, or for him to go, opening up a Pandora’s box as in Iraq.

The so-called peace process with the Palestinians seems to be at a dead end, and no one really knows who to blame. President Obama is busy trying to win re-election, so he can’t twist arms or knock heads. And above all, there hovers the growing threat of the Iranian nukes.

If this is not enough, then Egypt is an enigma. A year after the revolution, the people who took to Tahrir Square are left frustrated outside the political arena, while the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood moves in to collect the spoils. Their representative, Saad al Qatatani, has just been elected the speaker of the parliament, and together with the Salafists, the more radical Islamic movement, they have the majority in the House. Meanwhile, the army, which still calls the shots, tries to maintain “Mubarakism without Mubarak.”

The question that bothers Israelis is whether the peace treaty with Egypt will hold. Without a strong leader like Anwar Sadat or Hosni Mubarak, who were committed to the treaty, there is a danger that the army will have to compromise with the new Islamic political forces by paying them with Israeli currency. Already the Egyptian-Israeli border in Sinai is a source of trouble, and the pipeline carrying Egyptian gas to Israel is routinely sabotaged.

However, one can look at these developments through a different prism. Depends, of course, on whether one is a pessimist or an optimist. A recent study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that the difference between the two is rooted in biology. The researchers showed people some images, pleasant and unpleasant. They found out that people who defined themselves as conservatives reacted more strongly to unpleasant images; liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the pleasant images.

I didn’t need that research to know that conservatives and pessimists who look at the Middle East may well be seeing trouble only. Being a sworn optimist, however, I see different things in the same Middle Eastern images. While to others they spell risks and threats, to me they mean opportunities and hopes.

Let’s do the tour again, then, through a different perspective.

• Hezbollah is still licking its wounds from the 2006 Second Lebanon War; its Syrian support is waning; and it is heavily bogged down in the complex Lebanese political quagmire.

• Hamas, which had refused Iran’s demand to support Assad, was punished by the closure of the generous money line to from Tehran to Gaza. Once its headquarters in Damascus was closed because of the Syrian turmoil, Hamas was appalled to find out that no Arab “brother” state was willing to host them. A weakened Syria — with or without Assad — will stop being the crucial link in the chain of aggression leading from Iran to Lebanon.

• The Palestinians may be dragging their feet around the negotiating table, but they are not losing time in nation-building. An American official involved in helping them establish their law-enforcement agencies told me that never before was there such a feeling of personal security; so much so, that parents let their kids go alone to the cinema at night — something unusual in Palestinian towns, as well as in good many American ones. When leaders on both sides are ready to talk seriously again, Israelis will find the Palestinians to be much more serious partners than ever, especially when it comes to the most important issue for the Israelis: Security.

• Iran remains a threat, but just look what happens when the world starts being serious about sanctions. With Iran’s economy in danger, soon the suppressed Iranian people will make a move.

• Finally, Egypt, which is only starting to get its act together, is too busy with its own problems to rock the boat with Israel. At a conference in Zurich this week hosted by the think tank Horasis, which brings together the global business community, Tarek Tawfik, managing director of Cairo Poultry Group, told me that the Islamists are pragmatists, who from now on will have to feed 80 million people. They will have to compromise their radical Islamic beliefs with reality. Israel, he says, is now the least of their concerns.

I believe him, but to be on the safe side, I decided I’ll set my own little litmus test, not as scientific as the experiment in Nebraska, but still: If the Islamists rule that hotels in Egypt should stop selling alcohol to their foreign guests, thus jeopardizing Egypt’s tourism economy, then I’ll know that my optimism failed.

Uri Dromi is a columnist based in Jerusalem.