Yep.
If Cairo is North Africa, Beirut is Asia.
The Middle East is not a continent, its a region consisting of areas from North Africa and Asia. If Cairo isn’t in the Middle East then the term has no meaning.
More like picking Dubai over Mecca. Tel Aviv is the cultural and economic capital of Israel, and is a much more modern, cosmopolitan and “Mediterranean” city. As the First Hebrew City (an official nickname), it manages to stuff more history in the past century than most cities do in a thousand years; that’s ignoring the fact that Tel Aviv also includes Jaffa, a city so old it appears both in the Bible and in Greek myth.
Unlike Dubai, though, it’s also an organic city: rather than being raised up overnight from the desert by real estate investors, it grew - very quickly - from an influx of immigrants from around the world. In a way, it’s a lot like New York City, if you’d compress 400 years of NY history to a single century.
Thanks for the description. I’ve been to Beirut (and guessing you haven’t), and feel like Beirut (including the area up to Byblos) might actually be a lot like Tel Aviv… though in the Wiki page, Beirut seems to have a much larger population, so maybe not. Certainly Beirut has much more of an established “real” city feel than Dubai ever will.
I have indeed never been to Beirut (although my dad was there in '82 under less than ideal circumstances), but from all the descriptions I’ve heard that sounds about right. As for size, if you include the huge Tel Aviv metropolitan area then it’s actually slightly larger, at 3.1 million versus 2.6 million, and twice the size of Jerusalem.
82 wasn’t a good time to be there for anybody.
I haven’t been to Beirut in 10 years, but I was impressed… it had largely been rebuilt and there was optimism in the air (despite two bombs from Israeli jets knocking out a power station 6km from me). I only know about Israel from second hand reports, but when I was in Lebanon, I thought that if Israel and Lebanon could sort things out, they’d be a huge economic power… much more then the sum of the parts is now. Syria… probably not. 
Jerusalem
I agree, although Lebanon really has to sort *itself *out first. As things stand, it’s less a nation and more a collection of ceasefires.
Damascus.
If “Greatest” means “having the most history” then it’s a toss-up between (roughly South-West to North-East) Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus and Baghdad (which nobody has mentioned! Probably because of its current situation.) Personally, of course, I’ll choose Jerusalem
If “Greatest” means "best current combination of history, culture, fun and economic/political importance " I think it has to be Tel Aviv, hands down.
The first to come to mind, Jerusalem. Now if everybody can stop breaking stuff Over There, it would be nice, thank you!
My first thought was Damascus
Istanbul, but if that doesn’t count, then Jerusalem.
Istanbul counts and so does Cairo. Jerusalem is awesome but I think Cairo takes the cake. That place is mind-boggling.
Dubai.