You're right that Turkey would've been ideal were it not for the recent financial troubles, though I wonder if a big event like the World Cup could have elimina

You're right that Turkey would've been ideal were it not for the recent financial troubles, though I wonder if a big event like the World Cup could have eliminated or at least delayed this crisis. If you look a bit further afield than just the Middle East, Egypt or Morocco (or some dual bid) may have been good options too. I think you're right to discount Israel, to be honest not just because of safety and access issues but because it's a relatively small country that can't reasonably support stadia of the size and quality required to host the World Cup. They've three ~30k seaters which is ok but the rest are absolutely tiny - to be honest even the Greater Glasgow area likely has a better selection and there's not a hope in hell of even a Scotland bid (outside there's one >60k, three around 20-22k and a dozen more 10-19k). These smaller nations would do much better to submit joint bid - most countries can afford at least a couple of white elephant stadia if they don't already have a few bigger teams that could occupy them - but with Israel, I can't think who they'd host with.