DUBAI/LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been in the Middle East recently, asserting that the Israel-Palestine dispute is "the most important issue facing the world today."
Most Arab leaders would certainly agree with him. Indeed, they would go further than that. At the Arab Strategy Conference this month in Dubai, attended by numerous Arab and Persian Gulf prime ministers and foreign ministers, as well as by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, those speakers that denounced Israel (and Zionists), Americans and U.S. President George W. Bush (and all of his works for good measure) got a huge round of applause.
The proposition seems to be that all Middle East ills flow from American support for the Israelis and U.S. intervention in Iraq. In Arab minds, they are the twin evils: Solve either or both, goes the argument, and all will be peace, light and prosperity in the region.