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Arab ire grows unabated

Egypt's president says Arabs hold a "hatred never equaled" toward the US. Jordan's king abruptly postpones a visit to the White House. And those are among the US' best friends in the Arab world.

The war in Iraq, and a shift on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, has left the Bush administration facing growing hostility and an estrangement from friends across the Middle East.

"There is enormous anger in the Arab world that needs to be dealt with," said Nail Al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington.

The White House played down the problem on Tuesday, saying US President George W. Bush did not feel snubbed by King Abdullah II's decision to leave the US early and skip a planned meeting with Bush at the White House this week. Spokesman Scott McClellan said the meeting was merely postponed until next month and chalked it up to "domestic issues" in Jordan.

That's probably right, said Jim Phillips, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"[Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak is under pressure, King Abdullah is under pressure," from their own citizens and groups in their countries angry at the US, Phillips said.

"They're using this not only against the US but against Arab leaders allied with the US -- which is why Mubarak and Abdullah are reflecting those pressures in different ways," he said.

Mubarak and Abdullah "feel vulnerable," said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert and professor at the University of Maryland. "Every time they feel vulnerable they distance themselves from the US ... Governments often do that for their own survival."

It's unclear whether the estrangement is temporary or longer-lasting. There already are signs that the US may be considering some measures to reassure Arabs about its intentions on the Palestinians.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell offered public reminders on Tuesday that the Bush administration was determined to launch a Palestinian state next year and that any decision to keep Israeli settlements on the West Bank as part of a final peace deal would require Palestinian consent.

Powell noted that Bush, when meeting last week with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, endorsed Sharon's move to evacuate Israeli settlements in Gaza and on the West Bank.

That, Powell said, was "something that people have asked for and wanted for a long time."

On Iraq, Powell said he hoped that as people see progress toward establishing security and democracy there, that "the difficulties we're having with Arab opinion toward the United States will change."

Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said, "The question is how ... Bush will balance what he has done for Israel in response to Arab complaints."

That will be on the agenda when Abdullah calls on Bush and when the US, the UN, the EU and Russia -- the framers of the so-called road map for peacemaking -- convene next month, Indyk said in an interview.

The Bush administration would probably try to bridge the gap, agreed Telhami, because it needed Arab allies to help with its efforts in Iraq.
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