January 16, 2002	Wednesday	Ziqa’ad 1, 1422

LONDON: Frustrated, disappointed and angry. Many in the Middle East feel this way about US foreign policy in President George W. Bush’s first year in office — unless they happen to be Israeli.

The signals are not reassuring for those who believe that the sense of impotence and injustice pervading the region helps explain why the likes of Osama bin Laden can recruit suicide bombers willing to commit mass murder in the name of Islam.

Bush’s policies in the Middle East may have diverged from those of his predecessor Bill Clinton more in style than substance since he took office on January 20, 2001.

But bitterness at those policies now seems to be felt as keenly by Washington’s Arab allies as by its foes in the region.

This was heightened after the Sept 11 attacks on the US by American media suggestions that Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the countries from which most of the hijackers hailed, were as much part of the problem as the solution to terrorism.

At street level, many Arabs and Muslims point to the misery of Palestinians under occupation and Bush’s support for what is arguably the most hardline government in Israel’s history.

The US debate over what target to hit after Afghanistan in Bush’s war on global terrorism — Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan are among the candidates — lends plausibility to Muslim radicals who argue that the US is inherently hostile to Islam.

Even pro-Western Arab capitals have seemed impatient with Bush’s reluctance, especially in his presidency’s early months, to get more closely involved in stopping a decade of peacemaking from sinking in a welter of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

“Most Arab leaders are really frustrated with the Bush administration’s conduct of American foreign policy in the Middle East. They are totally disappointed and don’t expect it to get better,” Mohammad al Sayid Said, deputy director of Cairo’s Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, said .

He said Bush’s record had trashed a long-held idea that Arabs can expect a fairer deal from Republicans than Democrats, as well as the hope that he might emulate his father, who launched a Middle East peace process after the 1991 Gulf War.

Bush had regained some credit with Arabs by talking of a Palestinian state, Israeli “occupation” and Palestinian “suffering”, rather than only decrying Palestinian “terrorists”. “But he stopped short of saying several key things like calling for a full (Israeli) withdrawal and calling for a new approach to negotiations,” Said added.

An Egyptian government official, who asked not to be named, said public opinion in his country was frustrated and angry. “The government is also frustrated, but more silent,” he said. “We had hoped that Bush would build on his father’s legacy in terms of the Madrid peace process, but this didn’t happen.

“We were hoping for more from this administration, but it completely advocates the stand of (Israeli prime minister Ariel) Sharon,” the official sa