NEW YORK, July 30: With hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organisation, transforming the Shia group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements, said the New York Times on Friday.

In an analysis of the Israeli-Hezbollah war the newspaper noted that the Saudi royal family and King Abdullah of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shia Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression, the Times correspondent, reporting from Cairo, said.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world.”

President Hosni Mubarak emphasised his attempts to arrange a ceasefire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams ‘for the victims of Israeli aggression’. Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish.

“If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”