Arab

WASHINGTON - I should have known something was up when a Saudi diplomat recently asked me, "Do you know what kind of woman is most sought after as a wife by Saudi men today?" No, I said, what kind? "A woman with a job." I thought of that when I read last week's announcement that within a year Saudi Arabia will conduct its first real elections - for municipal councils. Most people thought it would snow in Saudi Arabia before there would be elections. So what's up? What's up are three big shocks hammering the Arab system.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush was right to declare that the Palestinians need to produce decent governance before they can get a state. Too bad, though, that he didn't say that it's not only the Palestinians who need radical reform of their governance -- it's most of the Arab world. By coincidence, though, some other important folks had the courage to say that just this week: The U.N. Development Program, which on Tuesday published, along with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, a brutally honest Arab Human Development Report, analyzing the three main reasons the Arab world is falling off the globe.

JERUSALEM -- Impatient for progress in the Middle East peace negotiations, Israel's new government yesterday urged the country's Arab neighbors to respond "more substantively" to Jerusalem's latest proposals, reiterating its readiness to move ahead quickly in those talks.Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose center-left government won election in June with a pledge to pursue a "land-for-peace" resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, voiced dismay that Arab negotiators had responded so cautiously to what Jerusalem pTC regarded as significant changes in its position.

AMMAN, Jordan -- In recent months, the explosion of Arab satellite TV stations and Web sites has had a profound impact on Arab public opinion by showing live, nonstop images of the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank. These TV and e-mail images have fueled massive demonstrations across the Arab world, and in both Egypt and Bahrain protesters have been shot. Could this roiling Arab street actually topple a regime? No -- none of the Arab regimes is in any danger right now. But Arab regimes' survival is not the right question.

CAIRO, Egypt - To read the Arab press is to think that the entire Arab world is enraged with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and to some extent that's true. But here's what you don't read: Underneath the rage, there is also a grudging, skeptical curiosity - a curiosity about whether the Americans will actually do what they claim and build a new, more liberal Iraq. While they may not be able to describe it, many Arabs intuit that this U.S. invasion of Iraq is something they've never seen before - the revolutionary side of U.S. power.

BRUSSELS - On the way back from Kabul, I passed through Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, London and Belgium, where I had a variety of talks with Arab and Muslim journalists and business people and Muslim community leaders in Europe. All of them were educated, intelligent and thoughtful - and virtually none of them believed that Osama bin Laden was guilty. Let's see, there was the serious Arab journalist in Bahrain who said that Arabs could never have pulled off something as complex as Sept.

JERUSALEM -- Jewish settlers shot and killed three Palestinian workers last night in retaliation for the earlier slaying of two Jews, according to reports, continuing a string of tit-for-tat killings.The violence has increased approaching Monday's scheduled start of Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jericho and the Gaza Strip. Partly because of security concerns, that withdrawal may be delayed.The triple slaying near Hebron was one of several violent attacks reported yesterday, despite a flood of soldiers sent into the occupied territories to keep peace.

WASHINGTON -- It was a moving scene: An Orthodox Jew, who clearly never imagined that some day he would break a major barrier his people faced, speaking from the heart with genuine excitement and gratitude for being selected as the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States. The message about the wonders of the American dream, about the increasing inclusiveness of the American political system resonated well enough with many Americans to propel the Gore- Lieberman team up in the polls.

PERHAPS RASHLY, President Bush has committed his administration to a quick solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He, of all Western policymakers, should know how difficult this will be. But several overlapping pressures and opportunities may increase the odds in his favor.For one thing, he has explicitly linked the two dimensions of the conflict in a way that will be hard to disavow. Any settlement, he said, must be based on the "twin tests of fairness and security" -- fairness to the Palestinians, security for the Israelis.

In speaking to reporters from Baghdad yesterday, Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, took issue with the way the Arab press has been reporting from Iraq. "I would like to add about the Fallujah situation," Abizaid said. "I was just out there talking to the Marines a couple of days ago. The Marines have been doing a great job in conduct of the military operations. They've been very precise. They have attempted to protect civilians to the best of their ability. "The Arab press, in particular Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, are portraying their actions as purposely targeting civilians, and we absolutely do not do that, and I think everybody knows that.