Arab World

Al Jazeera is ready for America, but is America ready for Al Jazeera? The Al Jazeera Channel, the controversial Arab-language network that has emerged as the principal television news source in the Arab world, is going global with an international English-language spin-off designed for European and American audiences. Al Jazeera International has signed such mainstream talent as British interviewer David Frost, former Nightline correspondent Dave Marash, and ex-CNN anchor Riz Khan.

Robert Robb is a columnist at the Arizona Republic President Bush has a very expansive view of what the United States needs to do to protect the country against terrorist attack, more fully articulated in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on Oct. 6 than ever before. The question is whether it is all truly necessary, or at least prudent, or whether it is overreaching and excessively risky. Certain core activities are inarguably necessary to protect the country against terrorist attack.

Projecting a front-runner's low-key confidence, Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas is widely predicted to win election Jan. 9 in the first territory-wide voting by Palestinians since the death of their longtime leader, Yasir Arafat. So assured is Abbas of victory, confidants say, he will leave daily decisions about his campaign, which began yesterday, to the political machine of his dominant Fatah party while he pursues a more important agenda. "The big challenge is not the election.

This is the Mideast you haven't seen on the evening news lately. There are no suicide bombers. No anti-U.S. protests. No grinding poverty. No mass arrests. Instead there are Silicon Valley-style office campuses, home to the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. And white-sand beaches packed with bikini-wearing European tourists. There are also plans for the future - well-financed plans. A world-class medical complex with a Harvard-run teaching hospital. A $7 billion theme park twice the size of Walt Disney World.

Slowly, haltingly, political reform is shouldering its way into what once was the most conservative and autocratic part of the Arab world. While Iraq struggles to rebuild and Saudi Arabia churns with fundamentalist tumult, most of the small, stable oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf have expanded political and economic rights for their citizens. In Oman three decades ago, it was illegal to own a radio. Last fall, this country held its first election open to all, for an advisory body.

Saddam Hussein may be under lock and key, but experts warn that the anger at the United States that he came to symbolize in the Arab world and Iran is far from contained. It still seethes in every capital from Rabat to Tehran, in the streets if not always in government. "To some extent, Saddam was a measure of the depth of the region's alienation from the West," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "He symbolized the anger; he symbolized the divide.

Fresh from victory in Iraq, President Bush today will challenge the Arab world to embrace political and economic freedom as the fastest path to peace and stability in the Middle East. In a commencement address at the University of South Carolina, Bush also will outline plans for a Middle East free-trade zone that could ultimately link the economies of Israel and its Arab neighbors. The address signals Bush's determination to use the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as a catalyst for economic and political change throughout the region.

MONEY CAN'T buy happiness - even, it seems, in oil-rich Arab countries. Though a new U.N. report shows that the Arab League nations have reduced poverty over the last decade, their lack of political freedom and educational advancement prevents them from keeping pace in terms of growth and per-capita income with even the poorest nations. It is precisely this lack of freedom that make such nations a ripe breeding ground for terrorism. "Poverty doesn't cause terrorism," President Bush said in his remarks to the Inter-American Development Bank in March, but when governments fail their people, "these failed states can become havens for terror.

I RESENT the pro-Palestinian propaganda that is trying to intimidate the U.S. because we support Israel. The majority of the Arab world is behaving like a mass of spoiled brats. Their hatred of Israel is nauseating and should not be rewarded by giving in to their demands, otherwise evil wins. Having lived in the Olney section of Philadelphia many years ago when I was a child, a number of neighbors and classmates were Jewish. We played together and got along very well. They became our doctors, nurses, our surgeons, our dentists, our lawyers and professionals in every phase of society and government - they excelled.

On the day Secretary of State Colin L. Powell consulted with Jordanian leaders about conditions in the Middle East, hundreds of angry men and women marched through this Arab capital yesterday, chanting "Where is the Arabic army?" and "No peace negotiations. " The raucous but orderly protest was one of two sizable gatherings in Amman, the latest in a series of anti-Israeli and anti-American protests across the Arab world that are growing larger, bolder and more violent. The unrest is putting pressure on moderate governments such as Jordan's that could make cooperation with America more difficult.