'Why do they hate us?'

Three weeks ago, a leading Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat, published a poem on its front page. A long lament about the plight of the Arabs, addressed to a dead Syrian poet, it ended:

"Children are dying, but no one makes a move.

Houses are demolished, but no one makes a move.

Holy places are desecrated, but no one makes a move....

I am fed up with life in the world of mortals.

Find me a hole near you. For a life of dignity is in those holes."

It sounds as if it could have been written by a desperate and hopeless man, driven by frustration to seek death, perhaps martyrdom. A young Palestinian refugee planning a suicide bomb attack, maybe. In fact, it was written by the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London, a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the kingdom that is Washington's closest Arab ally.

Against the background of that humiliated mood, America's unchallenged military, economic, and cultural might be seen as an affront even if its policies in the Middle East were neutral. And nobody voices that view.

From one end of the region to the other, the perception is that Israel can get away with murder - literally - and that Washington will turn a blind eye. Clearly, the US and Israel have compelling reasons for their actions. But little that US diplomats have done in recent years to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians has persuaded Arabs that the US is a fair-minded and equitable judge of Middle Eastern affairs.

Over the past year, Arab TV stations have broadcast countless pictures of Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian youths, Israeli tanks plowing into Palestinian homes, Israeli helicopters rocketing Palestinian streets. And they know that the US sends more than $3 billion a year in military and economic aid to Israel.

"You see this every day, and what do you feel?" asks Rafiq Hariri, the portly prime minister of Lebanon, who is not an excitable man. "It hurts me a lot. But for hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, it drives them crazy. They feel humiliated."

Ask Sheikh Abdul Majeed Atta why Palestinians may not like the United States, and he does not immediately answer. Instead, he pads barefoot across the red swirls of his living room carpet and reaches for three framed photographs on the floor beside a couch.

The black-and-white prints show dusty, rock-strewn hills dotted with tiny tents and cinderblock houses: the early days of Duheisheh refugee camp, south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. It was where Mr. Atta was born, and where his family has lived for more than half a century.

Atta's family village was destroyed in the struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jews after Britain divided Palestine between them in 1948. For 10 years his family of 13 lived in a tent. The year Atta was born, the United Nations gave them a one-room house.

It doesn't matter to Atta that the United States was not directly involved in "the catastrophe," as Palestinians refer to the events of 1948. Washington averted its eyes when it could have helped, he says, and since then has been firmly on Israel's side.

Heavyset, solid, with a neatly trimmed full beard, Atta is the preacher at a nearby mosque. He looks the part of the community leader, always meticulously turned out in crisp shirts and pressed trousers, gold-rimmed reading glasses tucked into a pocket.

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