In Mideast, Rice stresses civilian relief

"It is time for a new Middle East," Rice said in Jerusalem. "It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not."

In her comments about a cease-fire, the secretary has used high-minded language, referencing, for example, the need to base the cease-fire on "enduring principles." Rice is speaking of the two major foreign policy goals of the Bush administration: The emergence of new democracies, and the disarmament of nonstate groups that the US considers terrorists, such as Hizbullah.

Middle East experts do not expect that Hizbullah will fully disarm as a result of this conflict, something which Rice has been tacitly acknowledging.

While the US does not talk directly to either Syria or Hizbullah, Rice did meet in Beirut Monday with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has ties to both Hizbullah and Syria.

Rice told Mr. Berri, according to a diplomatic source, that a cease-fire would be possible if Hizbullah pulled back about 12 miles from the Israeli border and released the two Israeli soldiers.

While Hizbullah and its allies continue to insist that those demands are unacceptable, they stop well short of disarming the group.

For his part, Berri made it clear that the meeting wasn't very productive. In an interview with Al-Arabiyah, he said he told Rice that Israel's bombing of Lebanon has left destruction "equivalent to that from a nuclear bomb,'' and insisted that Syria and Iran had nothing to do with instigating the current conflict.

While Hizbullah sparked the latest conflict in Lebanon, daily images of Israeli bombing raids on Lebanese towns and of dead and dying Lebanese civilians have shifted almost all of the blame in Arab eyes onto Israel and the US.

To Arabs, America's drive for a "new Middle East" appears to be a drive for a region that is friendlier to Israel and militarily weaker overall.

Throughout the region's capitals, many who support democratic change for their own countries are condemning Israeli "aggression."

They see the current turmoil in Iraq as evidence not of a democracy push, but of what happens to regimes that oppose US and Israeli interests.

"The perception here is that the reason why we have these dictatorships – not the sole reason, but one of the reasons – is because the United State's backs them in exchange for their Israel-friendly policies,'' says Alaa Abdel-Fatah, an Egyptian democracy activist who spent 45 days in jail this May and June. He was arrested for attending a peaceful rally calling for an independent Egyptian judiciary.

As for Israel, he says, "It's not just about Palestine or solidarity. What people in the US miss is that we view the Arab-Israeli conflict as one for existence."

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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