Furthermore, the depth of Arab anger over the Bush administration's policies toward Israel and the Palestinians is affecting on efforts to stabilize Iraq. Israel's assassination last month of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, resonated throughout Iraq with Sunni insurgents naming a group after the slain cleric, and the maverick Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr declaring his followers "the striking arm" in Iraq of Hamas.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, referred to that link last week, saying his efforts to forge a new Iraqi government were hindered by Israel's "poison in the region" of "domination and the suffering of the Palestinians."

Despite Arab anger over Iraq, it is the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians that lies at the root of anti-American sentiment in the region.

The Arab world reacted with astonishment, despair, and rage when President Bush recently approved Israel retaining some West Bank settlements and rejected the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes in Israel. The announcement, coming after a meeting at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was a reversal of longstanding US policy of opposing Israel's settlement building on occupied Arab territory.

In truth, Mr. Bush was merely saying in public what many Arabs reluctantly concede in private. In past negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, it was generally accepted that the 3.2 million Palestinian refugees, now living in the occupied territories, Lebanon, and Jordan, would not return to Israel. At the same time, the Palestinians agreed to Israel keeping larger West Bank settlements in exchange for additional territory attached to the future Palestinian state.

Yet the fact that Bush made it a public declaration inflamed Arab passions.

"It was so offensive, so blatant, sitting there in the White House with Sharon and saying this is how it's going to be," says Rami Khouri, a Jordanian political analyst and executive editor of Lebanon's English-language Daily Star newspaper. "People were incredibly offended, shocked, and angered by that."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak observed last week that "there is a hatred of the Americans like never before in the region. People have a feeling of injustice," he told the French daily Le Monde. "What's more, they see Sharon acting as he pleases, without the Americans saying anything."

Mr. Khouri says that Arab resentment toward US Mideast policy extends beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There's a broad pattern of inconsistencies, double standards, contradictions, and an arrogance in the American style that really upsets people throughout the region and makes it increasingly difficult for anybody to take the Americans seriously or to work with them," Mr. Khouri says.

If Arab attitudes toward the US are to change, then Washington will "have to be more consistent, less contradictory, more reliable," he says. "If they say there are going to promote democracy, then they should promote democracy and not support [Arab] autocrats. They should order people around less and consult people more. They need to work on the substance and the style of their diplomacy and their involvement in this region."

Otherwise, the US risks losing the goodwill of moderates like Shammaa.

"I close this letter with one sole plea," Mr Shammaa concludes. "Do not force me, and others like me, who were educated and brought up by our American peers in the real heyday of American principles and democracy, to now classify those same people as the enemy camp. This pains me greatly, both as a Christian and an Arab, particularly after having so long believed and practiced the principles you taught me, and now seeing a parody of these very same beliefs dragged down into the mud of Iraq and the [Palestinian] occupied territories."

More than a decade ago, the US was instrumental in abolishing the Berlin Wall, and now it only pays lip service to democracy while watching silently as Israel puts up a cement wall around an occupied people in a giant ghetto. Such a sight without any seeming redress by the US, aside from a verbal rebuke, has never before been witnessed in a "democratic" world. I remember when the US cheered on Nelson Mandela and denounced apartheid; and yet now, every day more and more stones are piled on in an effort to contain a whole population as though it were in a zoo.

Please let me make one thing very clear: The entire world, whatever their political or religious beliefs, watched in horror and shared in your sorrow on that fateful day in September 2001. Muslims, Christians, and Jews in our area of the world were stricken by that horrible act and we all condemned it. That it was a premeditated act by a small group of Muslim extremists did not diminish its atrociousness. However, through the use of this horror perpetrated by these extremists, the current administration generalized its anger toward all Muslims and Arabs of the world.

Please understand why most Muslims consider you the ally and sole protector of Israel and why Iraqis categorize you as occupiers and not liberators. The US attacked Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussein was dangerous due to his weapons of mass destruction. The world has watched as this claim has been belied time and time again, yet the administration backs Israel, knowing full well that this country has devastating weapons at its disposal. Please understand why this administration has given 1 billion Muslims reason to consider the US unfair and unjust.

I close this letter with one sole plea: Do not force me, and others like me, who were educated and brought up by our American peers in the real heyday of American principles and democracy, to now classify those same people as the enemy camp. This pains me greatly, both as a Christian and an Arab, particularly after having so long believed and practiced the principles you taught me, and now seeing a parody of these very same beliefs dragged down into the mud of Iraq and the occupied territories.

• Munir Shammaa, practicing physician and clinical professor of medicine at the American University of Beirut