The Palestine Liberation Organization raised three main objections to the proposals. The proposals made no provisions for a viable Palestinian state, without which there could be no lasting peace. By permitting them to keep the settlements they built in the West Bank and Gaza in violation of United Nations Resolution 242, the proposals effectively rewarded the Israelis for their illegal colonization effort. And they denied the right of Palestinians exiled at the time of Israel's birth in 1948 to return to their homes, although this right is enshrined in the United Nations' Resolution 194, adopted half a century ago and reiterated every year since.

Even if he wanted to, Arafat would not be able to agree to these conditions for a peace settlement so blatantly weighted in Israel's favor. His people would not sanction it, nor would they give up their "Intifada of al-Aqsa" uprising against the Israelis' continuing denial of their right to freedom and independence. The fact is that the Palestinians have concluded that Clinton's "peace process" is in reality a smokescreen behind which the Israelis and their American patrons have collaborated to frustrate the right of the Palestinians, accepted by the rest of the world, to self-determination.

This conclusion is widely shared here in Europe, where many people think that U.S. Middle East policy is unreasonably biased in favor of Israel as the result of the influence of the powerful Zionist lobby in Congress. Most obviously, American compliance with the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza have plainly made it more difficult to envisage any possible agreement between Israel and the people whose land it is occupying. There is an opportunity here for President-elect George W. Bush to modify the U.S. bias toward Israel and explore the ground for a more even-handed approach to the problem of establishing peace in the Middle East.

For more than three months now, as violence has flared up all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the streets of Arab cities all across the Middle East have resounded to the cry of Arab unity. This has awakened echoes for me of my first days as a newspaper correspondent in 1955, when I was reporting the Suez crisis for the old Manchester Guardian.

At that time, the Americans were regarded as friends of the Arabs. Today things are very different; it's the Americans, along with Israel, whom most Arabs regard as their enemy. In Cairo and Amman and Damascus, and even in the sheikhdoms of the Gulf and in distant Yemen and Morocco, voices are being raised -- spontaneously and insistently -- by ordinary citizens who want their governments to unite in pursuit of a common objective: to save Arab Jerusalem from a blatant attempt by Israel, with the backing of the United States, to hijack the Holy City.

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