This week’s pledge of $2 billion of Palestinian aid by European countries would best be balanced by direct diplomatic activism by the Europeans, writes Rami G. Khouri.

A trip from Beirut to Boston, by way of London, writes Rami G. Khouri reveals three different views of the global crisis of terrorism. In the case of the United States, a refusal to address reality is aiding the global terrorists’ causes.

By reporting on the Arab world primarily in terms of its public and political deviance, rather than its human ordinariness and the rhythms of its many different neighborhoods, writes Rami G. Khouri, the Western media leaves little if any space to convey the defining reality of ordinary Middle Eastern lives.

Not only has Blair been hypocritical or partial to Israel and the United States rather than truly even-handed, writes Rami G. Khouri; his policies have contributed directly and abundantly to the precise Arab-Israeli conflict and associated tensions in the Middle East that he is now apparently going to try and resolve.

How, asks Rami G. Khouri, can the United States, Israel and Europe, having apparently formed themselves into a tri-part team, persist in a policy that creates disaster upon disaster? How can US-Israel-EU claim to be working for peace while enhancing the fragmentation of Palestinian society and renouncing its most popular and democratically-elected mass movement?

This past week has been filled with intriguing diplomatic activity in the Middle East in the form of American and British contacts with the three principal parties that Washington and London see as trouble-makers and bad guys, writes Rami G. Khouri.