From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media on Brook Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. This week, President Bush stood with Israeli Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon and declared that Israel had the right to keep parts of the West Bank

annexed by Israel in the 1967 war. He also said Palestinian refugees did not have the right

to return to their homes inside Israel. In a long season of mounting hostility

between the United States and the Arab world, it's hard to imagine news more likely to prompt

universal condemnation in the Arab media. Our friend Martin Walker, editor-in-chief of UPI, joins us

once again, having sorted through the Arab language papers.

Martin, welcome back.

Nice to be back on the air with you, Bob.

To the extent that there is any sympathy for the president in any quarter in the Arab press,

that's gone now, huh?

Yes, even the government-owned Arab press, which normally tries to give at least a nod

to the American

point of view, is now very firmly and overwhelmingly against what Bush is doing. For example,

in the Emirates, the Al-Khalij, a very pro-government paper, says that Bush has put himself

into the mould of Sharon and is acting as if a member of Sharon's Likod party. Bush has adopted

Israel's racist, expansionist, hostile policies, and so on. In Qatar, the pro-government paper Al-Raya

says that international borders cannot be unilaterally changed in this way by two men meeting in a room in Washington.

This is just a howl of pain outrage, which is coming on the heart on the heels of the similar

howls of pain over what's been happening in Iraq.

What is it that has most particularly infuriated the Arab press?

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