In less than 100 days a new American president will be elected, and most likely he will be Barack Obama, the first African-American to attain that position provided he maintains his current solid lead in the opinion polls. The gifted and articulate one-time senator has won the hearts of many in the United States and Europe, as evidenced during his recent overseas trip to Europe, and his remarkable speech in Berlin which was attended by some 200,000 Germans and others.

The choice has been whittled down to four candidates in the U.S. presidential race, so their various positions on the outstanding issues of Middle Eastern politics are becoming increasingly important.

The conflict that has developed between Fatah and Hamas poses new-and-unprecedented challenges for supporters of the Palestinian cause.

BULLDOZERS SCOUT THE AREA THAT WAS ONCE YASSER ARAFATS COMPOUND If judged only by its text, Palestinians should be largely satisfied with UN Resolution 1435 passed on Tuesday by 14 votes to 0 with a US abstention.

There can be no more shocking and disgusting demonstration of American double standards than the demand delivered to Qatar by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that the emirate rein in the Al Jazeera satellite-TV station.

Palestinians are the largest and most long-suffering refugee population in the world. There are more than 3.7 million Palestinians registered as refugees by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), the U.N. agency responsible for them.

Two more Palestinians were killed on January 13. But the two men, Majdi Mikkawi and Alam Bani Odeh, both in their twenties, were not shot dead by Israeli occupation forces.

It is widely accepted that the Middle East is a hotbed of anti-American terrorism, sponsored in part by governments actively opposed to United States foreign policy such as those of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Libya.