WASHINGTON — One of the frightening lessons one learns from spending time in Washington, DC is that most of the men and women who make or influence American policy in the Middle East actually have little or no first-hand experience in the region. They know very little about its people, or its political trends at the grassroots level — as the Iraq experience reconfirms so painfully.

American policy-making throughout the Middle East remains defined largely by three principal forces: pro-Israeli interests and lobbies in the United States that pander almost totally to Israeli government positions; an almost genetic, if understandable, need to respond to the 9/11 terror attack against the United States by politically and militarily striking against Middle Eastern targets; and, the growing determination to confront and contain Iran and its assorted Sunni and Shi’a Arab allies.

A significant consequence of Washington’s deep pro-Israeli tilt has been to ignore public opinion throughout the region, which in turn generates greater criticism of the United States. It is not clear if American policy-makers ignore Middle Eastern public opinion because of ignorance and diplomatic amateurism, or because of the structural dictates of pro-Israeli compliance.

This is a regrettable situation, given that we now know quite well the sentiments of the majorities of people in most Middle Eastern lands. A significant factor in people’s attitudes to the United States is its policy towards Israel and Palestine. Other issues also influence how Middle Easterners see the United States — such as Iraq, oil, and promoting democratic-or-autocratic regimes — but the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains a huge determinant of America’s standing in our eyes.

Also, a historic new mindset has developed in recent years as a result of the consistent and often growing criticism of the United States and Israel: a penchant for militancy and defiance that continues to spread around the region, transcending Iranian-Arab, Shi’a-Sunni, or secular-religious divides that are so often highlighted and exaggerated in Washington’s distorted view of the Middle East.

I have argued for years now that a new spirit of populist defiance, resistance and self-assertion is the single most important strategic development in the Middle East. Large numbers of Arabs, Iranians and Turks — hundreds of millions of people — have shed their legacy of passive acquiescence in their own suffering, weakness, marginalization and victimization. Instead, they are determined to take their fate into their own hands, and to challenge and checkmate those who would keep them in their previous vulnerable, dehumanized state.

At the domestic level, more and more people around the Middle East actively demand, and when possible work to craft, a life and society that offer them more human dignity and citizen rights. These include such basic issues as security, opportunity, socio-economic needs and expressing their cultural or political identity. At the regional level, this spirit of self-assertive defiance is more difficult to manifest or actualize, but it comes through very clearly in people’s attitudes, which are now well captured in public opinion polls.

A powerful new analysis of this phenomenon has just been published in Washington by the Brookings Institution, and deserves close study by anyone interested in the Middle East. The study by Dr. Shibley Telhami, the respected University of Maryland professor and senior fellow at the Brookings’ Saban Center, is entitled “Does the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Still Matter? Analyzing Arab Public Perceptions.” It reviews public opinion polling data from six Arab countries during the period 2002-2008.

He concludes that, “the Arab-Israeli conflict remains a central issue for most Arabs…. [and] the prism through which most Arabs view the world.”

He adds that the Arab public consistently and overwhelmingly judge the United States according to its policies, not its values, and that the role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in forming people’s view of the United States remains very important. Most of the Arab public believes that the United States attacked Iraq in order to help strengthen Israel, and Arabs see Israel and the U.S. as their two main threats. Israel and the United States are connected in the minds of most Arabs “in a way which makes anger with one hard to separate from the other.”

The leaders of Hizbullah, Hamas, and Iran rank highest among those whom Arabs respect, Telhami explains, primarily as a sign that Arabs like militants who defy the United States and Israel. This sense of defiant militancy seems to be spreading throughout the region. The gap between “militant” publics and conservative regimes also is growing in the Arab world, he says.

The importance of these findings is their consistency over time, and their verification through multiple questioning methods.

Of course, Washington policy-makers and think tank zealots who prefer to ignore these realities, and instead act mainly on the basis of pro-Israeli inclinations or arm-twisting, are free to do so. The cost, however, becomes more obvious for those who wish to see the real world as it is: massive, region-wide militancy and defiance, anchored squarely in resistance to American-Israeli aggression.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri