Often when a terrorist or violent act occurs in Syria, I feel like an astrologist watching a volcanic eruption on a distant planet for omens and portents. Today's car bombing in Damascus that left 17 people dead is a reminder that under the surface of that seemingly airless, unchanging place, there's molten fire. But beyond that, it's hard to know what signifies.

Ever since the secular Baathist government waged a brutally effective civil war against Islamic terrorists in the early 1980's, Syria has been one of the safest countries in the region. But within the last decade, Syria's chokehold on religious groups has begun to relax. This is part of an awkward attempt to co-opt the rise of Islamic feeling within the region, but also a result of the opening of Syria's economy to Saudi and Gulfie businessmen, some of whom brought their Islamic charities and mosque building programs with them. Most of the activity is harmless. But some may have also opened Syria up to infiltration by extremists.

Since 2006, there have been a rash of small scale attacks that the Syrian government has blamed on Islamic terrorists, including attacks against Syrian state television in central Damascus, against a checkpoint on the Lebanese border, a prison uprising, and an unsuccessful raid by gunman on the US Embassy -- which is nearly next door to the home of President Bashar al Assad. But today's attack represents a major escalation. This was the first large car bomb -- with perhaps 200 kilos of explosives -- aimed at mass casualties.

The rise in jihaddist activity in Syria could also be a case of blowback. After the Bush administration rebuffed Syrian overtures to provide intelligence for the fight against al Qaeda after 9/11, and after the US began hinting that it might do to the Assad regime what it did to Saddam Hussein, the Syrian government allowed their country to become a transit point for Islamist militants heading to Iraq to fight the Americans, according the US Army. Are jihaddis now biting the proverbial hand that fed them?

And yet, the attack could be something completely different. Syria is in the middle of a delicate diplomatic moment after having initiated indirect peace talks with Israel, and the region is rife with speculation about two unsolved major assassinations in Syria so far this year: of Hizballah's military operations chief, and of the a top military aid to President Assad. Were these house-cleaning gestures by the Syrian regime to show that it would be willing to cut its ties with Hizballah and sign a peace deal with Israel, or are hardliners within the regime acting out against detente? Today's attack is bound to be read in the context of such conspiracy theories. But it's worth taking all of this Syrian Kremlinology with a healthy dose of agnosticism. As the saying goes: no one who knows talks, and no one who talk's knows.

--Andrew Lee Butters in Beirut with reporting by Obaida Hamad in Damascus

Friday's debate in Mississippi showed the different approaches that John McCain and Barack Obama will bring to foreign policy, including specifically to Middle East issues. More than half the 90 minutes of the "foreign policy debate" was taken up with discussion about the U.S.-global financial crisis, so moderator Jim Lehrer didn't get around to asking about some key matters. There was nothing at all about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Arab world reform, and Lehrer did not ask either candidate whether they envisioned a U.S. attack on Iran during their presidency.

Both candidates came off as presidential, something of an advantage for the much younger, less experienced Obama, who had been cast even by Democratic challengers like Hillary Clinton as too green for the big job. Obama showed himself to be a strategic thinker, a well-informed, thoughtful and cool realist and a leader who is able to communicate to Americans and the world. In repeatedly saying, "What Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand," McCain threw Obama off balance a few times. McCain showed off his experience to good effect, repeatedly referencing his first-hand knowledge of geography, statesmen and international developments, dating back four decades to the Vietnam War when Obama was literally still a kid. For the "old hand" in foreign policy, however, McCain had surprising difficulty with the names of some of the key leaders. He stuttered and mangled his way through Ahmadinejad--which even the experience-challenged Sarah Palin now throws around like a Middle East scholar--and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari became "Kardari."

McCain came off as the big-talking promoter of a muscular America, ticking off promises to achieve military victory in Iraq and equal success against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, rebuking Russia's Vladimir Putin for running a KGB state and ridiculing Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for calling Israel a "stinking corpse." McCain repeatedly hailed Gen. David Petraeus as the savior of Iraq--mentioning Petraeus by name eight times, while referring to his actual running mate only once, as "a partner that's a good maverick"-- and gloried in recounting his visits with American troops in Iraq. McCain showed his nuanced side of foreign policy by noting that he had opposed President Reagan's ill-fated military intervention in Lebanon in 1982, and how despite being a POW in Hanoi he worked to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam after the war.

In contrast, Obama represented quieter American strength, underlined the virtues of diplomacy, eschewed personal attacks on foreign leaders, and spoke of the need for America to regain its moral standing in the world. He talked about using U.S. forces "wisely," saying the McCain-supported Bush administration focus on Iraq detracted from the main task of killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Obama was at pains to show he's no wimp. He labeled Iran a "rogue state" and took a jab at a Pakistani dictator that could have applied to Middle East allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well: "We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, 'Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he's our dictator.'"

The debate highlighted the specific differences between the candidates on the Middle East issues of Iraq, Iran and terrorism, but there was nothing new in what they had to say.

On Iraq:

Obama scored by pointing out that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was a test of leadership--one that Obama won, by correctly predicting the negative consequences and opposing the war, and McCain lost, by doing the opposite. McCain tried to deflect the judgement issue, saying, "The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind."

McCain sounded euphoric in hailing the "victory" that the U.S. is "winning" in Iraq. He framed the war in terms of American "honor" and U.S. security interests. He indicated that the victory will result in Iraq becoming a fledgling, stable democracy with less sectarian violence, a U.S. ally, and a country with decreased Iranian influence. In contrast, Obama was sober, as well as vague, about Iraq's prospects. At one point, saying America should "give Iraq back its country," he even seemed to agree with some war critics that U.S. troops are, at least in part, part of the problem.

While the success of the U.S. military "surge" has decreased violence in Iraq for the time being, McCain's rosy scenario is unjustified and, intentionally or not, is misleading. Iraq is years, perhaps decades, away from becoming either stable or democratic. While sectarianism is a historical problem in Iraq, the U.S. invasion itself enabled al-Qaeda extremists to enter Iraq and exacerbate it through murderous attacks on Iraqi Shi'ites. Iranian influence is pervasive in Iraq and will remain so while the U.S. stays in Iraq and after it exits. Obama was not pushed to explain the possible backlash in Iraq to his plan to "end this war responsibly" with a phased withdrawal of American forces over 16 months, or what he would do if an orderly pullout could not be achieved in that time frame.

On Iran:

Both candidates saw a nuclear-armed Iran as a serious threat to global stability. One of the starkest foreign policy differences between them is Obama's emphasis on seeking to end the crisis with Iran through negotiations rather than through pressure alone.

Obama's statement: "We are also going to have to, I believe, engage in tough direct diplomacy with Iran and this is a major difference I have with Senator McCain, this notion by not talking to people we are punishing them has not worked. It has not worked in Iran, it has not worked in North Korea. In each instance, our efforts of isolation have actually accelerated their efforts to get nuclear weapons. That will change when I'm president of the United States."

Obama, however, was not pushed to explain how he envisioned negotiations with Iran--whether he would seek a Grand Bargain that included normal relations or not, what demands he would make on the Iranians during the talks, etc. Obama made the excellent point that in the event negotiations failed, the U.S. would have enhanced it's moral leverage over Russia and China in seeking their crucial cooperation in imposing meaningful sanctions. Neither candidate was asked under what circumstances they would consider a military attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear program. McCain reiterated his policy of stiffening sanctions on Iran. He insisted that this could be done effectively without the help of Russia or China, but was not pushed to explain why the Bush administration had failed to succeed in that case. Despite his lack of interest in pushing diplomacy with Tehran, and although he called a nuclear-armed Iran "an existential threat to the State of Israel and to other countries in the region," McCain did not advocate using military force against Iran.

McCain flip-flopped and seemed confused on the issue of diplomacy and Iran. He pooh-poohed Obama, suggesting that he would naively start out with a meeting with somebody like Ahmadinejad without advance preparations. He also seemed to ridicule the results of Bush's about-face on nuclear negotiations with North Korea. Then he said he "always encouraged" diplomatic meetings with the Iranians by the U.S. secretary of state and lower-level officials, and that talks with North Korea were okay as long as U.S. diplomats "trust but verify."

Perhaps the clearest, most important difference was not over any policy like Iraq or Iran, but in the emotional templates of the candidates. McCain showed himself to be more of an emotional patriot, Obama more a cerebral realist. McCain mentioned "victory" or "winning" in Iraq nine times, and made references to "honor" or the agony of defeat 17 more times, whereas Obama limited himself in the patriotic buzz word competition to saying "nobody is talking about defeat in Iraq."

The statement that best reflected McCain's foreign policy mindset:

I have a record of being involved in these national security issues, which involve the highest responsibility and the toughest decisions that any president can make, and that is to send our young men and women into harm's way. And I'll tell you, I had a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and a woman stood up and she said, "Senator McCain, I want you to do me the honor of wearing a bracelet with my son's name on it." He was 22 years old and he was killed in combat outside of Baghdad, Matthew Stanley, before Christmas last year... And I said, "I will -- I will wear his bracelet with honor." ...And then she said, "But, Senator McCain, I want you to do everything -- promise me one thing, that you'll do everything in your power to make sure that my son's death was not in vain." That means that that mission succeeds... A [Vietnam] war that I was in, where we had an Army, that it wasn't through any fault of their own, but they were defeated. And I know how hard it is for that -- for an Army and a military to recover from that. And it did and we will win this one and we won't come home in defeat and dishonor and probably have to go back if we fail.

Perhaps Obama's most emblematic comment was:

It is important for us to understand that the way we are perceived in the world is going to make a difference, in terms of our capacity to get cooperation and root out terrorism. And one of the things that I intend to do as president is to restore America's standing in the world. We are less respected now than we were eight years ago or even four years ago. And this is the greatest country on Earth. But because of some of the mistakes that have been made -- and I give Senator McCain great credit on the torture issue, for having identified that as something that undermines our long-term security -- because of those things, we, I think, are going to have a lot of work to do in the next administration to restore that sense that America is that shining beacon on a hill.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

If anyone knows about fascism, it's Israeli historian Ze'ev Sternhell. As a boy in Poland, he fled the Nazis who killed his mother and older sister. After arriving in Israel, Sternhell joined the tough Golani Infantry Brigade and fought in three wars defending the Jewish democracy, while pursuing his ground-breaking studies on the rise of fascism in Europe.

On early Thursday morning, Sternhell became a victim of home-grown Israeli fascism. A pipe bomb exploded outside his Jerusalem home. The historian, who teaches at Hebrew University, was only lightly injured, but ominously, the explosive didn't seem to be the handiwork of a deranged student.

Scattered around the street were leaflets offering a 1.1 million shekel ($300,000) reward to anyone who killed a member of Peace Now, a leftist human rights organization to which Sternhell belonged.

Interior Minister Avi Dichter condemned it as “a nationalist terrorist attack apparently perpetrated by Jews”. And Sternhell himself, when he limped out of hospital on Friday, said he was convinced that extremists had carried out the terrorist attack. In his lectures and columns in the daily Haaretz, Sternhell was a fierce critic of the illegal Jewish settlements inside the Palestinian territories. “It's possible that this was done by a lone crazy person, an organization or an entire settlement,” he told Israel Radio.

Most Israelis, especially secular Israelis, think that if there's any chance of living peacefully, side-by-side with a Palestinian state, the Jewish settlements will have to go. The international community thinks so, too. These religious-Zionist settlers are feeling the heat, and preemptively trying to fend off any attempt by the Israeli government to pull them out. These extremists have taken to calling the Israelis security forces “Nazis” and are threatening to spill blood if the authorities try to evict them. Lately, they've come into increased confrontation with Palestinians, stealing or destroying their olive harvest, and even rumbling with the Israeli police.

But until the pipe-bombing, they confined their attacks to the far side of the Green Line, the old 1967 border that demarcates Israel from what was then Jordanian land. No longer. As Sternhill says: There are two populations in the territories and there are two systems of law, and if settlers are allowed to beat Palestinians, to uproot their orchards and demolish their houses, why shouldn't this happen across the Green Line?"

Let's hope that Shin Bet, the internal security service, goes after the professor's would-be murderers with more enthusiasm than they've shown in tracking down those responsible for attacking Palestinian farmers and shepherds. In the West Bank, the arrest record of Jewish lawbreakers is appalling. Referring to his attempted murder, Sternhill put it best: “the incident illustrates the fragility of Israeli democracy, and the urgent need to defend it.”

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

Photo by Pasqual Gorriz

I spent most of the hike down the rim of Qaddisha Valley worrying not so much what would happen if I slipped and fell down the mountain gorge, but about the protocol for visiting a hermit. I was trying to find Our Lady of Hawka Monastery, a 13th century shrine built into the side of the valley's red sandstone cliffs and one of the region's last functioning hermitages. So phoning ahead for an appointment was not an option: hermits are wireless in the Biblical sense.

When I arrived at the monastery grotto, two white doves cooed overhead as if to emphasize the sanctity of the otherwise silent setting. Beginning just a few centuries after the dawn of Christianity, holy men have come to the mountains of northern Lebanon in search of solitude, though the attraction of the ascetic life has faded in the modern era. Father Dario, a 73 year-old Colombian priest, took up residence at Hawka eight years ago, becoming one of just three hermits left in Lebanon.

Which made me that much more nervous about imposing. What if I stumbled into the monastery in middle of holy mass? Or interrupted the Father at some key moment in the contemplation of divine creation? Or more likely, what if the reason he renounced a life of earthly pleasures was to get away from the likes of me? Surely someone who becomes a hermit has people issues.

As it turns out, all that one has to do to ask for an audience with a hermit is knock. Father Dario emerged from his quarters wearing a black cowl and a warm smile. He explained that although he has many visitors -- some of whom wake him in the middle of the night, or use his pencils to graffiti their names on the walls of his cell -- all are welcome. It is the duty of hermits, he explained, to serve both God and humanity through prayer and penitence, which apparently includes suffering fools gladly.

Indeed, ermitism in the Catholic Church and its eastern branches is not some kind of a primal escape to nature and freedom, but a role defined by canonical law and subject to the discipline and hierarchy of the church. To become a hermit, one first has to be either a member of a monastic order, or to be consecrated by a bishop. Father Dario was a Catholic priest living in Florida and making $200 an hour working as a psychologist when God told him to give up his worldly possessions and take on the contemplative life. But the Word of the Lord wasn't good enough on its own. It took Father Dario ten years after moving to Lebanon and becoming a Maronite monk before he received his bishop's blessing to take the next step. He moved out of the hectic life at the main monastery -- Lebanese monks like their mobile phones and Mercedes Benz -- and into the silence of the valley. Now he spends his days on a tight schedule: 14 hours of prayer, 3 hours working in the vegetable garden, two hours studying mystical texts, and five hours sleeping on a wooden board with a stone under his head. "At the beginning it is difficult," he said, "But now I can't sleep with a pillow."

Unfortunately, for all his trials in the proverbial desert, Father Dario had little in the way of gnostic wisdom to offer the passing hiker, though he did have a funny story about what it's like trying to get through Homeland Security onto a flight to the Middle East when you have the same last name -- Escobar -- and the same place of birth -- Medellin -- as the world's most famous cocaine baron. "Many people come here because they think I know the future," he said. "I only know one thing: that we all will die." Then he told me to get married.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

In recent days, anti-Syrian politicians in Beirut have been crying wolf about an increase in Syrian soldiers on the border with northern Lebanon. They worry that the buildup is a prelude to Syrian incursions on the pretext of stamping out radical Islamist fighters there, but really aimed at reasserting Syrian hegemony. On the other hand, the Syrians say that the buildup is part of an attempt to clamp down on smuggling, and there is reason to believe them.

The double whammy of rising global energy prices and Syria's social subsidies on diesel and gasoline, has created a big black market in oil smuggling that is one of Syria's biggest financial problems. Until recently, the price of diesel fuel oil, the most commonly used petrol product there, was up to six times higher in neighboring Lebanon than in Syria. (Since Syria increased diesel prices this year, the figure is three or four times higher in Lebanon.) The Syrian government estimated that the 1.5 billion liters of diesel smuggled out of the country last year cost $1.2 billion USD, and accounted for 15 percent of all Syrian consumption.

Lebanese farmers with land in Syria come over the mountains in specially built 4x4's or vans with extra tanks that can hold an additional 300 liters. Lebanese and Syrian smugglers also use mules, which can carry 100 liters each. A mule train can cross the mountain paths at night without any guides, since they know the routes by memory. “With two mules, you don't need to work for a living,” said one Syrian gas station owner who lives in the mountains near Lebanon where smuggling is one of the main local industries. Even if the mules are caught, they can't sing to the police. “The mules have no passports.  What are the police going to do arrest them?”

Actually, police snipers have begun shooting mules, and burning their carcasses with the black market diesel the animals carry.  The Syrian government has also begun to crack down on diesel smugglers, and in mid-August, it increased jail sentences from 6 years to 12 years and declared that diesel smugglers would be treated like drug smugglers.

Energy costs are an existential issue for the Assad regime. Oil production once accounted for 90 percent of government revenue, but the country's aging oilfields have been in steep decline to the extent that Syria is now a net importer of oil. So Syria ran a budget deficit of almost 2 percent of GDP last year, and the government predicts a 10 percent defict this year. When a country with a controversial reputation starts running a budget deficit this is a big problem -- there aren't a whole lot of international investors who want to buy Syrian debt.

The difficulty with cracking down on illegal activity like oil smuggling is that some elements within the government are almost certainly profiting from it. Which is one reason why the Assad regime declared that fighting corruption is one of its biggest priorities, and perhaps why some of the soldiers recently sent to the border may have been elite troops. Those movements suggest that the Assad regime isn't reading the attack, but circling the wagons.

--Andrew Lee Butters in Beirut, with reporting by Obaida Hamad in Damascus

Jerusalem over the past year has witnessed an Arab who went on a shooting spree in a Jewish religious school, two others who ran amok with bulldozers in heavy traffic, and last night a 19-year old Arab slammed his BMW into a cluster of Israeli soldiers, injuring over a dozen.

As far as we know, none of the Arabs were ardent members of a Palestinian terrorist group, according to their families (though the Israeli police speculate that they may have been sleepers, adept at hiding their suicidal fanaticism from family and future brides.)

So what gives? Are Hamas and Islamic Jihad doing a better job of hiding their suicide killers from the eyes of collaborators? Or is there some personal motive, aside from politics, that makes them snap and take out their frustrations through terror? In this highly charged place, any act of desperation, of rage, is interpreted as a terrorist act.

These cases defy easy explanation. Look at the last one: here's an Arab youth with a death wish, and he's driving a BMW? Clearly the Israelis didn't drive him to penury. We can scratch economic hardship off the list as a possible motive.

His family ran a trucking firm; they were well off. They were among the fortunate ones. They aren't subjected to the pressure cooker that most Palestinians are. They live in East Jerusalem and don't face the daily restrictions and humiliations that Palestinians endure at checkpoints leaving and entering the West Bank. Police say that that Qassem Mughrabi was despondent because his girlfriend had broken up with him and that's why he went crazy.

Maybe. But it sounds a little lame to me. Naturally, there's another story. The family's side: they claim that Mughrabi, who didn't have a license, was a poor driver and may simply have lost control of the sleek BMW, plowing into the soldiers. He crashed the car into a wall and an officer shot him dead. The officer was later commended for his heroic action. I agree; Mughrabi could have had a bomb ready to detonate inside his car, and the officer's duty was to protect his men. But Mughrabi's parents claim their son was murdered. Shot 11 times because he lost control of his BMW and it jumped the curb and careened into a bunch of soldiers. One thing is certain: Mughrabi's death sure has made the young Arab drivers --who tend to speed with their radios blaring-- behave much more cautiously at the wheel. Everybody's got a gun in this town.

by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

Here are the questions I'd love PBS's Jim Lehrer to ask Barack Obama and John McCain during the University of Mississippi debate on Friday. This will be the first general election campaign debate, which is devoted to the topic of foreign policy, when Americans and the world will hear the candidates directly say what they would do about the Middle East. The region was George Bush's main foreign policy challenge, and it will likely be theirs, too.

1. On Iraq: What constitutes realistic "success" for you in Iraq, and what is your plan to risk more American lives and money, and your time span, for achieving it?

McCain says he would stay in Iraq for 100 years if necessary, while Obama wants a timetable for a quicker withdrawal. However, the key issues are how the candidates' define success, how much they're willing to invest to achieve it, and how realistic they are about facing harsh realities as they develop on the ground. If turning Iraq into Switzerland is your definition of success, you might be there for 100 years or more. But if you are willing to define success as a country with semi-functioning governing institutions, whose government leans more toward Tehran than Washington, you might be able to bring your boys home during your first year in office. What voters need is not more blather on timetables but a look at the next president's mindset about what the U.S. must achieve in Iraq, at what cost and with what degree of realism.

2. On Iran: How do you prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon? Will you seek a Grand Bargain including normal relations with the Tehran regime? If you believe the use of force is preferable or even inevitable, then tell American voters about your war plan.

In the 30 years since the Islamic Revolution and the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, American and Iranian leaders have come and gone, but relations have only gotten worse. As America's direct involvement in the Middle East has grown, so too has Iranian influence and demand for security. How to handle the Iran crisis may be the biggest foreign challenge facing the next U.S. president. If Iran succeeds in constructing a nuclear weapon, even assuming it does not launch an atomic attack, it will dangerously change the balance of power in the Middle East. A U.S.-led attack to destroy the Iranian nuclear program could set back U.S-Iranian relations much further, result in deadly Iranian reprisal attacks on the U.S., Israel and American Arab allies and spark a new wave of radical Islamic fervor against the West. The next president won't have the luxury of putting off the war-peace choice, so McCain and Obama have to explain their inclinations now.

3. On Israel-Palestine: If peacemaking is sincerely a high priority for you, then what mediation plan would your presidency adopt that is different and more likely to bring success, considering that four decades of direct mediation by U.S. administrations has already failed to achieve a final peace agreement?

The little secret about the Middle East conflict is that all the main parties are nearly there on a peace agreement. There are factions in Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East that oppose any compromises. But the mainstream parties, and their respective constituencies, have gone 80%, 90% or 95% of the way. This may not hold true forever, meaning that peacemaking is an urgent priority for the next president. Bush did immense damage to the peace process by withholding American diplomatic engagement for the first six years of his presidency. The next president could do immense good if he re-engages right away and shows the courage to bang heads together to push the parties the remaining 20% (or less) of the way home. Whether the candidates are able to initiate new approaches will be the key to success or more failure.

4. On Terrorism: What mix of military force, along with political, economic and social initiatives, if any, is required for the U.S. to defeat al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists?

Surely the defeat of al-Qaeda entails a large-scale military and intelligence campaign. The problem, as Bush's approach demonstrated, is that a badly conceived and/or managed campaign can lose friends and fail to influence people rather than the other way around. The U.S. had the support of the world to fight al-Qaeda after 9/11--that is, until the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and the establishment of Guantanamo Bay; until the invasion of Iraq without 9/11 linkage or U.N. mandate, the resulting looting and civil war and the images from Abu Ghraib; until the Islamic world watched as the U.S. did little to address Palestinian rights. The lesson of modern Middle East terrorism that the next president must absorb is that blunt force without credibility and adequate attention to addressing vital issues like freedom and justice is doomed to failure.

5. On Democracy: Will you continue supporting authoritarian regimes like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan that have been traditional U.S. allies in the Arab world, or will you make America's future friendship conditional on democracy and human rights in those countries?

Until Bush, all American administrations looked the other way if Arab leaders supported peace, exported oil, cooperated in Cold War or all of the above. Unfortunately, Bush's Middle East reform efforts were resented by nearly everybody in the Middle East including most Middle East reformers themselves. The regimes resented lecturing from a U.S. administration that nonetheless continued to request help in other areas like peace making and fighting terrorism. Most reformers who otherwise would welcome support for democracy did not want to be associated with a U.S. administration that maintained strong support for Israel's policies and launched a military invasion of an Arab country. The question is whether McCain and Obama have learned that, in the real Middle East, there is no stark choice between despots and democrats, no magic wand; stable democratization will come gradually and can be best assisted by truly standing for values like freedom and justice and the building of institutions that promote them.

-By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Arab-Americans are throwing their support behind Barack Obama. And in a tight nationwide race, according to a poll released in Washington today, the votes of Arab-Americans could give a boost in the key swings states like Michigan to Obama over John McCain. It's not the "ethnic vote" you might imagine, however. Arab-Americans are voting the pocket book issues like most other Americans are. They're not voting in a bloc because of Middle East-related issues.

The Zogby International poll for the Arab-American Institute shows that during the Bush presidency Arab-Americans have swung more decisively behind the Democratic Party in general. The respondents overall gave Bush a 76% negative job approval rating, with even those identifying themselves as Republicans registering only a 63%-37% positive-negative rating for the incumbent president. Compared to the year Bush was elected in 2000, when the Democratic-Republican ID breakdown was almost even at 40%-38%, Arab-Americans now identify with the Democratic Party by a margin of more than 2-1. Forty-six percent called themselves Democrats, while only 20% said they were Republicans.

In a two-way race, Obama beats McCain 54% to 33%, but Obama's advantage slips if independent Ralph Nader, who is of Lebanese ancestry, and Libertarian Bob Barr, are in the contest: Obama 46%, McCain 32%, Nader 6% and Barr 1%. Nader bites into Obama's support.

Indeed, analysis released with the poll said the results indicated that Obama's backing was somewhat soft. It noted that John Kerry did much better among independent and Catholic Arab-American voters in the 2004 election than Obama did in the Zogby poll. While independents favored Kerry by 71% to 15%, Obama is tied with McCain among independents at 44% each. Arab-Americans were far more likely to support Obama if they were Muslim. Muslim respondents picked Obama over McCain by a whopping 84%-4%, while Orthodox Christians chose Obama by 47%-43% and Catholic Arab-Americans actually favored McCain over Obama, by 53% to 31%.

It may seem counterintuitive, but Arab-Americans considered jobs and the economy by far to be the most important issue in the election rather than Middle East foreign policy issues. Just 16% of Arab-Americans said they favored McCain because of his stance on foreign policy, and only 3% said that about Obama. Forty percent said they liked Obama because of his positions on domestic issues. The number one reason McCain supporters gave for backing him was "I like him as a man."

Sixty-three percent listed the economy as one of the top two issues facing the country, while only 37% listed Iraq and Middle East peace. Health care, gas prices and terrorism were all much higher among the issues than regional problems like Palestine and Lebanon. Only 1% of the respondents said either of the latter issues were among the top two issues in the election.

When it came to who was better prepared to handle the economic challenges, 52% picked Obama and 34% McCain. Likewise, 48% said Obama was better able to handle the Middle East, while 39% said McCain was.

The poll did not take a sufficient sample to determine regional attitudes, but Zogby noted that about one-third of Arab-Americans reside in five battleground states. The largest bloc, making up 5% of the state's population, live in Michigan, one of the most important swing states. The other states are Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

There are an estimated 3.5 million Arab-Americans, making up about 1% of the population of the U.S. Almost two-thirds trace their ancestry to countries of the eastern Mediterranean Sea; Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan. Roughly 70% are Christians and 20% Muslims; the poll respondents were identified as 63% Christian, 24% Muslim and 13% other/none.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Beginning in the late afternoon during Ramadan, bakers in Damascus set up displays of special cakes that are only made during the Islamic holy month, when practicing Muslims fast during daylight hours. Appetites and eating patterns will return to normal after Ramadan is over. But food supplies in Syria are anything but normal. The jump in oil prices that has been such a bonanza for the oil producing parts of the Middle East is making it increasingly difficult for the oil importing countries of the region such as Syria to feed themselves.

The oil boom is catching Syria at an awkward moment -- as it tries to make the transition from a centralized Soviet style economy to a more open market economy. In Syria, the prices for both oil and bread are set low by the government as a social subsidy. But these subsidies are becoming unsustainable as global commodity prices rise. As a response, Syria this year increased the price of diesel, the most commonly used fuel here. But the government declared that the price of bread was an immutable "red line" that would not be changed. Bread is literally life for millions of poor Syrians.

The problem is that Syria only marginally increased the price it pays farmers for their wheat; and the increased fuel prices are hitting farmers hard. Farming consumes a lot of energy -- for transportation, farm equipment, for irrigation pumps, and indirectly for petroleum-based fertilizer. "The government forgets that we grow our crops with oil, not water," said one farmer from the Euphrates River Valley, the center of Syrian wheat production. So some Syrian farmers have begun hiding as much as half their harvests from the government, and selling what they hold back on the black market for over twice as much. Some have decided to stop planting their fields entirely.

Recently the Syrian government announced security restrictions and penalties aimed at stemming the tide of black market wheat, including setting up highway checkpoints and making it illegal to move wheat from across governorate lines in private transportation and without official permission. In the longer term, the Syrian government is betting that the country's otherwise healthy economy -- GDP is probably going to be 7 percent this year -- will help the country grow its way out of a food crisis. It's a gamble. But if the last five years of facing off against the Bush administration are any guide, Syrians are survivors.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus

Françoise Demulder, one of the finest war photographers of her generation, one of the women pioneers in a field dominated by men, has died in Paris after suffering a heart attack at age 61.

Françoise's career began in Indochina, where she was among the few Western witnesses to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. But, afterwards, she devoted most of her career to covering the Middle East. Her photo of a Palestinian woman in anguish amid a Christian militia's siege of the Karantina refugee camp in Beirut in 1976 is the iconic image, not only of the Lebanese Civil War, but of the tragedy of the Middle East. Typical of her work, the photo is itself very striking, yet in a way that emphasizes rather than overwhelms the ghastly moment of history. The image won Françoise the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award, the first time a woman had achieved the honor.

Françoise Demulder's images helped tell the world about the tragedy of the Middle East

I was among the many reporters and editors who had the privilege of working with Françoise on assignments for TIME over the years. Fifi, as she was called, was passionate, committed, beautiful and funny. She and her work were driven by a sense of basic human decency, a refusal to look away from the horrors of man's creation. She had a twinkle that reflected her gentle charm but she had very strong nerves, too.

Françoise's courage was evident on the battlefields; her sang-froid, always. We were dining with an Iraqi translator at a restaurant in Baghdad on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's brutish son, Uday, walked in and sat down at the next table. Our terrified Iraqi companion leapt up and departed without a word, fearful that Uday would take a disliking to this Iraqi fraternizing with foreigners and have him shot. I didn't know what to think. Françoise insisted on pretending it was just another relaxing night out after a long day of taking pictures. She continued drinking Lebanese arak, talking and laughing like she was in her neighborhood cafe back home in Paris.

We've lost a rare journalist and devoted friend. The French minister of culture, Christine Albanel, honored Françoise last week, hailing her as an artist as well as a witness of our times. Read the tribute to Françoise by her friend and colleague Alan Cowell in the International Herald Tribune.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo