When toppling Saddam Hussein rose to the top of George W Bush administration's foreign policy, a chorus of voices protested that the US had mis-diagnosed the root cause of terrorism in the Middle East.

It is unqualified US support for Israel, the critics argue, which has driven a wedge between Washington and the Arabs. If the US is to improve its regional position, it must tilt towards the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the US and Arabs have such different conceptions of what constitutes a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that it is hard to imagine Washington adopting a policy that would be truly popular in the Arab world. The most pro-Palestininan policy conceivable would still entail major Palestinian compromises (such as the renunciation of the right of pre-1967 refugees to return to their homes inside Israel proper).

Any Muslim leader who endorsed such a settlement, would be denounced as a puppet of the US and Israel. Suicide bombings would still continue, and the US would still be entangled in a violent communal conflict.

Even if the US succeeded in brokering a stable Palestinian-Israeli settlement, this would not necessarily generate a good deal of goodwill. It is true, that Arab political discourse revolves around Palestine. But although Palestine is central to the symbolism of Arab politics, it is actually marginal to its substance.

'Palestine-as-symbol' has a capacity for expressing grievances unrelated to the Palestinians themselves. For example, the IRA raised the Palestinian flag over Republican strongholds. Why? Because for many around the world, this banner expresses simple anti-colonial defiance.

The Palestinian flag plays a similar role in the Middle East. In addition to serving as a front for venting anger at local repression, unemployment, and corruption, Palestine-as-symbol expresses the resistance of Muslims to Western political and cultural hegemony.

Palestine has acquired this meaning because in Arab political discourse the maltreatment of the Palestinians signifies the prejudice of the West towards all Muslims. Palestine is the only Arab land successfully colonised, a fact that hurts deeply.

According to a widely believed conspiracy theory, the Western powers planted Israel in the Arab world with the intention of using it as an 'imperialist base'. For most Muslims, the history of Palestine is not simply the story of two peoples struggling for the same land, but evidence of the 'evil' intentions of the West towards all Muslims.

Palestine is one of the few communal symbols that crosses religious, ethnic, and national lines. An Iranian Shi'ite, a Moroccan Sunni fundamentalist and a Syrian Alawite can all stand united under the banner of Palestine. To call for justice in Palestine is to decry the failure of the Arab world in the 21st century, and to demand a change in the balance of power between the Arabs and the West.

The US must address the festering wound of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But those who say it should be tackled before or instead of Iraq and Al-Qaeda have their strategic priorities backwards.

The wedge that separates the US from the Arab world does not depend on more criticism of Israel, or whether Israel is is prepared to yield 85 percent or 100 percent of the West Bank, or even whether Palestinians are living in peace.

It stems more from the poverty, repression, and frustration that fuel the region's politics, and will remain until those larger issues are resolved.

It is for this reason that pacifying Iraq and destroying al-Qaeda must be met first, both because the danger from them is more urgent and because countering them will ease the long-term task of addressing the problems of tyranny, and social and economic malaise in the Middle East.

In the long run, the strength and passion of Palestine-as-symbol will only be sapped if the people of the Middle East begin to see the US as a partner in the quest for a better life.