The Palestinians, in signing the Oslo accords in 1993, ceded 78% of historic Palestine to the Israelis. They are not likely to give in to U.S. demands to give up large swaths of the West Bank, Gaza Strip (news - web sites) and most of Arab East Jerusalem to accommodate Israeli settlements, which remain in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and three U.N. Security Council resolutions.

On a broader scale, as long as the United States continues to arm and support dictatorships in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Uzbekistan -- which terrorize their citizens -- calls for greater respect for human rights and the end of support for terrorists will not be taken seriously.

And as long as the U.S. rejects calls for a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone for the entire Middle East and demands disarmament only for its perceived enemies, U.S. efforts at non-proliferation will fall short.

Furthermore, such demands for acquiescence from an outside power are -- for a people who have resisted invaders from the West for many centuries -- an invitation not to meekly comply, but to resist.

The initially successful invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) underscores the fact that no nation-state in the region can counter the United States militarily. Unfortunately, that may result in a pull to employ non-state actors -- such as terrorist groups -- to challenge American hegemony. For if conventional warfare cannot defeat a foreign power seen to be bent on conquest and domination, this could lead to a growing reliance on various methods of asymmetrical warfare that will be far harder to defeat than Iraq's Republican Guards.

Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, is author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.