Earlier this year, at the Arab League Summit in Damascus, when Muammar Qaddafi’s turn came at the lectern, he launched into a spirited and fiery criticism, a rant, really, directed at his fellow Arabs, specifically on the issue of Palestine and Israel. “Whatever happened to the cause (Palestinian) we had before 1967?” he asked his audience. “Were we lying to ourselves or to the world?” he continued. “How can you say that Israel must return to the pre-1967 borders? Does Palestine consist only of the West Bank and Gaza? If so,” he added with a air of disgust, “it means that the Israelis did not occupy it in 1948. They left it to you for 20 years, so why didn’t you establish a Palestinian state? Wasn’t Gaza part of Egypt, and the West Bank part of Jordan?”

The heads of state and sheikhs in the room all smiled, or in some cases laughed, albeit uncomfortably. All except Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister of Iran, whose non-Arab country had unusually been invited this year as an observer, who remained stone-faced while he listened through headphones (for very few Iranians speak or understand Arabic), and who the television cameras mischievously panned up to as if to make Qaddafi’s point. (Iran is the only country in the region that staunchly supports, morally, financially, and militarily, Hamas, which, along with Islamic Jihad, remains committed to a one-state solution, i.e., a Palestinian state that encompasses all of Israel.) The smiles of the Arab leaders for the cameras betrayed their view of Qaddafi, known as well in the Arab world (at least among the ruling elites) for a certain, shall we say, wackiness, as he is in the West, as well as their discomfort with the truth of what their wacky, often clownish cousin was saying. That truth was being broadcast by Al Jazeera to millions of their citizens. Citizens who (according to polls in 2006 and 2007) were far more enamored of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanese Hezbollah and the lean, almost emaciated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, perversely both Shias, than of their own smiling, Sunni, pro-Western, well-fed (and often corpulent) leaders.

The Arab League Summit, as in years past, was convened partly to address what was Qaddafi’s obsession in 2008 and what has been the single most important issue facing the Arab (and Muslim) world over the past 60 years, namely, what was once the Arab-Israeli, and is now simply the Palestinian-Israeli, conflict. (Ironically, the two nations Qaddafi mentioned by name, Jordan and Egypt, as having held Palestinian territory, are the two Arab countries that have made peace with Israel and have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, a point certainly not lost on the television audience.)

It may not be obvious what any of this could possibly have to do with the upcoming presidential elections in the U.S. Qaddafi may possess a certain sartorial splendor, and his once kohl-rimmed eyes were, if nothing else, a curiosity uncommon to macho Arab leaders, but his proclamations have rarely been either realistic or of serious concern to Americans.

But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is, ultimately, a crucial foreign policy issue for any American president who cares to make the world a safer and better place, a goal most recent presidents, George Bush excepted (until very recently, anyway), have acknowledged by their efforts to bring peace to the region. And for Americans Jews and many non-Jews, the Palestinian conflict has always loomed large, not just emotionally, but also in terms of how U.S. administrations, Democratic or Republican, deal with it. Qaddafi may have been way off-base in how he framed the conflict at the Damascus Summit, for it is probably safe to say that most Arabs and Muslims are realistic enough to recognize, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric notwithstanding, that Israel will neither disappear from the map or the “pages of time,” nor retreat anywhere behind pre-1967 borders.

But Qaddafi’s point, that Arab leaders have all but abandoned the Palestinian cause under intense pressure from the United States (and contrary to their citizens’ wishes), was not fantastical. And lest we forget, it was a few of those citizens who, well before the Iraq war, attacked the U.S. or U.S. interests (such as embassies and ships, and of course later New York and Washington). The Palestinian cause was given, at least partially, as the reason, or if you prefer, the excuse.

The U.S. is seen, whether most Americans like it or not, not just as a biased interlocutor or broker in the conflict but even as an impediment to the aspirations of the Palestinian people, not just by Arabs and Muslims, but by the outside world at large. Biased toward Israel, of course, to the point where it has become almost impossible for Palestinians (or other Arabs, even other Muslims) to trust America as a disinterested party. Naturally, no sane Palestinian sympathizer would believe that the U.S. will, under any administration, suddenly become a pro-Arab peacemaker, for U.S.-Israeli ties run deep, but in any election, and perhaps particularly this one, there is an opportunity to examine more closely where a candidate might lie when it comes to the Palestinian issue and how he or she might decide to affect it.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the presumptive nominees for president in a race that pits a (traditional) white, Protestant male against a wildly popular African-American son of a Muslim Kenyan, have both emphasized their unwavering support for Israel, as is to be expected of any candidate who hopes to be elected to the highest office in the land. Senator Obama, however, earlier in his candidacy, intimated that his would be a more forceful, respectful and fair foreign policy as it applied to the Middle East. He brought some cheer to the Arab world (and to many Americans), although his more-Catholic-than-the-Pope moment, in an appearance at the AIPAC convention in late spring where he went further than any American president, even the most pro-Israeli in history, in stating that he believed that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel “forever,” caused dismay in some quarters in the region. I happened to be talking to a senior Iranian government official the day of Obama’s appearance at AIPAC and he was astonished by the tone of his remarks.

“Is it that he has to say these things,” the official wondered out loud, “or is that the Israeli lobby is so strong that he daren’t execute a different foreign policy even if he wants to?” Senator Obama clarified his remarks later, backtracking somewhat and falling in line with official U.S. policy (and in recognition of U.N. resolutions) that the status of Jerusalem is a matter for negotiation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the Iranian official also added that day, wistfully, “How is it that there is no Muslim lobby in America that can even come close to having even a little influence, let alone challenge the Israeli lobby?”

The simplest answer to that is that Islam-phobia, if not outright anti-Muslim sentiment, rages unchecked in America, surely one reason that the son of a Muslim father, one who even continues to use his most Muslim of middle names, feels obliged to have his “more Catholic” moments and has to label the “accusations” that he is a Muslim a “smear.” (I was unaware that being a Muslim could be either.) Given those moments, and Senator Obama’s almost allergic stance toward anything to do with Islam, is there any reason to believe that he can play a different and more encouraging role in the Middle East peace process? (Senator McCain, we know, has not distinguished himself from the Bush administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [or Israeli conflict with any entity], including in his steadfast refusal to commit to talks with groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, despite the Israeli government’s own backdoor negotiations with both those stated enemies.) Can one take Obama at his word (his early words anyway) that one needs to talk to enemies as well as friends in order to resolve conflict?

“Change We Can Believe In,” one hopes, includes candidates for public office who don’t lie, and some “change” for the Muslim world, too. But perhaps it doesn’t matter, for Obama has the advantage of perception: that he will bring a new and more evenhanded approach to the Middle East that at the very least, according to him, involves respect for all parties involved. It’s one that has been eagerly awaited by parties (read: Muslim) who consider themselves perpetually aggrieved.

Obama’s summer trip to the Middle East, partly undertaken to reassure American Jews of his steadfast commitment to Israel and partly to burnish his foreign policy credentials, unfortunately did not do much to assuage the Muslim “street” with his appearances in Jerusalem, Amman and the West Bank (meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, something McCain has not yet done), simply because he appeared to be following a traditional U.S. line on the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, albeit a far more nuanced one than in recent years. (Had Senator Obama ventured into Gaza, even without meeting with Hamas’ senior leadership, he would have gone far in Arab eyes, but realistically, he may have also lost the election before he set foot back on American soil. Ditto Damascus.)

Perhaps recognizing that a Hamas endorsement may win him friends in the Middle East, as it did when Hamas suggested they would be happy if he were president, but lose him many more votes in the U.S., Obama has since gone out of his way to distance himself from his earlier language of talking to one’s enemies. So Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar Assad will have to keep waiting for Obama’s attentions. But Obama did miss an opportunity nonetheless (even in his meeting with Abbas) to at least bring up the question of Hamas. It’s all well and good to dismiss them as a “terrorist organization” and refuse to deal with them, but if Obama is to be an effective peace-broker, he will have to address the issue of Hamas sooner rather than later. Mahmoud Abbas is incapable of making a deal with Israel without Hamas (or any deal he can make will be rendered useless), and he must be pressured to figure out a way to make a deal first with Hamas before he can make a state-creating deal with Israel. There will be no three-state solution, nor will there be a Palestinian state in the West Bank alone.

The issue of Hamas, the inconveniently democratically elected political party, refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist (as a Jewish state), the issue that President Bush, John McCain and now Barack Obama have used as an excuse to ignore them, has always been a red herring: Who really cares if they recognize a “right to exist” before a deal is made, or if they “renounce terrorism”? What matters is whether they will explicitly or implicitly recognize that “right” and renounce the use of not just terror but all violence in negotiations, or in a final deal, and that should be the stance of anyone claiming to want to further the cause of peace in the region. Negotiations, after all, have the goal of reaching an agreement satisfactory to all parties.

Obama’s strength in his approach to the Middle East until now, as far as the Arabs are concerned, has been that he does not favor preconditions in any potential negotiations, but seemingly in this case, he does, which may be partly a reason for the somewhat subdued reaction to his trip from ordinary Arabs in the region, according to press reports. Senator Obama may have succeeded in appearing “presidential,” in dominating the world’s television screens and in seducing the Germans and the French, but he made no inroads with Middle Easterners, except, perhaps, in Israel.

Senator John McCain, who is likely to continue an unconditional-support-for-Israel policy, doesn’t seem to even consider the Palestinian issue a particularly pressing one. He has said that Iran is the No. 1 foreign policy challenge we face. Of course, many ordinary Americans who view foreign policy in terms of how it directly affects them might think that Iraq, with over a hundred thousand U.S. troops stationed there, is the true foreign policy issue, and others, including many on the left, believe that crushing Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants is the No. 1 foreign policy issue, but Senator McCain is rather more concerned with Iran, at least for now.

Senator McCain has mocked his opponent’s willingness to sit with Iranian leaders; “appeasement” he calls it (despite President Bush’s own “appeasement” of Iran at the Geneva nuclear talks of July 19, and his policy will be one of continuing the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate, choke and generally punish Iran into submission on the nuclear issue, and if that fails, to use military force to bring Iran to its knees.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, has retreated somewhat from his earlier eagerness to “jaw-jaw” (to use Churchill’s phrase) with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, but is still open to direct negotiations with the Iranian “leadership,” something that has worried some in the pro-Israeli camp but is, because of Obama’s refusal to take military action “off the table,” actually not a weaker position than his opponent’s.

Obama has also sounded a somewhat arrogant note in that respect recently, saying his willingness to meet Iranians would be “at the time and place of my choosing,” oddly precisely the sort of colonial language that the Second and Third World so resents, language that presumes not just an American superiority but also a desperate and supplicant negotiating partner who will ask “how high?” when asked to jump. The Iranians, one can be assured, can only react to that by actively working to deny him his choice of “time and place.”

The Iranians once offered to negotiate comprehensively with the Bush administration, way back in 2003, but presumably President Bush felt it wasn’t at the time and place of his choosing. What was his choosing were the 2007 talks in Baghdad, but we know how far that has gotten us. (Also, given that neither sanctions nor preconditions for negotiations, nor a perceived arrogant tone by the U.S., has worked in getting Iranians to slow their nuclear program, Senator Obama might do well to follow his own advice and view the Iranian issue as one of starting afresh with a new attitude.)

But beyond that, the people of the Muslim world, accustomed as they are now to American bombs falling on their heads should their leaders run afoul of American foreign policy, might generally applaud the concept of meaningful dialogue before the bombs are deployed. Senator Obama, brown himself, again has the benefit of perception, but as Condoleezza Rice may have come to realize, perception goes only so far.

No discussion of American foreign policy, though, is even partially complete without a discussion of Iraq. We know (or should know) that the Iraq war, that self-imposed suppurating wound, is not only the primary cause of the loss of American prestige throughout the world, but also by definition a primary foreign policy concern of whoever becomes president. Iraq cannot simply be ignored, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was for six years by the Bush administration, in favor of some other adventure or distraction, even as the American public’s patience is wearing thin on hearing any news from the front. And the two candidates for president have divergent views on how America needs to stanch the flow, the river, it sometimes seems, of blood on the Mesopotamian plains: Senator McCain would like to “win” the war, a view befitting a military man, and Senator Obama would like our involvement to end, whether a win in the American column can be chalked up or not.

General George S. Patton once said, in 1944, that "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win -- all the time. . . . The very thought of losing is hateful to an American." Indeed, Americans don’t love war; but they do love to win, and if Patton was right in his psychological analysis of his fellow citizens, then Senator McCain might be on the right track. But Patton spoke before America had ever lost a war, and many Americans today see Iraq as an unwinnable war, at least in the sense that Patton meant.

It’s not that Americans, or indeed almost everyone on the planet (including Muslims) wouldn’t like America to win, for winning in Iraq means a stable, somewhat democratic and functioning Muslim state. But it’s unclear if we can win and at what cost (bombing more brown people?). Senator McCain is in the unenviable position of having to convince Americans that we can indeed win, although he may, depending on circumstances in Iraq in October and November, have a difficult time doing so, particularly with Americans who watch the news or read the papers carefully. (“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”)

The question of significance to American voters is whether a graceful and orderly disentanglement, which Obama prefers, or an all-out effort to secure victory, which McCain does, is most likely to succeed and at what cost. If McCain is right and a withdrawal from Iraq means new beheading videos on the Internet, then one might argue we need to stay there until every last extremist with a butcher’s knife, a video camera, and a flawed reading of the Koran is vanquished. If he’s wrong, and staying in Iraq whether we “win” or not means we see more young Muslims blowing themselves up on the London tube or double-decker buses, or even trying to blow up American airliners, then perhaps Obama has it right, at least in terms of the damage Iraq continues to do to American interests both on the ground and far afield. One has to wonder if there isn’t there a third alternative, though, a way to “win” without an open-ended commitment to keeping troops based in Iraq? Probably not, but perhaps the Iranians, who seem to have more influence in Iraq than either the U.S. or even individual Iraqi leaders, can help us out here, maybe even find it in themselves to ally with us to win the war. Perhaps, if we talk to them nicely, but surely not if we bomb, bomb, bomb them?

American foreign policy, and foreign policy as it applies to the Middle East, will be a crucial factor in the fall campaign. Not because Qaddafi is still obsessed with a 20th-century Palestinian cause, nor necessarily because Senator McCain believes Iran’s 21st-century nuclear progress must be halted at any cost, even if it means another war. It will be crucial because both candidates recognize that many things that affect us, from terrorism to war to America’s standing in the world, and closer to home, the now stratospheric (to Americans) cost of oil, are tied up in the Middle East. The question is which candidate recognizes that what is good for the Middle East is probably good for Americans too?

Hooman Majd is the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, and has interpreted for two presidents of Iran during their visits to the United States. He can be reached at hmajd@observer.com.