The Middle East: Next Year in Jerusalem.(Brief Article)(Editorial)

The Middle East at the moment is more than unusually rocky. Islamist extremism is a threat to several Arab regimes. On the run from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda terrorists can count on clandestine networks to help them regroup and start all over again. The Saudi royal family has never been so unpopular. Poverty and oppression everywhere are breeding discontent, perhaps revolution. Any day, some Palestinian suicide bomber may spark a wider conflagration involving Israel and its neighbors.

The good news is that the United States has fought and won a campaign that numerous critics judged certain to end in shipwreck. Victory, they held rather patronizingly, would inflame the "Arab street" with a generalized anti-American sentiment. Nothing of the kind has occurred. On the contrary, Arabs everywhere have taken note of American political resolve and military capacities. They know that the United States is doing what it has to do, and that power in the pursuit of national interest is only normal, not in the least shocking. Had the United States failed to react as it did to September 11, the Arabs would have lost all respect for it, and their anti-Americanism would have conveyed contempt for people too feeble to defend themselves.

The next immediate step should be to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the ...