evidence that a raucous "Arab street" will not passively accept an American war in the Middle East.

An uninitiated observer of Arab politics might be tempted to conclude from Mubarak's bold warning that the Egyptian people are seething with outrage about the prospect of a US march into Baghdad. On the contrary, while demonstrations in support of the Palestinian uprising against Israel have drawn tens of thousands of Egyptians into the streets, efforts to organize mass anti-war demonstrations have been a dismal failure. "The Arab Street is apathetic on the issue of Iraq," says Hisham Qassem, editor-in-chief of the English language daily Cairo Times.5 "Egyptians main sympathy is with the Palestinians," explains Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, "Iraq is aof will shed a tear" if Saddam Hussein is ousted, he explained in a September 2002 interview with CNN. "The Arabs will not walk into the attack with the United States, but they will walk in[to] the funeral, and they will be very happy."10

"People look for real heroes who can deliver and Saddam is only a drowning, defeated ruler who is clinging to the wreckage," says Jordanian political analyst Raja Talab, adding that many Arabs blame Saddam for "leading the area to the edge of another catastrophe."11 Open expressions of such hostility to the Iraqi leader remain taboo in many Arab countries, in part because, like Mubarak, Arab heads of state have sought to convince the West that invading Iraq will produce popular unrest and thereby destabilize the