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In the past few weeks, however, things have suddenly accelerated as the king has moved to show the ultraconservative Saudi religious establishment quite literally who's boss. He sacked the head of the feared religious police and the minister of justice, appointed Nora al-Fayez as deputy education minister, making her the highest-ranking female official in the country's history, and moved to equalize the education of women and men under the direction of a favored son-in-law who has been preparing for years to modernize the nation's school system

Born into the crumbling palaces of desert tribes in 1923 (the precise date was not recorded), he now rules one of the richest countries on earth. When Abdullah was a child, his father had not yet finished his conquests on the Arabian Peninsula or founded the nation-state that bears the family name.The boy was 6 when his mother died, and as her only son he felt he had to take care of his younger sisters even then. "He had a tough childhood," says Abdullah's daughter Princess Adelah. "He took on a lot of responsibility from the time he was very young." The children grew up amid rebellion and insurrection, with their father's rule threatened by the intolerant Wahhabi Brotherhood that had helped bring him to power.As a grown man, Abdullah witnessed the oil boom and the corrosive effects of spectacular greed—and more fanaticism, more insurrection, including the bloody siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979. There were dangerous intrigues within the family, too. When Abdel Aziz died in 1953, the succession passed to his son Saud, who was deposed in 1964 by his half-brother Faisal, who was murdered years later by a nephew. When Fahd took the crown in 1982, Abdullah became crown prince, and after Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, he became acting king.

He brought a powerful sense of desert tradition to the job. His mother was from the powerful Shammar tribe that extends from Saudi territory deep into Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and before being named crown prince he had been head of the Saudi National Guard, a force made up of tribal levies from all over the country. He was immersed in Bedouin culture—the same traditional Saudi values that frame the world as Abdullah sees it. "You do not see him being more lenient with his family than with the National Guard," Princess Adelah told NEWSWEEK. "He is very straightforward, very honest, and hates injustice." Ambassador Fraker sees him as "someone who in many ways is a throwback to that desert-warrior ethos where men stand by their word, they look each other straight in the eye and they apply a code of honor."

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal denounced on Thursday an Israeli offer of a demilitarized Palestinian state as a "big prison" and said only armed struggle could restore Palestinian rights.

"Dealing with Hamas and Palestinian resistance movements must be based on respecting the will of the Palestinian people and its democratic choice, not through putting conditions, such as those of the quartet," he said.

He was referring to the demands of the United States, Russia the United Nations and the European Union for Hamas to renounce armed struggle, as well as accept past peace agreements.

On the other side of the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates authorities moved quickly to shut down a newspaper which ran a critical article about the repression. In Dubai, home to a huge Iranian expatriate community, protests were banned.

But in Bahrain, with a Sunni royal family, a restive Shia majority and fears of Iranian subversion, there was warm praise for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "If he was a candidate in any Arab country against a current president," wrote Qassim Hussain in al-Wasat, "the public would vote for him."

In regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, leader of the conservative Arab camp, there has been resounding public silence but private criticism – hardly surprising for an autocratic country with no political parties and where even local elections have been put on hold. Beneath the surface lies Saudi concern about possible unrest in the oil-producing Eastern province, where there is a Shia majority and a history of Iranian influence.

Lebanon will go the polls on Sunday in national elections that are widely expected to shift the fragile state's balance of power from the pro-western governing coalition to Hezbollah and its allies.

Such a scenario would unseat Siniora and further diminish the influence of the pro-western coalition made up of Sunnis, the remainder of the country's Christians and a Druze party, headed by Walid Jumblatt. But as a concession to the government's supporters, the opposition has privately offered the role of prime minister to the head of the Sunni bloc, Saad Hariri, whose father's assassination in 2005 triggered four years of instability.

The Iranian-backed opposition bloc comprising Hezbollah, the secular Shia party Amal and Christian supporters of General Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, is tipped to win a comfortable majority in the 128-seat parliament.

President Shimon Peres said on Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad must understand that Israel would not hand over the Golan Heights on a "silver platter" so long as Damascus continued its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. Peres told visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that a true peace process between the long time enemies would have to take place at the negotiating table, without preconditions or mediation.

Syrian officials last month threatened to take back the Golan Heights by force if a peace agreement involving the return of the strategic plateau is not reached with Israel. Advertisement A group calling itself the Syrian Committee for the Freedom of the Golan said it would take steps to regain control of the territory, adding that Israel has not shown willingness to achieve peace or to return what they called "Syrian land."

Just prior to that, Assad rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to resume peace talks between the two countries from "point zero." Assad said the negotiations should resume from the point at which they stopped under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when the two sides had planned to formulate mutual commitments that would enable the talks to move to a direct negotiations stage.