To non-Americans, the US foreign policy is bewildering. A vast majority of them feel that positions taken by successive US administrations on most international issues are at variance with the declared foreign policy principles of the United States. Foremost among those issues is the consistent pro-Israeli position of successive American administrations since the end of World War II. Muslims, like others, ask the question: how could the US, which has vowed to uphold the principle of self-determination, so eloquently enshrined in President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, continue to deny the Palestinians their right to exercise the same principle? Rightly or wrongly, this question haunts many people even after President Bush's announcement that the US accepts the establishment of an independent state for the Palestinians - the first such public commitment ever made by an American President.