My friend Daoud Kuttab sounds the call for liberal intervention with a passion that I share, but have grown to mistrust: “Right now every person who believes in democracy must stand with the lawyers and judges who are risking their lives to fight a dictator.” Righteous words, especially when we see decent Pakistanis being arrested for demanding an end to Musharraf’s lawlessness.

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First, this debate (for the most part) illustrates what we wanted when we started PostGlobal two years ago--which was to create a global online forum for discussion of issues that people care about, the more diverse the viewpoints, the better. And I think we have had good passionate debate here--from Saul Singer and Yossi Melman in Israel, from a pro-Israel Kin-Ming Liu in Hong Kong, from Daoud Kuttab, Lamis Andoni and Vivian Salama speaking from the Arab world. The posts reflect sharp differences--no surprise there--but in a way that I hope will make people think.

So what's my own take on the "Israel Lobby" question? For starters, I am not a great fan of lobbies in general. I think they tend to skew policies in the direction of interest groups that can mount effective and well-financed lobbying campaigns. I see that with the gun lobby, the anti-abortion lobby, the Armenian lobby (I'm an Armenian-American, by the way), and the lobby for corporate tax breaks. But these lobbies are a part of American democracy, circa 2007. You could no more ban them than restrict other forms of speech.

I worry whenever lobbies restrict the range of debate on an issue. Their power can become intimidating. We don't have a real debate about gun control, for example, because the power of the National Rifle Association is so great. And I worry sometimes that the U.S. debate about Middle East policy is too narrow--not necessarily because of direct pressure from AIPAC, but because of self-censorship. There is, as is often noted, a wider debate about Middle East policy within Israel than in the United States.

That wide-open debate is part of what I like so much about Israel. It's a passionate democracy. An example was my interview published last Sunday with Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, in which he called for talks with Iran and Syria. That's hardly evidence of the sort of lockstep thinking that critics of the Israel Lobby caution against. So I hope the "Israel Lobby," in the broadest sense--a lobby that includes a Halevy, as well as a Netanyahu--will encourage a searching debate about future policies in the Middle East. America needs it; Israel needs it; the world needs it.

I'm an optimist by nature. It's one of my failings as a journalist, I suspect. But I find it hard to be as optimistic about the course of the global economy as Swaminathan Aiyar. Yes, strong global demand is helping push up oil prices, and yes, a mild recession would help curb the U.S. consumption binge that produces such big trade deficits. And maybe we'll have yet another "soft landing."

But if there's one thing the last decade should have reminded us, it's that the economic law of gravity has not been suspended. What goes up does come down. What's unsustainable is not sustained. Big imbalances do have consequences. Markets do correct--and in doing so, they often overshoot.

The Fed and European central banks have been pumping new billions of liquidity into the international financial system (largely unnoticed) for a reason: They are nervous. So am I. A wise central banker commented to me recently that the best policy advice in such a delicate situation is the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. In other words, don't do anything rash to react to the repricing of assets and currencies that's now taking place. I hope that advice is followed. I hope it works. As I said, I want to be an optimist....

Stripping away the rhetoric and spin, what has actually happened today in Annapolis? I find three points of note:

--Bush announced that the U.S. will act as arbiter of whether the two sides have met the conditions of the road map. This puts Rice & Co. squarely in the middle of the process as, dare I say it, an "honest broker." It gives the U.S. considerable leverage to prod the two sides, and to do the mediator's conjuring act, when necessary. The fact that the Israelis agreed to give the U.S. this leverage is Rice's biggest achievement to date.

--All sides agreed that the negotiations will be continuous through 2008. This is an important fact when we think about what next year will look like for the region. A peace process will be underway, and all the parties -- Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Saudis -- will have to deal with it. The radicals will try to blow it up, but if it's making any headway, that will be difficult. There is a narcotic -- perhaps I should say, narcoleptic -- aspect to "continuous ongoing peace negotiations." They become the focus of attention. They distract from other problems. That's not a bad thing right now.

--The Saudis and the Arab League are present as handmaidens and midwives for whatever this is. That was Secretary Rice's goal when she first began thinking about what has become Annapolis -- to get "buy-in" from the Arabs at the outset of a negotiation process, so that Abbas and the moderate Palestinians would not feel isolated. Annapolis does give the Palestinians some cover -- and it gives Israelis a small hint of what Arab recognition would feel like.

It's always easy with the Middle East to forecast failure. As a colleague said many years ago, when it comes to the Middle East, "pessimism pays." So I understand Fareed's caution. But there's a bit more here than pessimists expected.