By Michael Slackman, New York Times, March 21, 2011

CAIRO — With his brutal military assault on civilians, and his rantings about spiked Nescafé, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi handed many leaders across the Arab world what had otherwise eluded them: A chance to side with the people while deflecting attention from their own citizens’ call for democracy, political analysts around the region said. And they really do not like him.[....]

“The Arab street reaction to the Western attacks on Libya has been warm,” said Hilal Khasan, chairman of the department of political studies at American University of Beirut. “This is not Iraq.” [....]

“I see hypocrisy in everything the Arab leaders do, and I’m talking as a person of the Arab world,” said Randa Habib, a political commentator in Jordan. “I wanted them to take such a decision. There were too many people being killed in Libya. That man is cuckoo.”

This new and unpredictable tone seemed to partly explain the flip-flopping of Amr Moussa [....] "This is not related actually to Qaddafi’s attitude to his people or the way he is ruling Libya,” Mr. Masry said. “It is related to his attitude. He was very unpredictable.”

Saudi animosity runs deep. In 2004, [....]  Then in 2009, Colonel Qaddafi embarrassed the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and infuriated King Abdullah, during an Arab summit meeting in Doha, Qatar, Qaddafi first denounced [....] When Sheikh Hamad tried to quiet him, he said, “I am an international leader, the dean of Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level.” [....]