Bush's stark Mideast markers

Reform-minded Palestinians, such as former Cabinet minister Nabeel Amro, who resigned his office last month to protest Arafat's unwillingness to promote change, appreciated Bush's emphasis on democracy. The problem is that Bush said nothing about the nuts and bolts of reform or the logistics of holding elections in a territory whose cities and major towns are under Israeli military occupation. "We need an atmosphere in which to go about reform – we need a mechanism," says Mr. Amro. "We need strong pressure from the Bush administration on the Israelis to create this atmosphere."

For a people who can't leave the house to buy milk, much less campaign for office, the absence of any presidential call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories was seen as a sign of disingenuousness.

"He was indifferent to what is going on on the ground," says Abdul Jawad Saleh, a member of the Palestinian parliament. "We are under reoccupation; we can't move from one city to another."

Ghassan Khatib, whom Arafat appointed to a reshuffled cabinet this month, says that "as a Palestinian, I felt the guy was hostile to us from the first word to the last word."

Bush's tone, and the suggestion that the American president should tell Palestinians when to change leaders, will backfire, Mr. Khatib argues. "At the end of the day, Palestinians are still supporting Yasser Arafat," he says. "This is not going to change."

Mr. Saleh isn't so sure. A longtime critic of the Palestinian leader, he argues that an opposition candidate, if he or she were allowed to campaign openly and candidly, could defeat Arafat. But such an upset will not occur, he cautions, if elections are held in the shadow of Israeli tanks – conditions that will only aid a man considered the father of the Palestinian movement.

Gerald Butt, Gulf editor of the Middle East Economic Survey, adds: "The Arab view will be that it's quite unacceptable for Washington to say who should lead the Palestinians, or anyone else for that matter. The Arab view is that the Israelis are causing the problem, and if you are going to change anybody, they'd want to change Sharon. Arafat is deemed as ineffective, but he's the elected leader, and they're not in the mood to be told by Amer-ica, which espouses democracy, to get rid of an elected leader."

Arab analysts noted that Bush did not mention the Middle East peace conference the US said it would organize or the Saudi peace initiative adopted by the Arab League in March. The Saudi initiative called on Israel to withdraw from territory occupied since 1967 in exchange for full normalization with the Arab world. The proposal, the most far-reaching concession from the Arabs in decades, was seen as a platform on which to negotiate a comprehensive peace settlement.

"Who remembers the Saudi initiative now?" asked Sateh Noureddine, a columnist for Beirut's As-Safir daily newspaper. "It's dead and buried."

• Nicholas Blanford in Beirut and Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

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