Israeli press criticises Bush statement

LINDA MOTTRAM: Flawed, naïve, unbalanced and a demonstration of an inability to grasp the Middle East, that's been some of the newspaper reaction from the Middle East to US President George W. Bush's much touted blueprint yesterday for solving the Israel/ Palestinian conflict.

What's surprising is that the criticism comes not from the Arab press but from Israel's most senior correspondents who say that while the Sharon government may have scored a political coup, Israelis and Palestinians have nothing to look forward to.

Middle East correspondent Tim Palmer reports from Jerusalem.

TIM PALMER: Business as usual for Yasser Arafat, still meeting world leaders in Ramallah, in this case the French Foreign Minister, despite the use by label George W. Bush attached to him yesterday.

"Definitely not," Yasser Arafat said when asked if President Bush had been talking about him when he called for a change in the Palestinian government.

Certainly there's been no clamour from Palestinians to take to the streets and seize on Mr Bush's somewhat vague promise of a provisional Palestinian state years from now if they do install new leaders. Perhaps because, in the West Bank at least, more than half a million of them live behind closed doors under curfew.

Hebron, the latest city reinvaded by Israeli troops and tanks sent by a government which knows there's no sniff of a demand from the White House now that they leave the territories.

Palestinian political scientist, Hisham Ahmed, said the Palestinian people have no incentive to pursue the distant Bush vision.

HISHAM AHMED: I find it to be most disappointing for all other American Presidential speeches since the beginning of the question of Palestine and I tend to believe that it was preferred in the corridors of the Israeli government rather than in the corridors of the White House.