President Bush last night demanded that the Palestinian people dump their leader, President Yasser Arafat. And he promised that if they do so and reform their institutions the US will back the establishment of a "provisional state of Palestine".
"Peace requires a new and different leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born," he said.
In a much-awaited speech delivered yesterday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Bush said the Palestinians should elect a new leadership that is "not contaminated by terrorism" in comments which will delight hawkish supporters in the administration and in Israel and will prove controversial among his European allies and in the Arab world.
Mr Bush also set out a vision of recognition of a negotiated, fully fledged Palestinian state which "with intensive efforts can be reached within three years", an aspirational time-frame in line with Israeli demands.
The Saudis had pressed for a definitive three-year time-frame to provide a dynamic for the discussions in the interim on the "final status" issues such as refugees, Jerusalem, and peace with Lebanon.
Although the President also pressed the Israelis to show restraint by ending their occupation and settlement activity, restoring freedom of movement for Palestinians, and unfreezing Palestinian money, his demands on them were largely based on a restoration of the status quo. Administration sources were quick to insist that Mr Bush is not attempting to dictate who should lead the Palestinians. That they said was a matter for the Palestinians, but they insisted that in Mr Bush's words the reforms of the Palestinian Authority could not be "cosmetic".
In particular, apart from political and economic reforms to introduce democracy and "genuine market reforms", Mr Bush spoke of international supervision of the restructuring of the Palestinian security services.
He promised international aid from the US, World Bank and the EU for the reform of financial institutions and increased humanitarian aid. Mr Bush specifically called on Arab states to join in denouncing terrorism and named Iraq, Iran and Syria as continuing obstacles to peace. He said the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, would work intensively to advance the process but stopped short of sending him back to the region.
The speech will go down well with Mr Bush's domestic audience but critics were asking whether there is enough incentive in it for a deeply alienated Palestinian population. Mr Bush's professions of empathy with the plight of the Palestinians, they say, will ring hollow in the absence of strong criticism of Israeli actions.