ISRAEL: There were profound Israeli satisfaction and deep Palestinian anger over President Bush's landmark Middle East speech last night, with its dramatic conditioning of independent Palestinian statehood on the ousting of Mr Yasser Arafat and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority, writes David Horovitz, in Jerusalem
Although Mr Arafat was quoted as welcoming the address as "a serious effort to push the peace process forward", Mr Saeb Erekat, his chief peace negotiator appeared more ready to acknowledge its devastating message, taking particular exception to Mr Bush's call to the Palestinian people to "elect new leaders - leaders not compromised by terror".
Fumed Mr Erekat: "Yasser Arafat is the elected leader, and that must be respected." Mr Arafat's initial response notwithstanding, almost every other aspect of the President's speech was disappointing, if not outright infuriating, to the Palestinians, and gratifying to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
Mr Bush did speak of the possibility of a permanent peace accord, and a finalised Palestinian state, "within three years", but he did not say that Israel would need to withdraw to its 1967 borders and specified no Palestinian role in Jerusalem. And he witheringly rejected the consistent claims by Mr Arafat and other PA leaders that they are fighting terrorism and instituting reforms. Just before Mr Bush delivered his speech, for instance, Mr Erekat had said that the PA was only "weeks away" from reforming its security forces and months away from elections.
But the President, in his remarks, appeared to deride such plans, by stating that "reform must be more than cosmetic change or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo".
Mr Dore Gold, an adviser to Mr Sharon, unsurprisingly hailed the speech, highlighting Mr Bush insistence on the halting of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli targets as a precondition for diplomatic progress. "The President made clear," he noted, that "the Palestinians must end the violence. There can't be negotiations so long as the violence goes on." Mr Bush had evidently taken on board, he added, Israel's documented assertions that Mr Arafat was directly involved in inciting and financing the bombings.
The President's speech came just hours after Israeli helicopters fired missiles at two taxis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing six Palestinians, all said to be members of Hamas, and as Mr Sharon vowed yesterday to take "massive action" against Hamas in the course of the army's large-scale operations inside Palestinian areas. But Mr Bush tacitly endorsed such Israeli actions in the cause of the fight against terrorism, and while he urged an Israeli withdrawal to the positions troops held before the intifada erupted 21 months ago, he said this pull-back need happen only "as we make progress towards security".
Similarly, his calls to Israel to halt settlement building, transfer tax revenues and, most importantly, end the occupation, were all conditioned, first, on a halt to terrorism and, second, on solid progress towards a negotiated peace agreement with a new Palestinian leadership.
Earlier yesterday, the Israeli army intercepted a Palestinian suicide bomber near the central Israeli town of Beit Shemesh and widened what Mr Sharon called its "massive incursion" throughout the West Bank, sending troops into Ramallah and, as several times in recent months, surrounding Mr Arafat's headquarters in the city.
In Jenin yesterday, the army said it found two suicide-bombers' belts and blew up a building that housed a weapons-factory. It made several arrests of "terror suspects" during house-to-house searches in Jenin and in Hebron.