Tough Bush speech may lead to failure: analysts

President George W. Bush's new Middle East policy, based on tough conditions for Palestinian statehood but no details for a final settlement, is unlikely to end the violence which has raged between Israelis and Palestinians for the past 21 months, analysts said.

They also noted that the Bush administration appeared to have dropped the idea of a Middle East peace conference during the summer and that the White House had given little weight to the views of US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The victors were those in the administration who see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of Bush's "war on terrorism", with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat cast in the role of villain alongside the militant Osama bin Laden.

"Clearly this is in a larger context in which the president believes we must do everything we can to fight terror, needs to find leaders who will fight terror," said a US official.

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, said he was shocked and surprised at the speech, even after closely following the weeks of deliberations within the Bush administration.

"There is nothing inspiring here, nothing that inspires hope. ...It is hard to envision that what he articulated will be seen by the parties as an incentive for them to rally behind the United States campaign," he added.

"It's a very tough approach. It looks as if at every step along the way there will be Uncle Sam looking over their (the Palestinians') shoulders and saying at every stage either you pass or you fail," added Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute and a former assistant secretary of state.

James Zogby, a partisan analyst as president of the Arab American Institute, said the speech was "a disaster" which showed that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and American neoconservatives had won the debate in the White House.

While pro-Israeli US politicians welcomed the speech for the blame it puts on Palestinian leaders, the analysts said it could give Sharon the impression he had a green light to press on with his military campaign in the West Bank and Gaza.

Bush said the Israeli forces should withdraw to the positions they held before the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in September 2000 but only "as we make progress toward security", not necessarily in the immediate future.

The Bush administration has already dropped its overt opposition to Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory, saying only that they should keep in mind the consequences.

Bush also did not say he planned to send Powell to the region immediately, as US officials had predicted.

Instead, he said he had asked Powell "to work intensively with Middle Eastern and international leaders to realise the vision of a Palestinian state, focusing them on a comprehensive plan to support Palestinian reform and institution building."

Walker said a positive element was the degree of US engagement, in the sense that the United States could end up as arbiter of whether each side has done its part.

But he added: "I think the Palestinians are going to reject it because they are going to interpret it as call to change Arafat. ...

They will say 'We are moving ahead on this agenda, where are you and what about the Israelis?'."

"The Israelis will take this as (meaning) nothing happens until there is a complete cessation of all terrorism and the sides will take positions on which the administration is going to have to make a judgment," he added.

"The real interesting question will be whether Sharon interprets this in the short term as a green light for what he is doing on the West Bank and for further measures against Arafat," said Telhami.

Sharon earlier this year made a short-lived attempt to expel Arafat from the West Bank.

He backed down when the United States objected, but his chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, was reported last month to continue to support the idea.

The analysts said the speech would disappoint Washington's Arab friends, who had hoped for an unconditional timetable for full Palestinian statehood in all of the territory occupied by Israeli forces since the 1967 war.

"Clearly the secretary (Powell) is going to have a sales job when he gets going on this thing," said Walker.

Telhami added: "It will leave Arabs like the Egyptians and Saudis not only confused but back to the drawing board in terms of what it means for their plans."