Speech Stuns Palestinians and Thrills Israelis
Delighted with President Bush's speech, Israeli officials expressed the hope tonight that perhaps, at last, Yasir Arafat would be ousted and a new, peace-seeking Palestinian leadership installed.

But Ismail Abu Shanab, a leader of the militant group Hamas, which has been behind several recent suicide bombings, expressed a different hope: that perhaps, at last, Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority would let real Palestinian violence explode.

"I hope the Palestinian Authority will now understand that it should support resistance and not chase after the West," said Mr. Abu Shanab, an engineer in Gaza City, observing that Mr. Arafat had now "lost the support of the American administration" along with that of average Palestinians.

Palestinian officials were as stunned by the speech as Israelis were pleased. The Palestinians had hoped that Mr. Bush would urge an Israeli withdrawal, but they heard him talk instead about Israel's need to defend itself.

Indeed, Mr. Bush softened previous demands on Israel. In a speech on April 4, Mr. Bush called for "immediate action" to ease Israel's blockades of Palestinian areas. Since then, those blockades have tightened. But tonight Mr. Bush asked only that Israel restore freedom of movement to "innocent Palestinians" as "violence subsides."

"The choice here is stark and simple," Mr. Bush said, invoking a biblical injunction to choose life over death. "The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace and hope and life."

But some Israeli politicians said that things in the Middle East were not necessarily simple. "I am willing to take my chances and say that the speech will not result in anything," Shlomo Ben Ami, a former foreign minister who opposes the current government, told Israel Radio. "At times I think he is talking about Switzerland and not about the Middle East."

Mr. Bush went far further, calling not only for new elections but also for a specific outcome, the election of a new leadership "not compromised by terror." For the first time, an American administration made the creation of a Palestinian state conditional on the removal of Mr. Arafat.

Mr. Bush made his speech on a day that Israel stepped up its latest West Bank offensive and killed six Palestinians with a missile strike on Palestinians it said were militants in the Gaza Strip. Once again tanks and troops were dispatched to encircle Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.

[Early on Tuesday, three Palestinian policemen were killed in the West Bank city of Hebron when Israeli troops stormed the Palestinian government headquarters there, The Associated Press reported.]

After invading Ramallah, Israeli forces held six of the eight major Palestinian cities and towns under round-the-clock curfew. After two suicide bombings in Jerusalem killed 26 Israelis last week, the Israeli government announced plans to seize Palestinian-controlled territory until the attacks cease.

Mr. Bush's call for a new Palestinian leadership uncompromised by terror raised one immediate quandary. There are no Palestinian leaders with any sizable following today that Israel regards as free of links to terrorism, either by long association with the Palestine Liberation Organization or as a result of their roles in the present conflict.

Indeed, the conflict has so embittered both peoples that it is conventional wisdom among Palestinian politicians and analysts that anyone who replaced Mr. Arafat now, lacking his history and credentials, would have to be even more extreme to sustain broad support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/25/international/middleeast/25MIDE.html