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By Wire servicesMany say the president has doomed the "road map" peace plan and abandoned the role of an impartial arbiter.
Palestinian leaders were sharply critical of President Bush on Wednesday, saying his support for Israeli positions dealt a crippling and perhaps fatal blow to what remains of current Middle East peace efforts.
Many other Arabs saw Bush's announcement as the death knell for the "road map" peace plan and a fundamental change in the U.S. role in the Middle East.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and other prominent Palestinians said Bush had now gone further than any American president in backing Israel on the most contentious Middle East issues: Jewish settlements, future borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
"I believe President Bush declared the death of the peace process today," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian information minister.
Abed Rabbo said the Bush administration "wants to determine our future, and the future of the entire Middle East, by writing a prescription for the whole region."
Palestinians said Bush's comments broke with longstanding U.S. policy not to prejudge such sensitive issues.
"For the first time, American policy violates the basic conditions for peace," said Hanan Ashrawi, a leading Palestinian legislator and spokeswoman. "This kind of submission to extreme Israeli positions is really incredible."
Abed Rabbo contrasted Bush's statements with a letter that his father, George Bush, sent to the Palestinians when he was president in 1991.
"The letter contained a very clear statement that key issues would be determined through negotiations, and not through unilateral Israeli decisions," Abed Rabbo recalled.
Across the Arab world, Bush's ringing endorsement of Sharon's plan for the West Bank was immediately interpreted as a deathblow to the very "road map" for peace Bush helped create and a break with decades of U.S. policy.
Bush's position appeared likely to erode the image of an administration already disparaged by Arabs for the occupation of Iraq and support of Sharon. In the eyes of many Arabs, it signaled something deeper as well: a decisive turn in a fundamental evolution of the U.S. role in the Mideast, from that of an evenhanded arbiter to an avowed partner of Israel in its fight against the Palestinians.
"The prestige of the Bush administration was extremely low, but this will take it another step down the spiral," said Walid Kazziha, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo.
"Arabs have waited a long time for the road map to unfold and, if this is what has unfolded, then it is really frustrating and disappointing, because this is an Israeli road map, not the one envisioned," Kazziha said.
The prospect of a new blow to the image of the United States in the Arab world comes as the United States is seeking to build international support for an expanded role for the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq. The United States is also in the midst of a broad effort to sow democracy in the Middle East, an initiative that has foundered because Arab leaders have sought to distance themselves from anything that has the American imprimatur.
Arabs across the region routinely link the U.S. occupation of Iraq with its support for Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza, and Wednesday's announcement in Washington seemed certain to enshrine that perception at the very moment that the United States is locked in mounting bloodshed with the Iraqi resistance.
The Egyptian daily Al-Jumhuriyah said Wednesday, "The victims being killed daily in Palestine and Iraq are due to the continuation of the occupation."
- Information from the Chicago Tribune and New York Times was used in this report.