DUBAI, June 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Hours after his long-awaited speech on his administration’s foreign policy toward the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush’s vision was called into question Tuesday, June 25, by analysts and newspapers across the Arab world, as well as internationally.

Emirates daily newspaper, Al-Bayan, said that Bush’s vision for the Middle East “was blind and lacked balance, and is in fact, completely Israeli as Bush placed strict conditions on the Palestinian and Arab sides.”

Al-Bayan also said that Bush “adopted the Israeli stance.”

Bush also did not mention any details concerning “the borders of the state that will emerge three years from now, the location of its capital, or the future of millions of Palestinian refugees - all vital concerns for the people of the West Bank and Gaza,” the paper said.

The Guardian also said that Bush handed Sharon “additional pretexts to delay a withdrawal from Palestinian lands, or the reopening of negotiations with the Palestinians. As Mr Bush made clear, Mr Sharon is now within his rights to demand not only an end to Palestinian violence, but a total overhaul of the judiciary in the West Bank or Gaza, before embarking on peace talks.”

An Israeli analyst, Joseph Alpher, told the Guardian: “There is no basis here for any pressure on Israel whatsoever. There is no vision in terms of providing an incentive to the Palestinians of what a state might look like. The only real vision is a democratic market state of Palestine without Arafat. If this is supposed to provide an incentive to Palestinians to get rid of Arafat, I don't see it.”

The Guardian said that Alpher felt that Bush’s address “falls short of a genuine re-engagement in Middle East peacemaking. By doing so, it also promises precious little in the way of hope for an end to nearly two years of blood and chaos.”

Alpher commented that “This is either an incredibly naive approach or the cover for an absence of any genuine energy to really deal with the region. After all, Bush began his term by being very standoffish, and this is an elegant way of getting out of the issues.”

“We are dealing with two leaders, Sharon and Arafat, who are locked in their respective positions, and an American leader, the only conceivable person who can affect change, who does not want to truly get involved. So we are stuck where we are, which means more of the same, which means the situation will get worse: creeping Israeli occupation, expanding settlements and continued terrorism.”

Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Ahram’s Washington bureau chief, Mohammed El-Sayed Said said, “The Arab world will not sleep tonight.”

“The Palestinians have elected Arafat and they will elect him again. If the Palestinians re-elect Arafat, are they going to be punished?”

U.K. daily, the Independent, said that Bush’s speech was victory for Sharon. “Game and set - if not match - to Ariel Sharon. Yasser Arafat, long frozen out of the Bush White House, is no longer perceived by the Americans as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people.”

The Independent pointed out that Sharon had always aimed to draw a link between Palestinian resistance and the “terror” that the U.S. has declared war upon, and that in Bush’s speech, “he partly achieved this.”