President Bush delivers Middle East speech
Israeli press commentators focused on the implications of President Bush's speech for Israel's military operations in the West Bank.
An article in the Hebrew-language paper, Yediot Aharonot, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's associates "believe that the Americans are leaving a window of time for the Israel Defence Force of a week to 10 days".
The writer said the estimate was based on the fact that Mr Powell would not be coming to the region before 10 April and will first visit Cairo, Riyadh and Amman "in an attempt to calm the stormy mood of those countries' leaders".
"Ticking stopwatch"
The paper wrote that, until Thursday this week, the Israeli Government had believed that Israel had all the time in the world to complete its "big battle against Palestinian terrorism, while Yasser Arafat had told his aides that it would last only a few days".
"In timetables, it appears, Arafat has the better understanding."
"One step forward"
"Bitter experience teaches that this is again one step forward, two steps back, another distraction until the next terror attack and the continuation of the war," it commented.
Another Yediot Aharonot analyst wrote that Mr Sharon had responded to Mr Bush's statement "with carefully contained fury" but added that "Israel cannot afford to refuse ... America is its only supporter. If America moves aside, Israel will become the world's leper."
US role under fire
The Jerusalem-based Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds was dismissive of the US initiative.
For Jordan's Al-Ra'y, Mr Powell's visit to the region constituted a significant development, but it warned that the US role would be effective only if it was fair and just and conformed with international resolutions.
US "U-turn"
In the Gulf, the Emirates-based Al-Bayan said Washington had been forced to change tack when it became apparent that Arab discontent was threatening its interests.
"This subdued American U-turn would not have been achieved had it not been for the general Arab solidarity," the paper said.
An editorial in the Jedda-based English-language Arab News said, however, that President Bush's speech and the Powell mission did "not seem to be anything more than a fig leaf to disguise American inaction".
The US move "goes nowhere near far enough to ending the conflict," it said.
Another article in the same paper said President Bush's appeal to Mr Sharon to halt the violence and return to the negotiating table "lacks the force of conviction that one would have expected from the US president, especially when Israel, its protege, has been guilty of heinous crimes against humanity".
The US move was seen "more as a public relations exercise than as a serious attempt to halt Israeli aggression against the Palestinians", it said.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.