With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in town for a visit, US President George W. Bush has signaled that he would support Israeli plans to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank and redraw its borders. He also, though, emphasized that Washington's preference would be for a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

It was Olmert's first official visit to Washington since his election in March , and after the two men met at the White House, President Bush said "I believe, and Prime Minister Olmert agrees, that a negotiated final status agreement best serves both the Israelis and the Palestinians and the cause of peace."

However, Bush greeted what he termed Olmert's "bold ideas," indicating that Washington would not stand in the way of Israel acting on its own in the absence of a breakthrough in the peace process. He said "these ideas could lead to a two-state solution if a pathway to progress on the road map is not opened in the period ahead."

Olmert's plan  involves withdrawing from parts of the West Bank while strengthening other lIsraeli settlements. The Israeli prime minister stressed that this plan would only be followed if all other bilateral options were exhausted. The Israeli government refuses to negotiate with Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January, as long as the group fails to recognize Israel's right to exist  or to renounce violence. However, Olmert told reporters, "I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority. I hope he will take the necessary steps which he committed to in order to move forward." Bush called on the Israeli government to increase its direct contact with the Palestinian president, who he said "speaks for peace".

Israeli cabinet minister Haim Ramon, speaking on Israel Radio shortly after the Olmert's meeting with President Bush, said that 2006 would be "the year of diplomacy" and that Hamas had until the end of the year to recognize Israel and swear off violence. According to Ramon, if these preconditions for peace talks were not met, then "we will move ahead with the consolidation plan."

The visit to Washington is being viewed with interest from Germany. The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes that the Hamas victory was a dark day for President Bush as it signaled the end of any hopes that he could mark his second term with a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Instead the US administration "has turned its back on the Middle East conflict", writes the paper. "The war between Israel and the Palestinians no longer has priority since Hamas's victory." Washington is now aiming at managing rather than solving the conflict. According to the paper, the fact that Condoleeza Rice has failed to appoint a new Middle East envoy since the resignation of James Wolfensohn at the beginning of May indicates how unimportant the region has become to Washtington.

According to the paper, although Olmert has said he will give Hamas several months to recognize Israel and swear off violence, no one in Jerusalem or Washington believes that Hamas will evolve into a partner for peace. "With his visit to Washington," writes the Süddeutsche, Olmert is looking primarily for "absolution" for his plan to evacuate around 250,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank, without Palestinian cooperation. In this case the Hamas government serves not only as a "legitimization" but also as an "excuse." According to the SZ, "as long as the Palestinians are governed by a terrorist group, Israel doesn’t have to make any concessions," such as those stipulated by the road map. The paper adds that while Bush would be wary of declaring a road map he helped to initiate as dead, "he will silently give Israel the green light for unilateral steps."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes that the Israeli prime minister's visit to the United States coincides with a heated debate there about the influence of pro-Israeli interest groups in Washington. The paper writes that the furore over the essay "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is being followed with as much interest in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as in Washington and New York. The core thesis of the essay is that an alliance of pro-Israeli Jews, neocons and evangelical Christian lobby groups -- the "Israel Lobby" -- has pushed the US into a systematically pro-Israeli foreign policy, even to the point of being against its own strategic interests. The authors argue that this Israel Lobby attacks any of its opponents by accusing them of anti-Semitism.

The FTD writes that, as one might expect, the essay has provoked fierce reactions both from those accusing the authors of anti-Semitism and those who defend them. According to the FTD, in highlighting the pro-Israel lobby, the authors have left out important factors. They have not taken into account the brutality with which many other lobby groups also attack their opponents. According to the paper, the authors have also ignored the historical foundation that connects Israel with America: "Central to the state of Israel and to the USA is the consciousness of a particular historical mission, tied up with the myth and the legacy of the pioneers: prosperity and democracy arose from practically nothing thanks to hard work and superior civilizing values."

However, the paper writes that there is a dark flipside to this coin, in the way both states have dealt with those who were there before the arrival of the pioneers. It argues that "the close, almost symbiotic connection between America and Israel has deeper reasons than the skill and strength of a lobby group, which is undeniably one of the most effective in Washington." The paper suggests that the authors might have been better advised to look at whether a group such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) actually makes allowances for the broad spectrum of opinion in Israel or within the Jewish community in the US. Many critics see it as a problem that AIPAC advocates an uncompromising line in dealing with the Palestinians, one that in some cases could go too far even for the Israeli government.

-- Siobhán Dowling, 2:30 p.m., CET

Court Limits Police Data Trawling

The German Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that a computer-aided investigation carried out by German police to try to discover Islamic terrorist sleeper cells was unconstitutional. In the future the mass scanning of data would only be allowed if there were a concrete threat to the country's security. The investigation, which was prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, did not uncover a single sleeper in Germany. The court, based in Karlsruhe, ruled that a general abstract threat such as that which was made apparent in 2001, was not sufficient to order this type of computer-aided investigation. The court was looking in particular at the federal state of North-Rhine West Palatinate, where the data of over 5 million male inhabitants between the ages of 18 and 40 was scanned. One of these, an unidentified Moroccan student, complained that the investigation curtailed his right to self-determination. The court upheld his complaint.

The court also ruled that this type of investigation would only be justified in concrete cases of a likely threat that terrorist attacks would be carried out and in such a case the investigation had to be proportionate.

The German press is divided in its reaction to the ruling. While many commentators praise the court for balancing the rights of the individual and the state's need to protect its citizens, the papers vary in their assessment of the actual investigation to search for possible sleeper terrorists in Germany.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes that in Germany a very concrete fear followed Sept. 11: "that al-Qaida sleepers like those of Atta's Hamburg cell were planning attacks in Germany that would lead to thousands of deaths." The constitutional court has now ruled that a wide-reaching computer-aided hunt for possible terrorists was not compatible with the constitution. "According to the judges," it writes, "there must be a danger not just a fear of it."

The court has emphasized that the rule of law has also to be strictly respected in times of heightened tension, writes the FTD. The computer-aided investigation after Sept. 11 proved to be ineffective: not one single "sleeper" was discovered. According to the paper, security was not served by the action and that should be a lesson for the future. However, it also argues that while the ruling is an important clarification it also smacks a bit of the "know it all". The 9/11 attacks were completely unexpected and were of a completely new type. "No one was able to judge how dangerous the situation was."

The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes that "presumably this decision was easy to make for the judges, because it dealt with such a useless and yet damaging police measure." The paper argues that by using the vague criteria of male Muslim students, the measure used up police resources and thus hindered rather than increased security. In the end the police could only claim that the investigation unsettled the Islamist scene and had a preventive effect. According to TAZ, "that just shows how disproportionate the measure was." The paper argues that the investigation would also show undiscovered Islamic terrorists that acceptance of Muslims in German society had reduced significantly. However, the paper adds that if, as in London, seemingly well integrated young men can become terrorists within a matter of months, then a society is right to be worried.

The conservative daily Die Welt welcomes the ruling by the constitutional court, arguing that it has achieved the necessary balance between data protection and protecting the population; between the need for security and the freedom of the individual. "There will always be danger in a world with organized crime and terrorist networks," it writes, and in this context, uncontrolled monitoring could have evolved into a matter of course. In the end, Germans would not only have had the feeling of being watched, but would have been a population of potential suspects.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes that the ruling's importance for internal security should not be underestimated: It demands a return to the police laws that were in place before Sept. 11. It does not accept the loosening of the police understanding of "threat." It does not tolerate that lawmakers or officials are making it easier to attack rights of citizens, based on a "general threat." In other words, a state that tries to protect the state of law by curtailing rights is not strong but weak. The newspaper argues that such a large computer-aided investigation creates new hysteria, as an entire section of the population is declared dangerous.

The center-right Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung is critical of the court's ruling. It argues that while the "highly abstract threat" of a terror attack in Germany is not very apparent in the everyday, it was different shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11. The paper also argues that the threat was not completely abstract. Many of the attackers had lived in Germany, and there were indications that bin Laden supporters were in the country. According to the FAZ, the ruling only mentions this threat in a few sentences while it describes at great length the curtailment of information rights and the stigmatization effect of the investigation, because it was based on criteria of origin, gender and religion. However, writes the paper, "the known attackers were not old German Christian women, but young Muslim men from Islamic countries."