“It would be much better if he didn’t visit our land at all,” said Bashar Fadl Ahmed, 34, an orthopedic surgeon who was shopping in the town square early this week, echoing the sentiment of many here. “He won’t achieve anything. He is trying to do something in his last year, but where was he before?”
Jericho, a relatively tranquil town of about 25,000 Palestinians north of the Dead Sea, was on the short list of West Bank Palestinian Authority destinations for the presidential visit, with Bethlehem and Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian authority headquarters. The governor of Jericho, Arif Jaabari, said that American security and diplomatic staff had been to his compound twice and checked the area where Yasir Arafat’s helicopter used to land.
But Jericho was not included in the president’s final schedule, causing little disappointment among residents. “He’s the worst, Bush,” said a 64-year-old man who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Muhammad. “He supports Israel and mocks and deceives us.”
On his official visits to Ramallah and Bethlehem, Mr. Bush is likely to be received with the utmost respect. After all, the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has received significant American backing as a bulwark against the rise of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last June.
For Mr. Abbas, the Bush visit is an honor and an opportunity that he hopes will advance nascent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the outline of a Palestinian state. The visit will be “historic and important,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas.
By contrast, many ordinary Palestinians are angry with Mr. Bush for, among other things, going to war in Iraq and spurning Mr. Arafat while he was alive. They point to the many checkpoints and the West Bank separation barrier, and they say that Mr. Bush’s support for Israel comes at their expense.
Ghassan Khatib, the vice president of Bir Zeit University, in the West Bank, said on Wednesday, “The Palestinians are in agreement that in the history of the United States, Bush is more biased than any other American president toward Israel.”
Consequently, the Palestinians are deeply skeptical about the goal of a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of Mr. Bush’s term.
“He has destroyed everything, and now he is coming to see the results,” said Moussa Al Hilou, 63, a clothing store owner. “What Palestinian state is he talking about? What he says is nonsense, even our leadership knows that.”
The same skepticism seems to prevail throughout the West Bank and Gaza. In a December poll of 1,270 Palestinians by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent research institute based in Ramallah, only 23 percent of those surveyed anticipated that the sides would reach a permanent agreement before the end of 2008, and 72 percent thought they would not succeed. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.
But the criticism is all the more pointed from Jericho, the location of significant Christian, Muslim and Jewish archaeological sites and the first West Bank city to have been handed over to Palestinian Authority rule in 1994 as a result of the Oslo peace accords.
For a while, Jericho was best known for its highly profitable casino that opened up in 1998 and was mostly frequented by Israelis. But it closed after the outbreak of the intifada in 2000.
Today, Jericho, a Fatah stronghold, is the hub of the authority’s Western-backed efforts to rebuild and train the Palestinian security forces, one of the foundations of the future state.
“I follow the security situation hour by hour,” Mr. Jaabari said. “There is full security control here.” The goal, he said, was for “everyone to live in peace in two states, next to each other, in love, security and stability.”
“Unfortunately, from 1967 until this moment, there has been no real progress,” he said.
In October, an Israeli security chief told the Israeli cabinet that a plot had been foiled to assassinate Mr. Olmert during a planned visit to Jericho in June, which was canceled. The suspects, two of them still being detained, were Jericho residents affiliated with Fatah, the security chief said.
Mr. Jabari said the plot never amounted to more than idle chatter.
Jericho’s flagship institution, the Palestinian Security Sciences Academy, opened in October. There 150 officers from various security organizations all over the West Bank are studying for academic and security diplomas. A courtyard with a trickling fountain and flowerbeds leads to a spotless and elegant building.
Mr. Bush would be welcomed here, the academy officials say. “We are trying to build the institutions to manage our country in the near future,” said the college president, Nour Eddin Abu al-Rub, an academic from Jenin. “I am proud of this place. We are eliminating the competition” among the security apparatuses, he said.
The Palestinians’ future, he added, “depends on the United States, and especially on President George Bush.”
“We hope he will see our suffering, and how the Israeli occupation deals with the Palestinian people and land,” he said. “I hope he is sincere and honest and will do something.”