CAIRO: The Middle East resonated yesterday to the yearning for change which drove Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election, but many predicted he would dash their hopes for a fresh start in Middle East policy.

A mixture of hope and skepticism was the hallmark of Arab and Iranian popular reaction to the election of Obama, the first African-American president in US history.

“The region has many expectations. We hope (Obama) will help efforts to bring about permanent and just peace,” said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki. Abdel Galil Mustafa, the coordinator of the Egyptian protest movement Kefaya, said: “Obama is a good choice, because he is after change in American policies, from which we have suffered much over the last several decades.”

Leading Syrian journalist Thabet Salem said the Arab world rejoiced at Obama’s victory. “Not because he won but because it meant that President George W. Bush, who is regarded as a bloodsucker, and his clique, were gone,” he said.

The policies of Bush’s outgoing administration have had a direct and often violent impact on the Middle East, especially in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, where antagonism toward Washington is widespread.

Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 in the face of overwhelming Arab opposition and paid less attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict than any US president since Ronald Reagan. He included Iran is his “axis of evil” and encouraged Israel’s failed attempt in 2006 to crush the resistance movement Hezbollah in Lebanon. Many Muslims saw his “war on terror” as a covert crusade against Islam.

Obama now faces the challenge of repairing relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds while convincing Americans that he can also prevent a repetition of the 2001 attacks on US soil.

Gholamali Haddadadel, a senior adviser to Iran’s most powerful figure Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said: “Obama’s election displays the failure of America’s policies around the globe. Americans have to change their policies to rescue themselves from the quagmire created by Bush.”

Ali Aghamohammadi, another close aide to Khamenei, said: “We are not fully optimistic but with a real change in American policy there will be a capacity to improve ties.”

Iraqis said they wanted change in US policy but differed over whether that meant US troops should stay or leave. “I as an Iraqi am asking Obama to keep his promises about the withdrawal of the US security forces... We don’t need an occupation here,” said Iraqi journalist Baqi Naqid.

Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian rights activist, said: “The campaign itself did a lot to repair the damage done to the image of the United States over the past eight years. There is ... the nervousness of expecting big disappointments when it comes to our region.”

“I’m worried he might need to prove that he is a strong president or ... that he puts America’s interests first,” he told Reuters.

Many commentators mentioned the influence of Israel’s supporters in Washington and the possibility that they will restrict Obama’s freedom of movement in Middle East policy.

Mohammed Faid, a 72-year-old Palestinian living in Gaza, said he wanted Obama to treat the Palestinian people justly. He added: “We do not know him. Things are not clear now. We do not know whether he will follow the policy of his predecessor and bow to the Jewish lobby.”

The skepticism was especially strong among Arab liberals. “We hope that ... he adopts a just policy that restores to America its natural position of respect for humankind and democracy,” said Mohamed Mahdi Akef, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group and the main victim of Egyptian police repression for the past two years.

Only in Israel did politicians see continuity between the policies of the Bush administration and those of Obama. “We have no doubt that the special relationship between Israel and the United States will continue and will be strengthened during the Obama administration,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement.

In the Gaza Strip, an impoverished Palestinian territory besieged by Israel, some residents hope Obama’s triumph will bring change for them too. “I don’t think Obama will deviate much from established US policies, but it appears that his positions on the Palestinian issue are more flexible than those of the current president,” said schoolteacher Dunia Ismail. “He could have a different attitude toward Hamas,” she said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas congratulated Obama and urged him to speed up the peace process between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. “President Abbas congratulates US president-elect Barack Obama in his name and in the name of the Palestinian people and hopes he will speed up efforts to achieve peace, particularly since a resolution of the Palestinian problem and the Israeli-Arab conflict is key to world peace,” Abbas spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA from the Hungarian capital Budapest.

— With input from Mohammed Mar’i