JERUSALEM - Israeli politicians expressed hope of a change in French policy towards the Middle East Monday following the election victory of Nicolas Sarkozy, while Arab leaders called for a continuation of longstanding French support.
In Israel, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu described Sarkozy, who has a Jewish grandparent, as "a friend of Israel" who was likely to pay greater heed to the security needs of the Jewish state.
Among the Palestinians, both president Mahmud Abbas and the Islamist Hamas party which leads the government expressed hope that his election would spell no change to French support.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke to Sarkozy over the phone "to congratulate him on his victory in the name of the state of Israel," Olmert's office said.
The French president-elect told Olmert: "I am a friend of Israel and Israel can always rely on my friendship," it added.
Olmert said in a statement that he was "convinced that the relations between Israel and France will develop and deepen during his mandate."
Netanyahu said that "with Sarkozy, France's politics will be much more balanced.
"He is sensitive to Israel's security needs and can make himself heard in Arab countries."
The Israeli press was equally enthusiastic.
"A new era in relations with France," said a front-page headline in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot.
"The Jewish origins of the next Catholic French president have provoked large hopes in Jerusalem," it said.
The Palestinian president "congratulated Mr Sarkozy on his election to the presidency and expressed to him his hope that France will continue its support for the Palestinian people and their rights," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
He also expressed hope that Sarkozy would "work toward lifting the siege" a reference to a freeze on direct aid to the Palestinian government imposed by the West after the Islamist Hamas movement, considered a terror group by the European Union and the United States, formed a cabinet alone in March 2006.
The Islamists formed a coalition with Abbas's secular Fatah party on March 17 in the hope of securing an end to the aid freeze but the European Union and the United States have so far refused to resume aid, saying the government must first renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals.
A Hamas spokesman also expressed hope of French support for an end to the aid freeze.
"We hope that this change will lead to cooperation with the national unity government and that Sarkozy will contribute to lifting the siege against the Palestinian people and support their legitimate rights," Fawzi Barhum told AFP.
King Abdullah II of Jordan said he hoped Sarkozy would continue to maintain close French relations with the Arab world.
"France has strong and historic relations with Jordan and all Arab counties and has been always a key supporter of Arab causes, in particular the Palestinian cause," the official Petra news agency quoted the king as saying.
Syria, which had difficult relations with France under outgoing President Jacques Chirac, said it hoped for a more constructive relationship under Sarkozy.
Chirac was a close friend of billionaire Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri, who was killed in a 2005 bombing widely blamed on Syria, and has strongly resisted any opening to Damascus.
"We are expecting Mr Sarkozy to reevaluate relations between France and Syria which have been strained over the past two years because of the prejudiced views of the outgoing president towards Syria," the editor of government daily Ath-Thawra, Khalaf al-Jarad, told AFP.
"We are hoping for relations based on objectivity and not the sort of personal animosity that characterised the Chirac era."
05/07/2007 15:20 GMT