Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Gaza  - While Israelis reacted with a mixture of excitement and trepidation to the election of Barack Obama as US president Wednesday, enthusiasm was noticeably lacking among Palestinians.

"American policy is very clear and will not change. It is totally biased toward Israel," said Mohammed Midyeh, a mathematics lecturer in the West Bank city of Ramallah, expressing a common opinion.

"The only difference between the two is their colour. Their policies will remain biased toward Israel, anti-Arab and anti- Muslim," agreed Yasser Saed, a 28-year-old NGO employee in Gaza City.

Throughout the election campaign, Palestinians expressed a clear preference for Obama over John McCain, who they believe would have continued the "disastrous" policies of George W Bush in Iraq and toward the rest of the Arab world.

But they also expressed a consensus view that they had no illusions that Obama would do more for the Palestinians than previous US presidents.

The radical Islamic Palestinian Hamas movement which rules the Gaza Strip did not bother with diplomatic niceties when its spokesman said Obama should "rethink American foreign policy and stop the clear bias toward the (Israeli) occupation." He urged the US president- elect to end Hamas' international isolation and start a dialogue with it.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival secular Fatah party, urged Obama to "speed up" the Middle East peace process and get involved in it "immediately." Analysts said this was unlikely to happen.

"I am not convinced, or on the contrary, am convinced that Israel and the Middle East won't be a priority for Obama," said former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman. Obama, he pointed out, Obama was elected against the background of an economic crisis which would demand "all of his energy and attention" in the coming months.

Officially Israel warmly welcomed the election of the first African-American US president as "historic," a "badge of honour for American democracy," an "end of racism," in the words of caretaker Premier Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres respectively.

But Gillerman expressed a common concern among some Israelis when he called Obama a "big question mark."

"We don't know Obama well enough. We don't know his opinions and certainly he is, at least portrayed as, a man who does not have a lot of experience in foreign relations," the former senior Israeli official told Israel's Channel 10 television.

While some Israelis said they feel McCain would have made a more staunchly pro-Israeli and experienced president, many seemed to have been caught in the wave of exhilaration that Obama has managed to generate around the globe like perhaps no other US presidential candidate.

Many Israeli Jews, not least those of Sephardic or oriental origin, expressed widespread and strong identification with Obama as the underdog, who overcame generations of racism to become the country's first African-American president.

"I am very, very happy," said Avivit Dadia, 48, pointing at the goosebumps on her forearms as she was talking. Her parents, she explained, had had a difficult start in Israel as Jewish immigrants from Morocco in the 1950s and she "got to where I got on my own merits, just like Obama."

Ibrahim Shalabi, 49, an Arab Israeli who owns a shawarma place in central Tel Aviv, was more blunt. "For years the whites screwed the blacks. Now the blacks have screwed the whites," he enthused. Arab Israelis and Jews originating from Morocco to Yemen alike were "all proud of him, because we are dark-skinned like him."

Dadia, sipping coffee at a Tel Aviv cafe, dismissed the argument that McCain would have looked out better for Israel's interests. On the contrary, perceived as more neutral by Palestinians and the Arab world, Obama will be in a better position to mediate, she argued.

"I think Obama is a man of justice. He won't look only at the Israelis or only at the Arabs. America must make peace here and he has an advantage to make the connection between both peoples." (dpa)