Rome's daily La Repubblica, the Dutch left-wing Trouw and the leading Czech paper Lidove Noviny all dubbed it "a virtual plan" that has not been signed by anyone currently in office.

But, like other Italian papers including La Stampa and Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica said "peace in the Middle East is possible".

The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia hailed "the bold solutions it proposes" to problems such as the creation of a Palestinian state and the status of Jerusalem, which have eluded peace-makers for half a century.

In contrast, the internationally-backed roadmap to peace "looks like an initiative that nobody believes in anymore," La Vanguardia said.

The left-leaning Paris daily Liberation also welcomed the plan, the fruit of two years of secret contacts between leading Palestinian and Israeli opposition politicians and intellectuals and backed by dozens of former world leaders such as Jimmy Carter, US president from 1976 to 1980.

"Unofficial diplomacy was probably needed to break out of the bloody circle in which Israelis and Palestinians were trapped," Liberation said.