On First Trip to Israel, Bush Hopes to Inject Vigor Into Peace Talks

"It's almost a tradition that lame-duck presidents make a swing to the Middle East, including Israel," said Michael B. Oren, a prominent historian of the Middle East at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. "It is traditionally a victory lap. This is a victory lap without a victory."

Bush administration officials sought to play down the difficulty in getting negotiations on track since Annapolis, citing the interests of groups on both sides to undermine the negotiations.

"The extremists have made clear that they view democracy and those people who try to build it as enemy number one," U.S. national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters last week. And you see it in the shelling that you see coming from Gaza into Israel, as an effort to undermine this process that got started in Annapolis."

In addition to the increased violence, a fresh dispute emerged last month over Har Homa, a Jewish settlement built in the late 1990s on a hilltop on the outskirts of Jerusalem that Israel annexed after the 1967 Middle East war.

Olmert pledged before the Annapolis conference to halt new settlement construction, although he did not say whether Israel would stop building in existing settlements. The Israeli government unveiled plans in late December for 307 new housing units in Har Homa, infuriating Palestinian leaders, who consider it a violation of the road map's demand that Israel "freeze all settlement activity."

"This settlement's very existence is already provocative, so talking about expanding it is obviously provocative, particularly at this sensitive time," said Elias Rishmawi, a city council member in Beit Sahour, a neighboring Palestinian settlement. "The implications of more building are the end of the peace process."

In a round of interviews last week, Bush made clear he intends to push the Israelis to halt so-called outposts, or unauthorized settlements the Israeli government has pledged repeatedly to remove. Olmert acknowledged in an interview with Israeli reporters last week "a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised."

The dearth of cooperation was evident last week during a four-day Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus. A bolstered Palestinian Authority police force over recent months had made it "the most stable and quiet city in the West Bank," according to an article last Tuesday in a prominent Israeli daily newspaper.

Dozens of Israeli armored jeeps arrived the same day to sweep up weapons caches and wanted suspects.

In Gaza, talk of peace contrasts starkly with recent clashes between Israeli forces, using aircraft and armored vehicles, and Palestinians fighters launching rockets and moving openly in crowded streets. Olmert said Sunday that his government had ordered a new offensive partly in response to the firing of the Katyusha, a rocket with a longer range and larger payload than the homemade version usually fired from Gaza.

An Israeli military spokesman said the rocket had been made in Iran, and local news reports said it was smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

"The talks have allowed Israel to commit all types of crimes and atrocities in Gaza, while the world stays silent," Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said in an interview in Gaza City.

The Israeli town of Sderot, less than five miles east of the volatile boundary with Gaza, has been targeted in recent weeks by daily rocket and mortar fire, with warning sirens sounding frequently to give residents a few seconds to take cover.

"They are talking about peace and compromise, but the mistake we made was pulling out of Gaza in the first place," said resident Nomi Zolberg, referring to Israel's decision to dismantle its army bases and evacuate its Jewish settlements there in 2005. "If we keep making deals, it will never stop."

Abramowitz reported from Washington. Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.