Bush's Legacy on Israel Debated on Eve of Visit

"Looking retrospectively, I seriously doubt there could have been anything achieved, even if the administration had brought all its efforts into this area," he said in an interview.

Israel remains the preeminent military power in the Middle East. It has nuclear weapons, strong conventional forces and the capability to strike at will, as it did in September when it destroyed what it believed to be a Syrian nuclear facility.

Last year, Israel signed a 10-year, $30 billion arms deal with Washington aimed at keeping that edge for years to come. Support for Israel's security from across the U.S. political spectrum appears "unshakable," as Obama put it in his own appearance at the Israeli Embassy celebration Thursday.

Still, Bush's approach to strengthening the U.S.-Israeli relationship has been unique -- and perhaps surprising to the Israelis, given their tense relations with his father, President George H.W. Bush, over West Bank settlements and other issues. The younger Bush came to power in 2001 with a basic sympathy to the Jewish state, nourished by a famous 1998 trip to Israel as Texas governor in which he was given a helicopter tour of the tiny country by then-Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon.

By the account of aides and those on the trip with him, the visit impressed Bush with a firsthand sense of Israel's tenuous security.

Once in office, Bush came to believe that the aggressive approach to brokering peace pursued by President Bill Clinton was a mistake--both because the United States could not, in his view, impose a solution on the two sides and because he believed Yasir Arafat to be an untrustworthy interlocutor for the Palestinians.

Bush moved early on to shun Arafat and to make clear he would deal with the Palestinians only if they put forward leaders "not compromised" by terrorism. The move was controversial, but Bush aides argued that it allowed the revival of a peace process late in his term, after Arafat died and was replaced by Mahmoud Abbas.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush also identified Israel as a bulwark of his anti-terrorism efforts and showed complete sympathy for any steps Israel considered necessary to protect itself, even those criticized by the rest of the world. His strong support, during a four-year campaign of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants, cemented the affection many Israelis now feel for Bush -- and secured the admiration of leading Jewish groups in the United States.

"He increasingly became convinced that democracy is the ultimate tonic to the issues that plagued the Middle East," former White House adviser Dan Bartlett said. "The one true democracy that is a friend of ours is Israel."

But the commitment to democracy has had a price. Bush pressed Israel to allow elections in the Palestinian territories, which led to unexpected victories by Hamas, considered a terrorist group by both Israel and the United States.

Hamas, with the backing of Iran, has since seized power in Gaza and has repeatedly fired rockets into southern Israel. "Now Iran is on Israel's border," said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel.

Over the course of his administration, Bush has enjoyed warm relations with two Israeli prime ministers, including the present leader, Ehud Olmert, who has lavishly praised him and his policies. But Olmert's predecessor, Sharon, obtained perhaps Bush's biggest concession to Israel: a 2004 letter that made explicit the U.S. view that Israel should not have to return to its pre-1967 borders.

The letter has been widely interpreted in Israel as a green light to construct settlements in part of the occupied territory that Israel hopes to retain in final negotiations with the Palestinians on the contours of a new state.

The fear among many conservatives is that a final peace deal now sought by Bush could compromise these commitments. Dore Gold, a onetime adviser to Sharon and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said it is too early to know the Bush administration's impact on Israel.

"If that agreement divides Jerusalem and strips Israel of defensible borders, then many will wonder about what precisely was the Bush legacy," Gold said.