Bush Visits Israel to Promote Mideast Peace

TEL AVIV, Jan.9--President Bush on Wednesday launched his first visit to Israel since becoming president, exchanging warm words of support with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others as he began a final push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before leaving office next year.

Olmert told Bush the "bond between the state of Israel and United States of America is unshakeable," and described Bush "as our strongest and most trusted ally in the battle against terrorism." Israeli President Shimon Peres said, "We greet you as a great friend."

Bush offered similar rhetoric in his own brief remarks, drawing parallels between the United States and Israel and describing "a new opportunity for peace here in the Holy Land, and for freedom across the region."

"Our people have built two great democracies under difficult circumstances," Bush said. "The alliance between our two countries helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state."

Peres also touched on one of Israel's top priorities for Bush's visit, telling the U.S. president that Israel will "take your advice about understanding the Iranian threat." Administration officials have said one of Bush's goals for this eight-day Middle East trip is to reassure countries in the region about U.S. plans to deal with the potential for aggression from Iran.

Following a brief airport welcoming ceremony, in which Bush reviewed an honor guard and went through a receiving line of dignitaries, he helicoptered to Jerusalem, where he is to hold meetings with Olmert, Peres and other senior leaders and then meet with the reporters.

On Thursday, Bush will travel to Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

His trip will also include stops in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Briefing reporters on Air Force One, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said Bush would urge the Israelis and Palestinians to get negotiations back on track, despite what he termed recent distractions.

Those include Hamas militants firing missiles from Gaza, the narrow strip of Palestinian territory that the extremist group controls, and a controversy over Israeli housing settlements in East Jerusalem.

Rockets and mortar fire launched from Gaza landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday, shortly before Bush arrived in Tel Aviv, the Associated Press reported. Earlier, the Israeli army had struck at three groups of militants in Gaza believed responsible for firing projectiles into Israel, the wire service said. Hamas-led demonstrators also gathered in Gaza on Wednesday to protest Bush's visit, burning U.S. and Israeli flags and portraying Bush as a "vampire" -- a contrast to the official reception he'll likely experience in Ramallah, when he arrives to meet with Abbas, whose more moderate Fatah faction controls the West Bank.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders "need to get the negotiating process started and be personally involved in it and make it a priority," Hadley said.

He indicated that he does not expect Bush to be bringing new ideas for bridging differences on such thorny issues as the status of Jerusalem or the future borders of a Palestinian state, though he expects the two sides to give the president a sense of where they stand on such issues.

Talks between the two sides have foundered since the Annapolis conference in November, but Olmert and Abbas told their negotiating teams this week to begin discussing such so-called "core issues." Hadley said Bush's visit helped prompt this development.

Haldey defined the goal of negotiations as coming up with a plan setting out the parameters of Palestinian state by the end of the year. Actually implementing the agreement, he said, might take longer. "The details of a Palestinian state is for both parties to negotiate," he said.

Hadley also had tough words for the Iranian government over what he termed a "provocative" incident Sunday in the Persian Gulf in which Iranian ships menaced American ships.

Bush criticized Iran's behavior Tuesday, in a speech just before he left the United States."The Iranians need to be on notice that they are fishing in troubled waters here," Hadley told reporters on the plane.

Echoing the president's remarks from a day earlier, he said: "This is a provocative act, not a smart thing to do, and they're going to have to take responsibility for the consequences if they do it again."