Bush gets a warm welcome in Israel

By Steven Erlanger and Steven Lee Myers 
Published: January 9, 2008

JERUSALEM: President George W. Bush arrived in Israel on Wednesday for his first trip there as president, and while he had some tough messages to deliver about Israel's obligations to advance peace, he was welcomed effusively by one of his firmest supporters, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has also become a friend.

Their relationship is politically useful to both men, but they have also bonded - as politicians with difficult challenges, as sports fans, as fitness devotees and as two leaders who are both committed, in their own ways, to fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism.

For Olmert, beset by coalition troubles, a poorly run war in Lebanon and the looming final report of the Winograd Commission into that war, the close connection to Bush is both a lifeline and an insurance policy, that Israel will not be pressed to sacrifice its security to satisfy the American desire for a peace treaty.

Bush came here, and will go to the Palestinian territories on Thursday, to push Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to get serious about their negotiations and their obligations to each other, as written in the first stage of the "road map" for peace.

Under that plan, Israel is to stop settlement growth, dismantle unauthorized outposts built by settlers since March 2001 and lift more travel restrictions on the Palestinians. For their part, the Palestinians are to start to dismantle terrorist groups and build the institutions of a responsible future state.

Bush said this was a "historic moment, a historic opportunity," but added: "I'm under no illusions. This is going to be hard work." He made it clear that he would not impose terms on either party, saying, "America cannot dictate the terms of what a state will look like."

But America would help, he said, and whenever "a little pressure" would be required, he would be happy to provide it.

Iran also is a main theme of Bush's eight-day Middle East trip. He repeated his view that a potentially nuclear-armed Iran remains a danger, that Tehran must be deterred from seeking nuclear weapons and that if it halted a military weapons program in 2003, it could start one again.

Olmert said he was "encouraged and strengthened" by Bush's position on Iran.

Otherwise, there was little news in their news conference, which came before Bush was to meet with Abbas.

But it was another chance to judge the relationship between the two men. And it is the strength of their trust in one another - especially Olmert's faith in Bush's commitment to Israel's security - that may be the best chance for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement before the end of Bush's term.

However warm, the relationship is not one of equals.

"They have a strong personal rapport," said Miri Eisin, who just left the job as Olmert's spokeswoman. "But in the end, Bush is the leader of the free world, someone whose decisions affect the entire world. And you see the dynamics of that in the room."

Greeting Bush on Wednesday, Olmert told him: "Since I took office two years ago, you have become my personal friend and confidant." He continued: "You are our strongest and most trusted ally in the battle against terrorism and fundamentalism and a staunch supporter of our quest for peace and stability."

In an interview last week with The Jerusalem Post, Olmert said, "President Bush is a giant friend of ours," adding: "One of his most senior aides said that he doesn't know of another relationship with similar intimacy, a bond of souls, as that between Israel and the United States."

Bush, as usual, was more circumspect in his public comments. Part of that may be personality, but part also reflects the power of Washington and the need to try to seem even-handed between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In a pre-trip interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot, however, Bush said of Olmert, "I trust him, I like him and I think he's a man of strength."

Bush said that Olmert had a vision for the future: "A lot of times in the - this complicated world in which we live, we stay so focused on the moment that it's hard to see a vision that reaches beyond the immediate. And so when I talk to Prime Minister Olmert, I listen very carefully about his vision for the future, because what we're talking about at Annapolis is vision, is giving people something to be for, something to hope for."

On Wednesday, at their news conference, Bush said that each time he met Olmert, "I come away impressed by your steadfast desire, not just to protect your people, but to implement a vision that will lead to peace in the long term."

Bush has also spoken of Abbas, an older, more formal figure, as a man of vision and courage, but rarely in such a personal way.

Olmert, who is said to have begun his acquaintance with Bush with a little skepticism, has come to admire and trust him, his aides say. He believes that Bush, with his post-9/11 stance against terrorism and his belief in Israel's democratic values, is a dependable ally who understands Israel's security problems, both with the Palestinians and regionally, with Iran, and who is committed to defending Israel's existence.

Bush was said to have admired former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a war hero and resilient politician, and treated the older man with respect.

"With Olmert, there's not the awe Bush had of Sharon as a great warrior, a little like Bush's father," Oren said. "And it's not like Clinton and Rabin," he said, referring to President Bill Clinton and the assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, "because that was really love - there was also a father issue there, Rabin as the father Clinton never had, and he would speak to him in those terms."

Sharon, then lost in opposition, took Bush, then governor of Texas, on a helicopter ride over the settlements and battlefields that crystallized Bush's sympathies for Israel's security concerns, a senior Israeli official who worked for both Israeli leaders said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing private dealings between the leaders.

"With Olmert it's completely different," he said. "They're the same age. They're both runners. They both feel that most of the world is against them, which, I think, is not far from the truth."

Sharon also infuriated Bush at times, once by indirectly comparing him, in 2001, to Neville Chamberlain, warning Bush not to appease Arab nations the way that "enlightened democracies in Europe" appeased Hitler in 1938 by sacrificing Czechoslovakia. When discussing a freeze on settlements, including "natural growth," Sharon once asked Bush if Israel should give all pregnant settlers abortions, which did not go down well.

Bush often relies on the personal in his interactions with world leaders, responding to them based on his own sense of trust and honesty, as he famously - and, some say, wrongly - did with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Bush and Olmert share a keen interest in party politics, and try to help one another as politicians. On Wednesday, when Bush met Eli Shai, leader of the religious Shas party at the airport, he was well-briefed enough to ask him if it was necessary to pressure him to stay inside Olmert's coalition.

Daniel Levy, an Israeli analyst with the New American Foundation in Washington, said that Bush and Olmert had grown so close that the president was not invested in his political future, and willing to visit Israel so soon after the opening of the peace talks in Annapolis, Maryland, at least in part to bolster his standing before the Winograd report on the Lebanon war, due Jan. 30.

"He'll make sure he knows the extracurricular interest of his interlocutor," Levy said. He called it "an act of fidelity to Olmert."

But the disparity in the relationship was also clear in the gifts the two men exchanged. Bush gave Olmert - a soccer fanatic - a soccer ball, sports bag and cufflinks. Olmert gave Bush, who loves trail bikes, an Israeli national bike-team uniform, a water canteen emblazoned with "George W. 43" and a GPS for the handlebars, loaded with the trails on his Texas ranch and riding paths in Israel.

But not only that. When the GPS is turned on, the U.S. and Israeli flags appear, and the sentence: "To my friend George Bush, from one athlete to another, happy trails."