As he left for Kuwait, President Bush promised on Friday to return in May for Israel’s 60th anniversary, a visit that could serve as additional pressure on both Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate a peace treaty by the end of his term.Protesters, some with placards, burned makeshift American and Israeli flags in Bahrain, where Mr. Bush will be Saturday.
Mr. Bush made it clear to the two sides that he would be involved to the extent they proved serious about making peace, and that the United States could not want a settlement more than they did. And he did his best to shore up both leaders, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who are politically weak.
At a dinner with Mr. Olmert and senior members of his fractious coalition on Thursday night, Mr. Bush urged the coalition members to get behind Mr. Olmert, despite their political differences, and to work to advance peace, saying the current situation was not sustainable, one attendee said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the dinner was private.
Mr. Olmert, whose popularity is low, faces another challenge on Jan. 30, with the expected release of the final report of the state-appointed Winograd Commission into the handling of the war in Lebanon in 2006. Mr. Olmert has said he will not resign no matter what the report says.
“There’s a good chance for peace, and I want to help you,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Olmert on Friday before getting on a plane. But there are few Israelis or Palestinians who second Mr. Bush’s assertion that a peace treaty will be signed this year.
The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, attacked Mr. Bush on Friday for giving Israel “all the required pledges to solidify its occupation and to wipe out basic Palestinian rights and sacred issues, while he gave Palestinians more illusions and slogans.”
In particular, Mr. Haniya vowed that Palestinians would never give up what they considered their right to return, with their descendants, to their original homes in what is now the state of Israel.
The idea of a Palestinian state as the sole homeland for Palestinian refugees is “totally unacceptable to us and can in no way commit our people and the next generations,” Mr. Haniya said. “The problem of Palestine will remain alive.”
Hamas is opposed to Mr. Abbas’s talks with Israel and rejects any territorial compromise that allows Israel to retain any land beyond its pre-1967 boundaries. Hamas’s charter calls for Israel to be expunged, but Mr. Haniya and some others in Hamas have said they could accept a long-term truce with an Israel that pulls back from all its territorial gains made in the 1967 war.
While Mr. Abbas was a polite host, other reactions showed discontent. Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said of Mr. Bush: “He is adopting the Israeli position regarding a settlement: no return to the ’67 borders, no return for refugees, no return of all East Jerusalem. Actually, these are the conditions of Israel. It will be extremely difficult for any Palestinian leader to accept all three.”
For Mr. Bush, Friday was an emotional day of tourism at sights special to Jews and Christians. He visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. At least twice, Mr. Bush had tears in his eyes, said Avner Shalev, the chairman of the museum.
At one point Mr. Bush stopped before aerial photos of the Auschwitz death camp taken by American planes during World War II, and asked Ms. Rice why the American military did not bomb the camp. “We should have bombed it,” he told her, Mr. Shalev told reporters later.
Ms. Rice, asked by reporters on the plane to Kuwait about the comment, said they had been discussing the reasons the wartime allies had not bombed railway lines to Auschwitz. Calls to the museum and its representatives, made as the Jewish Sabbath began, were not answered.
As governor of Texas in 1998, Mr. Bush visited the old Yad Vashem museum; this one, opened in March 2005, is both larger and more modern, telling the story of the Holocaust through the experiences of individuals.
When he emerged, Mr. Bush said, “I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it.” He continued, “I was most impressed that people, in the face of horror and evil, would not forsake their God.”
Mr. Bush laid a wreath and lighted a torch in memory of the victims. A cantor sang a Jewish prayer for the dead, and a children’s choir sang a Hebrew song written by Hannah Senesh, a poet and parachutist killed in World War II and considered a national heroine.
In the memorial’s visitors’ book, the president wrote, “God bless Israel, George Bush.”
He then took a helicopter to the Sea of Galilee, walking out onto a pier with two friars in brown robes, who pointed toward the spot where Jesus is said to have walked on the water, according to pool reports. Mr. Bush held hands with two elderly nuns outside the Church of the Beatitudes, where Jesus is said to have delivered the Sermon on the Mount.
He was given a crystal memento inscribed with some of the most famous words of the sermon: “Blessed are those who are peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Asked how he felt to walk where Jesus had, Mr. Bush said, “Amazing experience.” Archbishop Elias Shakur, a Greek Catholic, showed Mr. Bush around and asked him, “Did you come as a politician, as a leader of state, or as a pilgrim?”
Mr. Bush answered, “I came as a pilgrim,” the archbishop said.
After Mr. Bush’s departure, Jerusalem had barely returned to normal before the Sabbath began. While he was here, roads were closed, cars were towed and central Jerusalem, near the King David Hotel, where he stayed, was nearly empty; the few pedestrians visible wore uniforms and carried guns.
The King David Hotel itself was reserved for the American delegation, and Israeli taxpayers spent about $25,000 for every hour that Mr. Bush was in the country for security expenses, not counting the loss of business.
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