In a year-end piece in the New York Times in 2008, columnist Bob Herbert wrote that the majority of Americans would be glad to say good riddance to the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, who vacated the White House this week after eight years in office and was replaced by the first African-American president, Barack Obama.

 Blasting Bush’s foreign and domestic policies, Herbert observed, “This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantanamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad…”

It’s clear that Bush left a legacy of anger and distrust, but in Israel he was highly regarded. On Bush’s first official visit to Israel last January,  the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, hailed him as Israel’s “strongest and most trusted ally.” As he put it, “Your policies have reflected a basic understanding of the challenges facing Israel in this troubled region and a solid commitment to our national security.”

In a speech to the Knesset during that visit, Bush solidified his reputation as one of the most pro-Israel of presidents. “The alliance between our governments is unbreakable,” he declared, saying it is guided by “clear principles and shared convictions” that will not be affected by “popularity polls” or “shifting opinions of international elites.” Praising Israel as “a light unto the nations,” Bush said  that Israel could always count on the United States “to be at your side.”

Revisiting Israel several months later during its 60th anniversary celebrations, Bush reiterated America’s commitment to the Jewish state, noting the United States was “proud to be Israel’s closest ally and best friend.”

Not surprisingly, Bush stuck by Israel in his final days as president, as the current war in the Gaza Strip unfolded. His administration accused Hamas of having provoked hostilities by breaking the six-month ceasefire and continuing to fire rockets at Israel, agreed that Israel had acted in self-defence and called for a durable and lasting truce. In yet another demonstration of loyalty, the United States vetoed a one-sided Libyan resolution at the United Nations.  

Washington, however, supported a call by the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers – the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia – for an immediate truce and abstained on a resolution, proposed by Britain, France and Arab states and passed by a 14-0 margin, calling for “an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire.”

The Israeli government was disappointed by Washington’s decision not to veto the UN resolution altogether, but Israel could take solace from the fact that the Bush administration had, in effect, given Israel still more time to press its ground invasion of Gaza. Lest it be forgotten, Washington adopted a similar position during the 2006 war in Lebanon, when Israeli forces fought Hezbollah.

Bush, a born-again Christian, was predisposed to Israel from the outset. On his first-ever visit to Israel in 1998, when he was governor of Texas, he was taken on a helicopter ride of the country by the then-foreign minister, Ariel Sharon, who sought to impress upon him that Israel could ill afford to make sweeping geographical concessions to the Palestinians. Bush formed a close bond with Sharon and described him as “a man of peace” after he became Israel’s prime minister.

As Bush campaigned for the presidency, he spoke to key members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential lobby based in Washington. In comments that would define his attitude to Israel, Bush said that the United States and Israel had “a special friendship” and asserted that his support of Israel was “not conditional on the outcome of the peace process.”

Bush, in the aftermath of the Islamist terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, placed the Arab-Israeli conflict on the back burner and concentrated on defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Suggesting that his predecessor, Bill Clinton, had spent too much time trying to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria, Bush refrained from appointing a permanent special envoy to the Middle East.

Instead, following the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, he dispatched two emissaries to the region – George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Anthony Zini, a former U.S. general – in what proved to be a futile effort  to broker a ceasefire. Yet he did not promote Israeli talks with Syria.

The Bush administration severed relations with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, after Israel intercepted the Karine-A, a ship carrying Iranian weapons and munitions to the PA. Like Israel, the United States boycotted Arafat. Nonetheless, Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, criticized Israel for launching raids into Gaza in response to the first Qassam rocket attacks.

Despite his antipathy to Arafat, Bush was the first American president to explicitly call for a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution. But as he said in a landmark 2002 speech, the Palestinians required a leadership that was “untainted by terrorism.” With Arafat’s death and his replacement by Mahmoud Abbas, the United States reopened its relationship with the PA and resumed financial aid to the Palestinians.

Bush embraced the 2003 “road map” peace plan, which set out the terms for a resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. But the initiative crumbled because the United States did not exert sufficient pressure on both sides to fully abide by its conditions.

In 2004, in one of his most significant speeches on the Middle East, Bush tacitly recognized Israel’s claim to several settlement blocs in the contested West Bank. As he put it, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

Alongside this statement supporting Israel’s refusal to return to the pre-1967 borders, the United States chided Israel for expanding settlements in the territories, building in disputed eastern Jerusalem and tolerating unauthorized outposts. Washington also asked Israel to ease its restrictions on the lives of Palestinian civilians in the territories and advised Israel to build its new separation barrier along the border rather than inside the West Bank. Bush’s second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, worked to revive the road map. But the 2007 Annapolis agreement turned out to be a dead letter, notwithstanding Olmert’s claim that a lot of progress had been made in Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Bush, in keeping with his commitment to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge over the Arab states, approved a $30-billion aid package to Israel over 10 years, allowed Israel to buy state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets and deployed an advanced radar system in the Negev, manned by American personnel, to guard against a potential missile attack by Iran.

But while Bush pledged that he would never permit Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal, he declined to sell Israel a new generation of bunker-busting bombs or let Israeli aircraft overfly Iraq in case Israel decided to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.

He portrayed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a victory for democracy in the region and as a gift to Israel’s security. But given the resultant chaos in Iraq and the empowerment of the Shiite community, Iran has managed to increase its influence in Iraq, a development that Israel views with great concern.