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Bush Ends Visit to Israel, Walks in Jesus' Footsteps (Update2) By Holly Rosenkrantz and Janine Zacharia Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush called it ``amazing'' to walk in the footsteps of Jesus as he wrapped up a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas during which he outlined a framework for peace talks between the two sides. Bush, a devout Christian, flew by helicopter from Jerusalem to visit Christian holy sites in Israel's Galilee region, stopping first in Capernaum, which according to the Gospels is where Jesus first began to preach and performed miracles. Standing among ruins of an ancient synagogue on the bank of the Sea of Galilee, Bush smiled as a Franciscan father in a long, brown robe read him a Bible passage about casting out the unclean spirit. After his tour of Capernaum, Bush was given a crystal inscribed with his name and the Biblical passage: ``Blessed are those who are peacemakers for they will be called children of God.'' He then traveled to the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus delivered his Sermon on the Mount. Grasping the hands of two nuns, Bush said it was an ``amazing experience'' to walk in Jesus' footsteps. ``This isn't an everyday occurrence,'' he added with a laugh. Bush's visit to the Galilee came a day after the president -- who in a 2000 presidential debate with Democrat Al Gore famously named Jesus as his favorite philosopher -- visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, site of Jesus' birth. Sightseeing Unusual This amount of sightseeing is unusual for Bush, whose foreign travels often consist almost entirely of meetings with officials with perhaps a brief stop at a local chocolate shop. Before visiting the Galilee today, Bush toured Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum that commemorates the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazis during World War II. Donning a royal blue, Jewish skullcap, Bush, employing language he often uses to describe world threats, called the Holocaust museum a ``sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when evil exists we must resist it.'' Bush toured the museum alongside Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres. He said he was heartened that people don't ``forsake their god'' when faced with horror, rekindled the museum's eternal flame and laid a wreath on behalf of the U.S. Auschwitz, U.S. After the tour, officials at Yad Vashem told reporters that Bush was moved to tears by the museum and even told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to stop the killings during the Holocaust. Rice later clarified that Bush asked her during the tour why the American government decided against bombing the site. In Israel, Bush tried to stimulate meaningful peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He pledged to return to Israel at least one more time during his term in office and to regularly dispatch Rice. Bush yesterday said he believed a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians could be reached before he leaves office in a year. In a statement meant to formulate a starting point for negotiations, Bush yesterday called for an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, said he understood the difficulty of negotiating a future for Jerusalem, and called for the creation of new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the question of Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars. Will Return Before boarding Air Force One at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, Bush said he had accepted the invitation to return to Israel for its 60th anniversary celebrations. Israeli Independence Day is May 8. After his sightseeing today, Bush left Israel for Kuwait, a staging ground for U.S. operations in Iraq and his first stop on a tour of five Arab states. He meets tonight with the Kuwaiti emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah and shifts his focus from Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking to the war in Iraq and Iran. He is scheduled to meet with General David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq and with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, before addressing military personnel and coalition forces at Camp Arifjan. From Kuwait, Bush travels to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter. Those countries face Iran across the Persian Gulf, the conduit for a quarter of the world's oil. A Jan. 6 confrontation between U.S. and Iranian naval forces in the Gulf's Strait of Hormuz prompted the White House to caution Iran to avoid ``provocative actions.'' America's Commitment The U.S. called the Iranian conduct threatening, while Iranian have characterized it as a routine request for identification. The U.S. said one of its ships was on the verge of firing before the Iranians broke off. Bush has proposed $11 billion in arms sales to Gulf allies to strengthen their defenses. In his radio speech on Jan. 5, Bush said one reason for his visit to the Arab nations was to ``assure them that America's commitment to the security of our friends in the region is strong and enduring.'' His final stop on his Middle East tour will be Egypt, the only country on his itinerary that he has previously visited as president. To contact the reporters on this story: Janine Zacharia in Jerusalem at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net ; Holly Rosenkrantz in Tel Aviv at or hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net . Last Updated: January 11, 2008 18:03 EST http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=home&sid=ar9Arx8hfl0o |
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