President Bush arrived in Israel on Wednesday to begin a weeklong trip in West Asia intended to overcome deep scepticism by Israelis and Palestinians about the prospects of a negotiated peace in the last year of Bush’s presidency.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres greeted Bush during a ceremonial arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, with Olmert telling him he had “the love and admiration of all the citizens of Israel”.

But Bush, making his first visit to Israel as President, almost immediately found himself confronted with the political and diplomatic controversies that have thwarted previous efforts to forge a Palestinian-Israeli peace.

A sign in a field, visible from his helicopter during the quick flight to Jerusalem, declared, “Hands off Jerusalem”, the city whose ultimate status remains among the most difficult issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians. A new barrage of rockets landed in Israel from the Gaza Strip. And Israeli settlers began erecting new outposts on Palestinian lands before dawn in Hebron.

The settlements and rocket attacks have threatened to derail the nascent progress Bush nurtured during an international conference in November in Annapolis, where the Israelis and Palestinians committed themselves to trying to negotiate a peace agreement in 2008.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also stirred controversy in remarks made to reporters on the eve of Bush’s visit and published here on Wednesday in which she suggested that the US opposed any Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, including those in Har Homa.

Official American policy has been deliberately ambiguous on the matter. Officials traveling with Bush declined to clarify whether Rice’s remarks reflected a shift in American policy or were intended to press the Israelis as part of the peace effort.

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