page_title: Israel–United States relations
section_title: George W. Bush administration (2001–2009)
hierarchical_section_title: Israel–United States relations / Foreign policy of US government / George W. Bush administration (2001–2009)
context_page_description: Israel–United States relations refers to the bilateral relationship between Israel and the United States. Since the 1960s the United States has been very strong supporter of Israel, and promoted good relations between Israel and Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, while holding off the hostility from other Middle Eastern nations, especially Syria and Iran. The relations are a very important factor in the United States government's overall policy in the Middle East, and Congress has placed considerable importance on the maintenance of a close and supportive relationship.
  Since 1985, the United States has provided nearly US$3 billion in grants annually to Israel, with Israel being the largest annual recipient of American aid from 1976 to 2004 and the largest cumulative recipient of aid since World War II. Seventy-four percent of these funds must be spent purchasing US goods and services. More recently, in fiscal year 2019, the US provided $3.8 billion in foreign military aid to Israel. Israel also benefits from about $8 billion of loan guarantees. Almost all US aid to Israel is now in the form of military assistance, while in the past it also received significant economic assistance.
context_section_description: President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon established good relations in their March and June 2001 meetings. On 4 October 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, Sharon accused the Bush Administration of appeasing the Palestinians at Israel's expense in a bid for Arab support for the US anti-terror campaign. The White House said that the remark was unacceptable. Rather than apologize for the remark, Sharon said that the United States failed to understand him. Also, the United States criticized the Israeli practice of assassinating Palestinians believed to be engaged in terrorism, which appeared to some Israelis to be inconsistent with the US policy of pursuing Osama bin Laden "dead or alive".
  In 2003, in the middle of the Second Intifada and a sharp economic downturn in Israel, the US provided Israel with $9 billion in conditional loan guarantees made available through 2011 and negotiated each year at the US–Israel Joint Economic Development Group.
  All recent US administrations have disapproved of Israel's settlement activity as prejudging final status and possibly preventing the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state. However, President Bush noted in an April 14, 2002 Memorandum which came to be called "the Bush Roadmap" (and which established the parameters for subsequent Israel-Palestinian negotiations) the need to take into account changed "realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers", as well as Israel's security concerns, asserting that "It is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." He later emphasized that, within these parameters, details of the borders were subjects for negotiations between the parties.
  At times of violence, US officials have urged Israel to withdraw as rapidly as possible from Palestinian areas retaken in security operations. The Bush Administration insisted that United Nations Security Council resolutions be "balanced" by criticizing Palestinian as well as Israeli violence, and it vetoed resolutions which did not meet that standard.
  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not name a Special Middle East Envoy and did not say that she would not get involved in direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations of issues. She said that she preferred to have the Israelis and Palestinians work together, traveling to the region several times in 2005. The Administration supported Israel's disengagement from Gaza as a way to return to the Road Map process to achieve a solution based on two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. The evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip and four small settlements in the northern West Bank was completed on 23 August 2005.
caption: Mahmoud Abbas, George W. Bush, and Ariel Sharon after reading statement to the press during the closing moments of the Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, Jordan, June 4, 2003.
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