In these troubled times, security for the President's Middle East road show requires the logistics and hardware fit for a small invasion. When Bush touched down in Israel on Wednesday, he was preceded by three C-5 Galaxy aircraft — the U.S. Air Force's heavy lifter — crammed with dozens of armored cars, computers, jamming devices, weapons, packs of bomb-sniffing dogs, Secret Service agents, and a contingent of snipers, some of whom who were later spotted on a rooftop in Bethlehem hiding behind a fake Santa.
When Bush paid a visit to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's home, the presidential convoy had dozens of armored cars, even though Olmert lives just a few blocks away from the historic King David hotel where Bush was staying. Still, compared to other stops on Bush's Middle East wing, Israel is considered comparatively safe. The Israeli police, well-experienced in dealing with suicide bombers, are unmatched in the world when it comes to security. More than 4,000 Israeli police and soldiers stopped traffic and cordoned off chunks of Jerusalem whenever the U.S. President drove through.
But venturing into the Palestinian West Bank was another matter. Palestinian militants are no friends to Bush, who is viewed as fervently pro-Israeli and a "vampire" out to suck Muslim blood. Nor did it help that an al-Qaeda member — a Jewish American convert to Islam — had issued a communique urging Muslims to greet the President "not with roses and applause, but with bombs and booby-traps."
The safest way would have been for Bush to fly on one of two U.S. Chinook helicopters to cover the short distance from Jerusalem to the Palestinian headquarters of President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. But fog rolled into the Judean hills on Thursday, grounding the Chinooks. Instead, Bush set off by road in his serpentine 45-car motorcade riding in one of many identical bomb-proof limousines. The convoy sped by refugee camps and bounced over potholed roads to Abbas's compound. Meanwhile, a senior Israeli police official told TIME that Israel Special Forces and an emergency medical team were at the ready on the outskirts of Ramallah in case of an assassination attempt — they were particularly watchful for a car bombing. "The Americans didn't take any chances whatsoever in dealing with us or with the Palestinians," the official said. "They did everything to break the routine, do the opposite of what a terrorist might expect."
Working with Abbas's own security force, the American advance team cased out houses around the Muqataa compound where the two leaders would meet. Palestinian police arrested more than 300 militants belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. One Israeli police official said that the American delegation, fearing that a bomb might be hidden in the table or chairs where Bush and Abbas were talking, decided to bring their own furniture from Washington. On the day itself, Palestinian soldiers lined the roads and closed off traffic.
The same was true in Bethlehem, where even children were kept off the roads and many, including the wife of TIME correspondent Jamil Hamad, were forbidden by soldiers to glance out the window of their own homes. At Manger Square, in front of Jesus' birthplace, American security experts were spotted prying up manholes to check sewage pipes for bombs. These draconian security precautions prompted one Palestinian official, who opposes his own President's close ties with Bush, to comment: "What's all this fear? Is it because the Americans and Palestinians running this show know they're doing something wrong?"
Thanks to all these precautions, Bush's foray into the West Bank passed without a hitch. But the real challenge for the presidential phalanx of bodyguards will come when his tour moves on to possibly more dangerous territory — Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — where Bush is even less popular. With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem and Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem