WHEN Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, flew home last night he took back a warmer endorsement from President Bush than many expected.

He also won backing from the House of Representatives — and a vote to clamp down on the Palestinian group Hamas — that is too vigorous for the White House’s comfort.

The comedy in the summit, the first between Bush and Olmert, was the US insistence that the 2002 “road map” peace plan was still alive. It isn’t.

But all the same, the US has a point: that it is hard to see peace persisting without a negotiated settlement and hard to see far along Israel’s chosen road of unilateral withdrawal.

In a statement analysed into fragments around the world, Bush declared: “Today Prime Minister Olmert shared with me some of his ideas. I would call them bold ideas . . . (that) could be an important step toward the peace we both support.”

In headlines in a dozen countries some called it encouraging of Olmert’s plans; others discouraging. The evidence for “encouraging” is stronger. Olmert got the minimum he needed in flying to Washington: support for his plan of unilateral separation from the Palestinians. He is proposing to pull about 60,000 Israeli settlers from 72 communities in the West Bank but to expand those settlements with hundreds of thousands of residents and unilaterally to decide the border, marking it with a wall or “security fence”.

Palestinians say that Israel is grabbing and claiming land that it captured in 1967, but which they need for a future state.

Bush pointedly qualified his support. He urged Olmert to pursue talks with the Palestinians, adding: “I believe Prime Minister Olmert agrees that a negotiated final-status agreement best serves the Israelis and the Palestinians and the cause of peace.” Bush said that an eventual settlement should be based on the principle of two states living side by side. This is the essence of the 2002 road map, which envisaged parallel concessions by each side, although it did not stipulate the final division of territory or rights.

It has withered in stages since then; the election in January of the Palestinian radical group Hamas as the dominant force in government was the final blow, if one were even needed.

Bush carefully made a distinction between Abbas, the leader of the more moderate Fatah faction, who “speaks out for peace”, and Hamas, “who does not”. During the meeting between Bush and Olmert on Tuesday the House of Representatives prepared to vote on cutting aid even further to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority because of its refusal so far to recognise Israel.

The measure, approved by 361 votes to 37, would cut off aid to non-governmental groups working in the West Bank and Gaza, except for those involved in health, and it would limit Bush’s authority to waive those bans.

The move, which the White House opposed, also split the Israeli lobby in the US. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, backed the passage of the Bill, but the Israel Policy Forum did not.

Critics argued that the move would undermine the American ability to negotiate peace. The Senate is working on a more moderate version that allows more leeway for dealings with those who are not part of Hamas.

For all Bush’s endorsement of Olmert’s plan, Israel’s plans for a unilateral exit from selected parts of the West Bank have left the US wrong-footed.

Successive teams of negotiators since 2002 have invested great hopes in the road map as a way of keeping the two sides talking and even allowing a solution to emerge.

The implosion of the Palestinian Authority since Israel’s exit from Gaza last summer has bolstered Israel’s claim that there are no Palestinians with whom it can talk.

But US officials are acutely uneasy that the way ahead, under the present Israeli plan, is obscure and does not obviously lead to peace.

Israel won Bush’s agreement this week that there was no immediate alternative.

But it was also given a reminder of the US view that, in the end, peace will mean talking to the Palestinians.

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