First Lady Shrugs Off Protests
Laura Bush said Monday she was not surprised to be met by protesters during her tour of Mideast holy sites and pledged the United States will do all it can to help resolve age-old conflicts.
Palestinians heckled her at the Dome of the Rock mosque, and Israelis at the Western Wall, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger.
One worshipper shouted, "Why is your husband killing Muslims? How dare you come here."
"These are some of the most holy places ... emotions always run high," the first lady said Monday on CBS News' The Early Show. "These are very, very emotional places. They're sacred places to religions."
Bush said the protesters who heckled her during Sunday's visits did not surprise her and she denied that they overshadowed her goodwill visit.
"I think maybe the reports that you all have seen have been slightly exaggerated. The crowds were mainly photographers, as you might guess, and press," she Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "I never felt at all unsafe, and no one in my party felt unsafe at all."
After visiting the Church of the Resurrection in Abu Ghosh, "where Jesus revealed himself to the two disciples ... this beautiful 12th century church," she insisted she was welcomed by most people, and said the Arab town within Israel shows that different religions can live side-by-side.
"Like in very, very many parts of Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians live in peace with each other," she said.
On this trip, Bush has taken pains to appear even-handed and upbeat, saying that Israelis and Palestinians are as close to achieving peace as they've ever been, reports CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins.
"I met with a group of Israeli women earlier. I just had tea with a group of Palestinian women. All of them, many of them mothers, say what we all want is peace," Bush said.
As Bush toured the 12th-century church, nuns and monks sang Psalm 150 in Hebrew as a symbol of the religious cultures coexisting in the region.
While Bush was being heckled in Israel Sunday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced an angry demonstration in New York. While giving a speech to the leaders of major Jewish organizations, protesters clad in orange T-shirts with "Gush Katif forever" printed on the back interrupted the prime minister's speech, shouting, "Jews do not expel other Jews!" when Sharon started talking about his Gaza disengagement plan. Gush Katif is a bloc of Jewish settlement in Gaza.
From Israel, Bush traveled to Cairo, where she met with Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak at Ittihadiyya Palace. The two women then taped a segment for "Alam Simsim," the Egyptian version of "Sesame Street," with a peach-colored puppet named Khokha. "Mama Suzanne" and "Auntie Laura," as Khokha called the first ladies, talked about the importance of reading to children.
Bush's low-key travels Monday were in contrast to her stops Sunday at sites sacred to Muslims and Jews.
At the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, protesters demanded that the U.S. release Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American imprisoned for spying for Israel. During a visit to the Dome of the Rock, she faced heckling from angry Palestinians.
Bush's five-day visit to the Middle East, which also included stops in Jordan and Egypt, was intended partly to help defuse anti-American sentiment in the region. Strains have arisen because of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and allegations that American interrogators have mistreated Muslim prisoners.
Bush said her visit has been very moving for her.
"To go to the Western Wall, to leave my prayer at the Western Wall, to go to the Dome of the Rock, to see these sites that are so important to three great religions that all came from the Holy Land ... what it reminds all of us — and certainly reminds me — is how important this area is for the world," she told The Early Show.
Some visitors that Bush encountered near the Dome of the Rock, a mosque on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, shouted at her in Arabic. "None of you belong in here!" one man yelled as Bush and her entourage arrived.
Bush removed her shoes as she entered the mosque and walked barefoot on the red carpet. She held a black scarf tightly around her head as she gazed up at the gilded dome and the colorful mosaics.
Despite the chaos at both sites, Bush kept smiling and said little.
As she left, visitors and media grew so aggressive that Israeli police locked arms to form a human chain and pushed by Israeli media and protesters who got to close. U.S. Secret Service agents packed tightly around her.
Pollard's supporters also held up signs outside the residence of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, where Bush had tea with his wife, Gila Katsav, and other Israeli women.
No protesters were evident when Bush had lunch with leading Palestinian women at a hotel in Jericho, a West Bank town that Israel recently turned over to Palestinian control, or when she visited the ruins of an 8th-century palace in Jericho and appealed for peace.
"It will take a lot of baby steps, and I'm sure it will be a few steps backward on the way," she said.
"But I want to encourage the people that I met with earlier and the women that I just met with that the United States will do what they can in this process. It also requires the work of the people here, of the Palestinians and the Israelis, to come to the table, obviously. And we'll see."