While the one term of US President George H. W. Bush, who died Saturday, is defined largely by the end of the Cold War and the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein, it should also be remembered that Bush Sr. was tough on Israel, perhaps more than any other occupant of the White House. Despite his inability to mediate a long-term peace settlement between the Palestinians and Israel, Bush’s readiness to confront Israel forced Tel Aviv to concede that it would not get a free pass simply because of its historical ties with Washington.

When on March 6, 1991, Bush told Congress, “The time has come to put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict”, that declaration culminated in the Madrid Peace Conference in October that year. The conference for the first time gathered all of the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation - a historically unprecedented event.

But in the run-up to the conference, Bush had to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who opposed it. Bush pressured Shamir by withholding $10 billion in loan guarantees that he had requested to help settle Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. Bush insisted that Shamir would have to promise that the funds would not be used to finance new settlement activity in the occupied territories.

Shamir and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington decided to push hard for their request but Bush pushed even harder, asking Congress for a 120-day delay on the loan guarantees. Bush not only gained congressional support for the delay, but following that, Shamir caved in, the diplomatic pieces soon fell into place and the parties convened in Madrid. The bilateral Palestinian-Israeli negotiations eventually led to the most comprehensive agreement brokered in the history of the conflict to that point, the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The request for Israeli loan guarantees sparked a political showdown between Shamir’s Likud government and the Bush administration and was a test of the latter’s resolve. What in effect the Israeli government wanted was to expand its population further into Palestinian territories. The administration did not see populating settlements as Israel did, a “humanitarian issue”.

Bush took on the Israel lobby, no small feat. He was holding up $10 billion to Israel until he received assurances it would not fund settlements. The building of hundreds of thousands of illegal homes on Palestinian land that Jews regard as their ancient homeland were settlement colonies, hugely complicating the peace process. The settlements were the reason for the start of talk of Bantustans and apartheid in the West Bank.

Bush was not alone in his steadfastness. He had Secretary of State James Baker who might as well have been a Palestinian official when, at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the Israeli lion’s den, he called for Israel to “lay aside once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel”, cease the construction of Israeli settlements in West Bank and Gaza, forswear annexation of more territory, and to treat Palestinians “as neighbors who deserve political rights”. It was Baker who famously gave Israel the White House phone number if it were serious about peace.

The Bush years signaled that the pro-Israel Reagan years were over. With his unambiguous show of determination and will, he kept Israel second-guessing as to American policy. He might not have gotten exactly what he wanted from Israel, because he had to deal with Shamir who would later admit that he wanted to drag out peace talks with the Palestinians for 10 years, while vastly increasing the number of Jewish settlers to half a million in the West Bank. But Bush was successful in keeping Israel in check, deciding that to give Israel what it wanted Israel had to give something in return.