News Brief15:05 PM

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a point of telling ministers in the weekly Sunday morning cabinet meeting this week that US President George W. Bush never visited Israel during the administration of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"He (Bush) was in close touch with my predecessor, Ariel Sharon, but he had not visited Israel during his seven years in office until last week. This was his first visit," he noted, adding that Bush plans to return to the region. "In a few months, around Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations, he will pay another official visit in order to attend the festivities," he said.

Although Olmert was the architect of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza known as the 2005 Disengagement, which evicted some 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gush Katif and northern Samaria, the expulsion was carried out by the government of then-Prime Minister Sharon. The former prime minister has been in a vegetative state since suffering a massive stroke in January 2006. Most of the families whose homes were destroyed in the Disengagement have remained without permanent homes and many are still jobless as well.