AQABA, Jordan — Under the firm hand of President Bush, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, on Wednesday pledged to begin dismantling some "unauthorized outposts" of settlements in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, declared for the first time that "the armed intifada must end."
The Palestinian commitment to terminating the 32-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israel and the Israeli decision to dismantle immediately some settlement outposts on West Bank hilltops appeared to constitute the first fruit of the Bush administration's decision to become centrally involved in the quest for a Middle East peace.
Bush has now thrust himself into the often treacherous role of Middle East peacemaker that U.S. presidents have played for the last quarter century, but which he himself had avoided until now.
"The Holy Land must be shared between the state of Palestine and the state of Israel, living in peace with each other, and with every nation of the Middle East," Bush said as he stood between Sharon and Abbas, with the brilliant blue waters of the Gulf of Aqaba at his back. King Abdullah II of Jordan, who was the host of the summit meeting at his summer palace in this Red Sea port city, stood to Abbas' left.
Later, speaking to reporters in a rare presidential briefing on Air Force One, Bush defined his new role in the Middle East as both a judge and an enforcer.
His job, he said, was "to keep the thing moving, to keep the process moving," adding: "I used the expression 'ride herd.' I don't know if anybody understood it in the meeting today."
In his statement on Wednesday, Bush pledged to send a team of U.S. monitors to the Middle East to help carry out the current peace plan, called the road map, and to try to keep both parties talking. The team will be led by John Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.
"This mission will be charged with helping the parties move towards peace, monitoring their progress and stating clearly who was fulfilling their responsibilities," the president said.
In his statement, Abbas promised "a complete end to violence and terrorism," as well as the collection of illegal weapons and a stop to any encouragement of violence by Palestinian institutions — apparently a reference to schools and the news media. But he did not spell out how he would achieve those aims.
Speaking first of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel, he added: "We do not ignore the suffering of the Jews throughout history. It is time to bring all this suffering to an end."
Sharon delivered a more cautious statement that fell short of the more sweeping remarks U.S. diplomats had drafted and then negotiated, word by word, with Israeli officials. He did pledge to begin dismantling some clusters of trailers and tents that have been set up by Jewish settlers, but he implied that action would be taken only against those outposts that Israel considers to be illegal.
Two senior Israel officials said on Wednesday that there were perhaps 20 such outposts, although they said Israel had not determined the precise number.
All three leaders offered versions of the same formulation — two states "living side by side in peace and security." But while Bush and Abbas spoke of "Israel and Palestine," Sharon balked at uttering "Palestine," a politically freighted word in Israel, and referred instead to "Israel and a Palestinian state."
Sharon also omitted any reference to ending Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as American diplomats had hoped he would. Sharon shocked and infuriated his right-wing allies last week by using the word "occupation" to describe the status of the West Bank, territory that his Likud Party has always referred to as disputed.
Instead, Sharon offered a variation on his previous statement that Israel could not continue to control 3.5 million Palestinians. "It is in Israel's interest not to govern the Palestinians, but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state," he said.
Nonetheless, Bush said he was highly satisfied with the commitments of both sides. "Some amazing things were said," the president told reporters on Air Force One. "The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority talked about the suffering of the Jewish people. The prime minister of Israel talked about a Palestinian state."
In his remarks in Aqaba, Bush referred for the first time to his commitment to Israel's security as "a vibrant Jewish state, " a formulation that both sides interpreted to mean that Palestinians refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants would not be granted a full right of return to what is now Israel. Some Palestinian officials also viewed it as a slap at Israel's one million Arab citizens.
While the words and their meanings were intensely parsed by both sides, the White House had also gone to remarkable lengths to create the visual moment, with Bush as its center, that they hoped would be stamped in memories of the day.
White House operatives requested that Abdullah finish his new summer palace in time for the summit meeting, and went so far as to have the Jordanians build a wooden bridge over the pool at the palace so that the four leaders could walk side by side over the water toward the cameras, where each read a statement on a lush lawn that edged the beach.
Before the statements, Bush met first with Sharon, then with Abbas and then with the two together. Finally, the president met with both Sharon and Abbas, first in a house on Abdullah's property and then for 40 minutes outdoors under a tree. Earlier, the three leaders greeted an army of photographers and reporters.
Journalists began shouting at the trio to shake hands, a request that seemed to startle the three men. Abbas and Bush then said something to each other, and Bush was heard to say, "Let's wave." Bush and Abbas were the first to wave, and then Sharon joined in, apparently after Bush said something to him.
The peace plan calls for Israel to affirm a vision of an "independent, viable, sovereign" Palestinian state. Of those adjectives, Sharon used only one, viable. Sharon envisions a Palestinian state in only part of the West Bank and Gaza, with no army of its own and Israel in control of its borders and airspace.