JERUSALEM – President Bush called for a halt to Israel’s military occupation of land the Palestinians claim for a state and an end to the terrorist threat over the Jewish homeland, spelling out the U.S. bottom line Thursday for ending the long and bloody Mideast conflict.

“Now is the time to make difficult choices,” Bush said. An agreement will require “painful concessions” by both sides, Bush said, but he predicted one could be reached within a year, putting himself more firmly on the line than ever for an achievement considered unlikely by many experts.

The White House said Bush would return to the Mideast at least once and possibly more this year, including another stop in Israel for its 60th anniversary celebrations in May.

Bush came away with no breakthroughs or apparent concessions from two days of separate talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian West Bank. There was no joint meeting of the three leaders, but Olmert and Abbas assured Bush they were serious about reaching an agreement.

Bush’s peacemaking checklist, combining existing U.S. policy with a few new elements, was his most detailed summary yet of U.S. expectations for resolving some of the hardest issues in a final peace accord. He outlined his position in a five-minute statement to reporters summoned to a room in the King David Hotel, overlooking Jerusalem’s holy and historic Old City.

The biggest hurdles to an agreement are: conflicting claims to the holy city of Jerusalem, different views about the outlines of a future Palestinian state, and the fate of Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants. Bush pointedly dodged the Jerusalem question, simply calling it “one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace.”

As if to jolt Israel into action, Bush deliberately used a loaded term – occupation – to describe Israeli military control over the West Bank, the territory that would eventually form the bulk of an independent Palestinian state.

This is how Bush described the opening point for peace negotiations:

“There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent.”

AP Diplomatic Correspondent Anne Gearan and AP reporters Diaa Hadid and Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.