WASHINGTON — President Bush is rejecting calls from Democrats — and a highly anticipated reported from a bipartisan commission — to prepare for a withdrawal and eventual exit from Iraq. Mr. Bush is also standing by the Iraqi premier, despite comments last month from his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, questioning whether Mr. Maliki could use his influence to stem a Shiite takeover of the Iraqi government.

In the press conference that followed his summit in Amman, Jordan, yesterday with Prime Minister al-Maliki, Mr. Bush questioned the wisdom of those advocating a “graceful exit” from Iraq, a clear signal to the White House, which is preparing to respond to the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to be published on Wednesday.

The study group, chaired by a former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former Democratic chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Lee Hamilton, is expected to recommend that America prepare to exit Iraq — but without setting clear timelines.

Taking an apparent shot at Mr. Baker and Hamilton, both of whom subscribe to the realist foreign-policy school, Mr. Bush said, “This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all. We’re going to help this government. … We have a government that wants our help and is becoming more capable about taking the lead in the fight to protect their own country.”

Those words are very different than what some Democratic leaders this week had hoped that he would tell Iraq’s embattled prime minister. A letter from five Democratic leaders in the Senate sent November 28 urged Mr. Bush to “advise” Mr. Maliki “that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is not open-ended and that the American people are impatient with the failure of the Iraqi political leaders to reach a political compromise.” The letter was sent on the same day that the supreme leader of Iran declared that now was the time for America to exit Iraq.

While Mr. Bush yesterday was forceful in adhering to his original vision for the war — that America leave Iraq after the nation has become a free democracy — he also hinted that his foreign-policy team was beginning to link the Arab-Israeli conflict to progress in Iraq and even Lebanon.

When asked about the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Mr. Bush said, “There’s no question that if we were able to settle the Palestinian-Israeli issue, it would help bring more peace to the Middle East. And therefore, our government is focused on helping develop the two-state solution.”

Secretary of State Rice yesterday was more explicit in a roundtable with reporters. While she conceded that the situations in Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon were different and that the problems should be solved on their own merit, she also suggested the issues were linked. “What is clear is that in all of those cases, you have the obvious contest between moderate forces and extremist forces, and I think that’s what is common to all of them. And you do have in all of those cases, as well, an Iranian factor that is undeniable.”

The question of a linkage between these policies is relevant because there is informed speculation, as The New York Sun reported last Wednesday, that one of the recommendations from the Baker-Hamilton commission will be to hold a regional conference where concessions from Israel are traded for promises from Iran and Syria to end meddling in Iraq. In September, the outgoing State Department counselor, Philip Zelikow, told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that movement on the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict was a “sine qua non” for Arab and European allies in America’s war on terror.

Indeed, the State Department had originally hoped that yesterday Amman’s Forum for the Future meeting would double as a plenary peace conference. However, that plan was scuttled after Hamas rejected an offer to recast the Palestinian Authority so as to empower members of the Fatah Party who have announced their acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.

Adding to the pressure for restarting the peace talks are the Saudis. King Abdullah last weekend reportedly told Vice President Cheney that some kind of process would be needed to entice the kingdom’s support for stabilizing Iraq. This kind of solution is familiar to Mr. Baker, who as President George H. W. Bush’s top diplomat planned the 1991 Madrid peace conference, the first forum whereby Israel officially recognized a Palestinian Arab national delegation, which at the time was represented through the Jordanians.

Since 2002, President Bush has consistently said his vision for resolving the conflict was “two states, living side by side.” In 2003, he tasked Secretary of State Powell to draft a road map with the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. But since 2004, his administration has worked with the Israeli government on their unilateral strategy of “disengagement” or “convergence,” that resulted in the withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005.

However, in the aftermath of the recent war with Lebanon, this policy has been all but abandoned by Jerusalem.