The Jerusalem issue has played into the campaigns to succeed Bush, with Barack Obama and John McCain both courting Jewish and Christian voters - and, in doing so, courting controversy.
When Obama tried to woo Jewish Democrats by saying Jerusalem "must remain undivided", Palestinian leaders protested he was prejudging negotiations. Obama said he had used "poor phrasing".
McCain's drive for support from evangelical Republicans went awry when he had to disown an endorsement from Texan preacher John Hagee - after media reported Hagee's view of the Holocaust as part of God's biblical plan for the Jews to move to Israel.
Some Israelis criticise Olmert for embracing evangelicals, including Hagee, who visited Olmert in Jerusalem in April.
The critics say some Christians' goal in supporting Israel is to provoke the prophesied apocalyptic showdown between good and evil in which Jews must perish or be converted to Jesus.
"Do we still need to point out that Jesus can return only after Armageddon and to this end it is best if Israel continues to be at war?" rival politician Colette Avital wrote last month.
Yet Olmert, who once called the Christian community the most politically powerful in the world, was not the first Israeli politician to tap the evangelicals for money. He was, however, one of the most aggressive after being elected mayor in 1993.
"Olmert gets it," said Yechiel Eckstein, founder of a group that has raised nearly $500 million for Israeli and Jewish causes, mainly from Christians. Eckstein, a rabbi, set up the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews in 1983.
Olmert's bond with evangelicals is rooted in his platform as mayor of keeping Jerusalem united. Palestinians accuse him of spearheading Jewish settlement round the city, dividing Arab East Jerusalem from the West Bank, both occupied by Israel in 1967.
Olmert headed the New Jerusalem Foundation, set up in 2000 to fund charity projects in the city, and records filed with Israel's Justice Ministry show that groups like Eckstein's International Fellowship were among the largest donors.
In Israel, the New Jerusalem Foundation, which is now headed by Olmert's successor as mayor, said in a statement to Reuters that it was not under investigation and described the US branch as a "separate legal entity" that it never oversaw.
Public documents indicate financial links between the two.
