The Republicans weren't consistently "the party of Israel" before 9/11.
The issue wasn't positioned as front and center back then, but if you were very pro-Israel, you wouldn't be dissuaded from voting Republican because you felt they weren't sufficiently pro-Israel.
The closest you ever got to that was George H. W. Bush's first term, and he underwent a dramatic course correction as he geared up for reelection, in no small part to try to placate the increasingly powerful evangelicals in his party.
There were people like Paul Findley and Charles Percy who expressed skepticism about the US-Israel relationship, but they never exercised any real influence on that issue.