Israeli Premier Faces a Frosty Visit to U.S.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in the United States on Sunday to face a cool reception from a U.S. administration frustrated by the lack of progress on peacemaking and fury from the American Jewish community over religious conversion.

The Clinton administration is increasingly dissatisfied with what it sees as Netanyahu’s intransigence on Middle East peace talks and has declined so far to schedule a meeting with the Israeli leader during his three-day U.S. visit, which includes stops in Indianapolis and Los Angeles.

Publicly, U.S. officials have blamed President Clinton’s busy schedule for his failure to receive Netanyahu and said that, in any case, the two leaders are likely to meet before the end of the year. Privately, however, several officials said the snub, underlined by the fact that both men will be in Los Angeles on Monday morning, is intended to signal American displeasure with Netanyahu’s policies on peace.

At the same time, Israel’s relations with the American Jewish community are in unprecedented crisis over the emotion-laden issue of Jewish conversion, with many non-Orthodox American Jews furious at what they view as attempts in Israel to delegitimize their brands of Judaism. Netanyahu is expected to try to defuse the issue at a speech in Indianapolis on Sunday to the annual convention of the American Jewish Federations.

Discontent over the conversion issue and, to a lesser extent, the pace of peace negotiations runs deep among many American Jews. Experts who monitor Israel’s relationship with the Jewish Diaspora say there are several signs of trouble, including increasingly open criticism of the Israeli government by American Jewish leaders and recent suggestions to the Clinton administration to be more assertive in its dealings with both Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Overall, Israeli officials, U.S. diplomats and political analysts here stress, Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States remains unchanged, with military cooperation and $3 billion in annual economic aid unaffected by the recent troubles.

But the unusual conjunction of official U.S. frustration and Jewish community anger is cause for concern in Israel, with analysts and commentators warning that Netanyahu’s trip may serve to underscore his growing alienation from traditional allies in the United States. Those interviewed said, however, that it is unclear how much pressure might be brought to bear on him to change his political course.

“Both relationships are problematic right now, and each is influencing the other,” said Joseph Alpher, who heads the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee. “The Clinton administration’s readiness to be critical of Israel is partly because there is growing support among the Jewish community for a more assertive attitude from the administration.”

At the same time, he said, criticism of Netanyahu on the conversion issue has been heightened by the dissatisfaction of many American Jews over the lack of progress toward peace.

The legal battle over conversion, now on hold as a government-appointed committee struggles to find a compromise, involves proposed legislation that would codify an Orthodox monopoly on religious affairs that has existed since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. The bill, which would authorize only Orthodox rabbis to perform conversions in Israel, is backed by several small religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition.

The proposed law, which has passed a first reading in the Israeli parliament, would not affect conversions performed outside Israel but would stymie efforts by Reform and Conservative Jews to gain recognition for their movements in Israel. The two movements have relatively few adherents in Israel but represent a majority of American Jews.

Alpher of the American Jewish Committee said Netanyahu’s troubles in the United States are part of a growing credibility problem for the Israeli leader, at home and abroad. This week, members of the prime minister’s own Likud Party, including several government ministers, complained that he had deceived them in a successful bid to solidify his hold on the party by canceling its primaries.

“We’re looking at a broad phenomenon of erosion in the prime minister’s credibility,” Alpher said. “It began with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab leaders, moved to European leaders, the American administration and American Jews and is now a problem within his own coalition and party. It’s not clear what he will do to rebuild that trust.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who met Netanyahu in London on Friday, has become frustrated with the premier’s inability or unwillingness to move forward on the peace process, according to U.S. diplomats in Israel.

Netanyahu’s talks with Albright were arranged after the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in Washington ended without a breakthrough.

Aides said Albright had hoped to use evidence of progress in the talks to help persuade Arab leaders to send delegations to a regional economic conference in Doha, Qatar, which begins Sunday. With the peace talks stalled, however, a majority of Arab states have announced that they will boycott the U.S.-backed conference to express their criticism of Israel’s hard-line positions.

A senior U.S. official in Israel said the empty seats at the Doha conference will only underline to the Clinton administration the importance of “a living, breathing peace process” to U.S. interests in the region.

“The United States clearly has an interest in seeing substantive progress, beyond just process and meetings,” he said. “But our problem is, how do you influence this government to move in a direction that serves American interests without being seen as undermining Israel’s security needs? We have to find a way of being persuasive.”

Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has been in crisis since March, when Netanyahu’s government began work on a Jewish housing project in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem. The stalemate was deepened by a series of Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that claimed the lives of 26 people.

Since then, each side has accused the other of failing to carry out obligations detailed in their interim peace agreements. Albright visited the region in September and proposed that Israelis and Palestinians give the process a chance to work by taking a “timeout” from unilateral actions that damage trust. But they have yet to agree on what such a timeout would mean.

Israeli officials said the current level of U.S. pressure is easily withstood.

“Obviously, it’s unpleasant and embarrassing for the prime minister not to be received by Clinton,” one said. “But it hasn’t gone much beyond that at this point. Our job is to make it clear to the Americans that they need to be exerting effective pressure on the Palestinians and not on us.”