Netanyahu Glowers, Arafat Glows as Clinton Visit Nears

To hear him talk about it, you’d think Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expecting the visit of an irritating in-law, not the leader of the free world and Israel’s best ally.

“What am I going to tell him, not to come--don’t come?” Netanyahu said Monday of President Clinton, who is scheduled to arrive here Saturday night. “I can prevent him from coming?”

And over the weekend, Netanyahu had this to say to his Cabinet: “If he wants, he’ll come. If he doesn’t want, he won’t come.”

Such underwhelming enthusiasm may seem a strange way to greet an American president whose administration is regarded as the friendliest ever to Israel and Israeli interests.

By contrast, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, with whom U.S. relations through the years have improved from hostile to rocky, is positively glowing at the upcoming trip.

“Historic,” Arafat said Monday of the impending visit. “Great.”

Despite U.S. assurances to the contrary, the first visit by a sitting American president to Palestinian-ruled territory is being seen here as tantamount to official recognition of a fledgling, sovereign Palestinian state.

That so infuriates Netanyahu and many in the Israeli government that they are eager to downplay the significance of the trip, which the Clinton administration intended as a boost for the troubled land-for-security agreement brokered by the U.S. in October.

While some Israeli Cabinet ministers urged Clinton to postpone his visit, Netanyahu has gone so far as to deny that he ever invited Clinton in the first place.

U.S. officials insist that the idea for the visit came from Netanyahu during the marathon peace talks at Wye Plantation in Maryland, when it was thought that Clinton’s appearance before the Palestine National Congress in Gaza City would lend weight to a meeting in which that body was to void clauses in its charter that call for Israel’s destruction.

Netanyahu’s government now refers to that meeting, scheduled for Monday, as a “masquerade ball” that will “pervert” the original purpose, claiming that Arafat has reduced the agenda to empty formalities. In the aftermath of the Wye negotiations, Netanyahu had to answer tough questioning from his Cabinet about who invited Clinton, anyway.

“One of the dangers is that the Palestinian Authority gets the feeling that they are totally backed by this great democracy,” Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, a hard-line former army commander, said in Washington. “We welcome President Clinton to visit . . . but we think that all of us have to be careful not to create false expectations that only add frustration and tension.”

Netanyahu’s turn as reluctant host bemused, angered and chagrined commentators and the political opposition here. The Palestinians were also surprised, and perhaps a bit gleeful.

The fact that Israelis and Palestinians see Clinton’s three-day visit to Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank so differently underscores the shift in their respective relations with Washington.

Palestinian officials make no secret about regarding the arrival of the American head of state in their territory as the granting of Palestinian legitimacy, heralding a new friendship with the Americans spawned by successive peace talks. Palestinian organizers in Gaza announced Monday an itinerary for Clinton befitting an Arab royal, complete with a midday feast, a nap and fawning delegations. It was not clear the White House would go along with any of it.

On the other hand, the personal relationship between Clinton and Netanyahu has been a chilly one, and it is not helped by any perception of deference to the Palestinians.

Israeli officials, whose nation has long had uniquely close economic, military and diplomatic ties with the U.S., chafe at the suggestion that a Palestinian state is being recognized. The final status of Palestinian areas is supposed to be decided next year.

“For the last 50 years, Israel’s national security has been based on the covenant between Israel and the USA [that] provided Israel with exclusive American support against the whole of the Arab world,” leftist political commentator Uri Avneri wrote in Monday’s Maariv daily.

“Now this is all changing. The American-Israeli covenant will continue to exist, but it has stopped being exclusive. There is now an American-Palestinian covenant alongside it, which although not equal, changes the equation by its very existence.”

With the Wye pact, the U.S. role shifted as well. The Americans are now much more active as arbiters, called on to assess violations and assign blame. The Israeli government, and Netanyahu in particular, may now regret having accepted that new dynamic, since it could, in effect, put the Israelis and Palestinians on a par with each other.

Assurances from Washington that White House organizers of the Clinton trip would be evenhanded in balancing events in Palestinian areas with appearances in Israel also riled senior Israelis.

“We have nothing against equality,” said one senior official, “but saying that we are a state and they are a state . . . is insulting and worrisome. If you treat the Palestinians as a sovereign power, you are predetermining the end of [final-status] negotiations.”

Parliament speaker Dan Tichon announced that he will boycott Clinton’s events because the president is not making a call on the parliament. Clinton spoke there during a 1994 visit to Jerusalem.

Uri Dromi, who served as spokesman for the Labor Party-led government that Netanyahu defeated in 1996, recalled Clinton’s visit to Israel earlier that same year, shortly after devastating terrorist attacks killed several dozen Israelis.

“The bottom line [of Clinton’s message] was we were not alone in this world, that we had a great ally and personal friend named Bill Clinton who came in such a time of agony for Israel,” Dromi said. “For the greatest ally of Israel to be given this kind of welcome now is unbelievable.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.