Clinton’s Young Audience Reflects Israel’s Chasms

Standing quietly in the crowd of students eagerly awaiting President Clinton’s arrival at the Binyanei Hauma convention hall here Sunday, Naama Dadon seemed subdued and a little concerned.

The curly-haired 17-year-old, a student at a religious school near Tel Aviv, said she had debated turning down the opportunity to hear Clinton, an honor that was afforded to only a few thousand handpicked Israeli high school students. Dadon decided in the end to come but still felt uneasy, she admitted.

“I don’t like it that President Clinton is pushing [Israel] so hard toward peace,” she said, frowning. “He doesn’t think about how it is dangerous for us with the Palestinians right now.”

Across the convention center’s jampacked foyer, though, Eran Laor, 16, of Tel Aviv could barely contain his excitement at the idea of seeing Clinton and hearing his public appeal for progress in a peace process that has stalled yet again.

“He is the only one that can move this forward, and I believe he is trying, very hard, to do a great thing for our people: He wants to bring us peace,” Laor said firmly as his buddies gaped at their suddenly serious friend.

The students who gathered to hear the beleaguered U.S. president--and no doubt buoyed his spirits by welcoming him as if he were a rock star--reflected the deep fractures that the latest peace agreement has created in this nation, already divided between left and right, religious and secular, Arab and Jew.

But they greeted Clinton with whoops, whistles and sustained applause during a nationally televised speech in which he urged Israelis not to lose the dream of a lasting peace with the Palestinians. “Hope is not an illusion,” he said.

Under the Oct. 23 accord reached at Wye Plantation in Maryland, Israel agreed to transfer to the Palestinians more West Bank land in exchange for concrete security guarantees by the Palestinians. Each side now accuses the other of not living up to its obligations, and Israel two weeks ago suspended further troop withdrawals.

Many Israelis have been stunned in recent days by an upsurge of violence in the West Bank, the outgrowth of Palestinian anger over the issue of which prisoners in Israeli jails qualify for release under the new accord. Clashes stemming from the prisoner dispute left four young Palestinians dead in the West Bank last week.

Growing numbers of Israelis also have been targeted in rock-throwing and more serious incidents. On Sunday, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl reportedly stabbed and lightly injured a 17-year-old Israeli outside a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

The violence has been matched by political turmoil, with right-wing and religious parties now threatening to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a no-confidence vote next Monday.

Amid the tumult, Clinton arrived here late Saturday on a three-day mission aimed at rescuing a peace that seems under siege. But some said his presence was helping to create the violence, as extremists used the visit to gain attention.

“We’re in the middle of a peace process, and this morning a Palestinian girl stabbed an Israeli girl. Why?” asked Gadi Cohen, a falafel stand worker in Jerusalem’s central vegetable market, Mahane Yehuda. “Because Clinton is here, and it negates the whole process.”

At the convention center, however, many of the students, who were drawn from a variety of high schools throughout the nation, said they were grateful for Clinton’s attempts to rescue the accord he brokered seven weeks ago near Washington. And some said he should exert even more pressure on Netanyahu to move forward with the peace process.

“I hope that Clinton’s presence will influence those elements that require American pressure to push them into making the necessary and right moves,” said Lior Kotler, 17, of Givatayim. “And it is the Israeli side that needs more pressure at the moment.”

Like Dadon, however, a few said they feared Clinton would use his visit to try to push Israel too hard, too fast, if only to distract attention from his troubles at home.

“We need peace, but not exactly this way,” said Michal Gold, 16, of Bnei Brak, a predominantly religious community near Tel Aviv.

Outside Clinton’s hotel, demonstrators with conflicting views and competing chants did their best to influence the U.S. president or anyone else within earshot.

“No to violence! Yes to peace!” shouted the leftists.

“Clinton, go home!” replied a handful of extreme right-wingers, adding, “Go mess with Monica!”--a reference to the president’s current imbroglio because of his affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.