Palestinians Give First Lady Special Praise

Of many standing ovations at the Shawa convention center Monday, one of the warmest went to the other Clinton in the house, the American president’s wife, Hillary.

Welcomed by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat as a “great and generous guest,” Hillary Rodham Clinton beamed to the audience, daughter Chelsea at her side. Clinton and Arafat’s wife, Suha, seemed genuinely friendly, walking arm in arm and whispering to each other as though sharing comfortable confidences.

While her husband is in Israel and the Palestinian territories to attempt to rescue an endangered peace, Hillary Clinton is making a few stops of her own. She visited a school for disabled children Monday. The day before, she went to an Israeli village where Arab and Jewish families live side by side.

Praised as a strong woman who stands by her family in the worst of times, she has attracted fans on both sides of the national divide. But especially among Palestinians, the first lady has earned special status because she is remembered for having declared, way ahead of American officialdom, her support for a Palestinian state.

“I think that it will be in the long-term interests of the Middle East for Palestine to be a state . . . that has responsibility for providing education and health care and economic opportunity to its citizens, a state that has to accept the responsibility for governing,” she said.

That statement in May set off alarm bells among Israelis, American Jewish organizations and an antsy U.S. State Department that was then attempting to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The president’s spokesman found himself having to distance Hillary Clinton’s comments from her husband’s official position.

On this trip, the Israelis have not mentioned their dismay over the matter, although Israeli television Monday night rebroadcast the comments, which the first lady made to a group of Israeli and Arab students.

And on Monday, as she visited Gaza children who serenaded her with drums and bagpipes, a reporter shouted out a question, asking whether she still supported a Palestinian state.

She ignored the reporter.

Instead, she announced an aid package of $73 million to Palestinian refugees and women’s groups.

Palestinians who jostled to catch a glimpse Monday of Clinton or her husband said they were grateful for her statehood statements.

“There was an impression that the U.S. was only a friend of Israel, but when she said these things and then came here, there was a change in that impression,” said Mahmoud Sawafira, working in his father’s small grocery store.

Amal Dabbagh and her daughters were hanging off their third-floor balcony to watch the festivities as the Clinton motorcade whizzed by. Dabbagh, 43, had stayed up all night cooking, and done all her cleaning in the morning, so that she would be free when the Clintons came to town.

“It is a very good thing for our people that she could come with her husband and visit the Palestinian people, and that we could see them with our own eyes,” she said.

In Israel, Hillary Clinton had admirers too.

“Hillary is a role model for me,” said Jocelyn Gross, a 23-year-old originally from Philadelphia who is “making aliyah”--immigrating--to Israel. “She’s an intelligent woman who can stand up for herself. And she dresses great.”