Netanyahu will turn up empty-handed

The US Secretary of State, Mrs Madeleine Albright, has given Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, an ultimatum: by next Wednesday, when the two are scheduled to meet, his government has to decide how much more of the West Bank it is prepared to hand over, immediately, to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Mrs Albright was dismayed, to put it mildly, when Mr Netanyahu turned up for their two consultations in Europe last weekend without detailed maps showing the scope of the overdue Israeli West Bank withdrawal. Next time, she is understood to have made clear, he had better arrive with his maps, marked out to show at least 10 per cent more of the West Bank ready to go over to Palestinian rule.

Although Mrs Albright is privately said to be furious with Mr Netanyahu's delaying tactics, and increasingly sceptical about his professed fundamental commitment to peacemaking with the Palestinians, she has not, as far as is known, yet resorted to threatening the Israeli Prime Minister as to the repercussions of further Israeli evasion. But officials close to her have been dropping small hints about the areas in which American anger might make itself felt.

For starters, it seems that the US administration will itself reject any Israeli West Bank land offer that falls below 10 per cent, sparing Mr Yasser Arafat the need to do so. The administration would also probably begin publicly attributing blame to Mr Netanyahu's government for the collapse of peace hopes, eschewing the even-handed "both sides need to take tough decisions" formula it has followed hitherto.

More dramatically, the administration might move towards overt support for independent Palestinian statehood, again eschewing the traditional formula, under which the US always said that the final status of the Palestinian territories would be resolved in the course of the negotiating process. Further down the line, if Israel still refused to budge, there is the prospect of reduced aid - Israel receives an annual $3 billion - and of a real fracturing of the Israeli-American strategic partnership.

That even the more mild of these possibilities are now on the agenda is astonishing, given the previously rock-solid nature of Israeli-US ties, and the more so in the light of President Clinton's genuine personal regard for the Jewish state. But the US administration is evidently reaching the conclusion that its determinedly non-critical mediating stance - which has seen it refrain from pressuring an Israeli government that, for 18 months, has done virtually nothing to advance peace hopes and a great deal to kill them - is gravely weakening its prestige throughout the Middle East.

Its tolerance of Israel's obduracy, for example, led several Arab leaders to wonder loudly, when called on for support by the US during the latest weapons inspection flare-up with Saddam Hussein, why Iraq was being asked to honour UN resolutions while Israel was allowed to ignore them year after year. In a similar vein, moderate Arab state after moderate Arab state rejected US pleas that they attend last month's Middle East economic summit with Israel in Doha, and ignored US calls to boycott this week's Islamic summit.

Instead of Iran and Iraq being isolated, it is Israel that is now the regional pariah, and its diminishing number of allies, most obviously Turkey and the US, which are suffering for their association with Mr Netanyahu's government.

Mr Netanyahu knows the Americans are incensed with him; he can't even get into the White House to see Bill Clinton any more. He knows, too, that his country has a great deal to lose through a reorientation of the Middle East that sees Iran and Iraq playing more central roles. And yet he procrastinates.

He has offered a 6 or 8 per cent West Bank pull-back, when the US demands at least 10 per cent and the Palestinians 30 per cent, because he wants to avoid turning some of the smaller settlements, in the heart of the West Bank, into isolated enclaves, surrounded by Palestinian-held territory.

These minor outposts, "political settlements" as the late Yitzhak Rabin would scathingly call them, were planted close to Palestinian towns mainly by governments led by Mr Netanyahu's own Likud party, precisely so that Israel could never abandon those parts of the West Bank. The Prime Minister is balking at the ideological volte-face a troop withdrawal would represent.

Ideology apart, he has good reason to be personally reluctant as well to sanction a major land handover. His right-wing constituency may have forgiven him for pulling Israeli troops out of most of Hebron at the start of this year - he was merely honouring an inherited agreement. But the more extreme among them would have trouble swallowing any further "concessions."

Already, Mr Netanyahu has seen his features, in Arab head-dress, pasted on billboards across Jerusalem under the heading "The Liar." Death threats have been phoned, faxed and mailed in to his home and office. And even if Mr Netanyahu, like Mr Rabin, chooses to shrug off the personal threat, there is a very real prospect of his political career dying over the withdrawal issue. About a third of his coalition members say they would rather bring him down, even if that helped the Labour Party back into power, than vote for a further substantial West Bank pull-out. Likud leadership rivals are gathering like vultures.

A bold, decisive prime minister could probably find a way out of this imbroglio. Were he to suddenly announce a desire to carry out the kind of withdrawal the Americans are demanding, explain to his hardline coalition members that they are better off with him at the helm than they would be under Labour, and use his considerable public relations skills to remind his rank-and-file supporters of the benefits of improved relations in the region and further afield, he could yet emerge triumphant.

But Mr Netanyahu has shown himself to be neither bold nor decisive over the past 18 months. And so he will probably turn up emptyhanded again to see Mrs Albright next week, Mr Arafat's failing credibility among his people will take another blow, and US displeasure with Israel will make itself increasingly felt.

Unless, that is, the Islamic extremists in Gaza or the West Bank perpetrate a new bombing outrage against Israel. Then, of course, Mr Netanyahu will insist that he has every right to dig in his heels, and demand more action against the bombers from Mr Arafat before any more land is handed over. And the US would find it hard to argue with him.

David Horovitz is the managing editor of the Jerusalem Report