THE Israeli official was only half joking when he said they had brought out the anti aircraft artillery to meet President Jacques Chirac's plane at Tel Aviv yesterday morning.
Israel's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister had categorically rejected Mr Chirac's proposal, made in Damascus at the weekend, for European cosponsorship of the peace process. When delivering a prepared speech yesterday afternoon, Mr Chirac thought it more diplomatic to delete a reference to cosponsorship.
The French president tried in vain to soften hostility to his visit. The speaker of the Knesset relented on an earlier vow to boycott Mr Chirac only after the French leader altered his schedule to include a stop at the assembly.
Mr Chirac's intention to spend "only" five minutes at the Jewish shrine of the Western, or Wailing, Wall raised such an outcry that he was forced to lengthen the visit to 20 minutes.
Aides say Mr Chirac knows he has little chance of changing the extremist line of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's government. But he hopes to move Israeli public opinion towards acceptance of a Palestinian state and the return of occupied Arab land.
With this goal he travelled to Haifa in Galilee to address students and professors at the Technion Technological University, where 75 per cent of Israeli scientists are trained.
The director of the university quoted an old Hebrew greeting, apparently without intended irony: "Blessed be they who come to us."
The audience listened soberly when Mr Chirac broached the most delicate subject. "As long as the Palestinians are not able to take charge of their own affairs," he said, "as long as they are not entitled to the dignity enjoyed by all other peoples, as long as they have to make do with a second rate existence, frustrations and bitterness will persist. And we all know the bitter fruits which frustration and bitterness produce.
"On the contrary, a recognised Palestinian state would provide Israel with a true partner. Only such a partner will be capable of making, and adhering to, the commitments that are necessary for the security of Israel," he said.
As the audience filed out, Israelis could be heard muttering, "pro Arab". "They only let 100 students in," Mr Omer Yagel (32), a doctoral student in aerospace engineering, complained. "Eighty per cent of students are against this visit. Why did he bother to come?
Mr Yagel voiced many of the same allegations made in two editorials of rare ferocity in yesterday's Jerusalem Post. "France remains a rabid partisan" with "no place in the Middle East peace process", the Post said.
The newspaper accused Mr Chirac of endorsing Palestinian violence against Israelis and mocked the warm reception he received in Damascus. France's "fawning support of the region's most unregenerate terrorists" in Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran made it an unacceptable mediator.
. Palestinian negotiators walked out of peace talks last night in protest at the attitude of Israeli delegates, which they described as that of "occupiers toward the occupied", PLO officials said.
PLO officials said after the walkout that the Israelis were insisting on discussing proposals already rejected by the Palestinians. Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment.
Earlier the US peace envoy Mr Dennis Ross announced that he was going home, having failed to achieve a breakthrough in Israeli PLO talks on Hebron.
