Four days before President Clinton's scheduled visit to Gaza and Israel, the Palestinians are excitedly manufacturing US flags and issuing invitations to hear the President speak. Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, by contrast, is denying ever having invited the President, as well as hinting he will boycott a three-way meeting with Mr Clinton and Mr Yasser Arafat. Mr Netanyahu is also preoccupied with an uphill battle to prevent the collapse of his government as soon as the visit is over.
When Mr Netanyahu returned from the US with the Wye peace deal in October, he expressed delight that Mr Clinton, as part of that accord, would be travelling to Gaza to witness the public annulment by the Palestine National Council of the anti-Israeli clauses in the PLO's guiding Covenant.
Mr Netanyahu is still half-heartedly declaring that the President will be a welcome guest.
Given the billions of dollars in aid that the US has granted Israel, and the critical strategic alliance between them, he could hardly say otherwise. But now that it has belatedly dawned on him that the Clinton trip to Gaza will immeasurably boost Mr Arafat's claims to Palestinian statehood, the Prime Minister is ducking responsibility for the invitation.
He is also already hinting that the PNC session which Mr Clinton is to attend next Monday will not meet his demands. Invitations to the session make no reference to annulling the Covenant, he noted yesterday, but refer only to a speech by President Clinton. If no formal vote to annul the Covenant takes place, Mr Netanyahu has said that he will not attend a meeting with the President and Mr Arafat.
Mr Dennis Ross, the US special envoy who is here to prepare for the visit, rose to Mr Netanyahu's defence yesterday, saying that the visit was "frankly, an idea that came from us." Presumably Mr Ross had forgotten that Clinton, in a recent Israel TV interview, had said that it was "the Prime Minister" who invited him.
The misjudged Clinton visit is only one of many elements of the Wye deal infuriating many members of Mr Netanyahu's tottering coalition. And although the Prime Minister, in a last-ditch parliamentary manoeuvre, managed to stave off his government's collapse in a stormy Knesset session on Monday night, he won only a two-week respite. His own ministers are now lining up to suggest that he either forge a "unity" coalition with the main opposition Labour Party, or give up and initiate new elections.
Mr Netanyahu yesterday gave no hint of his plans.