The tough guy performance by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, in the White House this week, resisting President Clinton's calls for a handover of more than 10 per cent of occupied West Bank territory to the Palestinians in the next phase of the peace process, appears to have dramatically improved his standing with the Israeli public.
Having lagged behind the opposition Labour Party leader, Mr Ehud Barak, for many months in the popularity stakes, Mr Netanyahu has now drawn level with Mr Barak at 41 per cent, according to a survey published yesterday in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
Mr Netanyahu's demands for greater efforts by the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, to quash the Islamic militants of Hamas, as a precondition for any further West Bank withdrawal, appear to have struck a chord with the Israeli public, which has been warned repeatedly by its security chiefs in recent weeks to brace itself for further suicide attacks.
Aides to the prime minister have given briefings to Israeli journalists alleging that Hamas is strengthening its "infrastructure" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that Mr Arafat seems disinclined to take action. Even the recent discovery by Palestinian police of a Hamas bomb factory in the West Bank city of Nablus was derided by unnamed aides to Mr Netanyahu as a case of the Palestinians, acting on Israeli information, doing "the minimum" to crack down on Hamas.
The Israeli prime minister has won praise from hardliners in his government for resisting US pressure for an accelerated peace effort. And he has maintained his uncompromising stance since returning from Washington yesterday, assuring the Mayor of Jerusalem, Mr Ehud Olmert, that construction of homes at Har Homa on the southern edge of the city would get under way in earnest in the very near future.
The peace process was brought to a halt early last year by Mr Netanyahu's decision to send bulldozers to clear land for Jewish housing at Har Homa, on territory Israel claims as part of Jerusalem but which the Palestinians regard as indivisible from the West Bank. Buoyed by the polls and by the support of his coalition members, Mr Netanyahu can consider himself the big winner of this week's Washington dialogue. Crucially, while Mr Arafat has sought to gain control of up to 90 per cent of the West Bank in the course of three Israeli troop withdrawals, Mr Netanyahu has firmly defended his refusal to give up more than a relatively small percentage of West Bank land for the foreseeable future and done so without provoking a public crisis with the US.
Himself the survivor of an adultery scandal five years ago, Mr Netanyahu will also know that, because of the Monica Lewinsky saga, Mr Clinton will have little time in the weeks ahead to try to pressure Israel into more flexible positions.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report.