New clashes erupted in the West Bank yesterday between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israelis as domestic pressure mounted on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to abandon the Wye River land-for-security agreement. The violence and Israel's political turmoil came just five days before the start of President Bill Clinton's visit to Israel and the Palestinian self-rule areas. The US president's visit is the fruit of years of efforts by Palestinian leaders to gain the ear of the only country thought able to put pressure on its Israeli ally. "It's a very important, historical visit. It's almost like Nixon's first visit to China" in 1972, said Nabil Shaath, Palestinian minister for international cooperation. "This is a step in the direction of US recognition of a Palestinian entity," Shaath explained, being careful to avoid using the word "state." Indeed, unlike earlier vociferous declarations about an independent state by next May, the Palestinians now have been reduced to making faint murmurs. In Gaza Clinton will attend the meeting of the Palestinian Central Council -- enlarged to include members of the Palestinian National and Legislative Councils and the PLO Executive Committee -- that will annul for ever all provisions in the Palestinian National Charter that Israel perceives as threatening its survival. National Council Speaker Selim Zaanoun said the cancellation of these provisions, already confirmed by a letter from Yasser Arafat to Clinton, "is meant to give a boost to the peace process." The United States, for its part, has conveyed to the Palestinians, and also to Egypt, Israel's wish that negotiations on the final status of the Occupied Territories be allowed to continue beyond the 4 May deadline contained in the Oslo Accords. At a Cairo news conference on Monday, following a round of Egyptian-US strategic dialogue, Martin Indyk, under-secretary of state, confirmed that Cairo and Washington were discussing the possibility of prolonging this deadline. Cairo has not taken a position on the proposal. According to Assistant Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, "the 4 May is a target date. Everybody is looking forward to, and anticipating, this date. And it does not have to do with the US or the Palestinians or the Israelis, but with all [regional and international] powers that take interest in the Palestinian track of the peace process." But analysts caution that it would be unwise to give Netanyahu an open-ended deadline when the Israeli prime minister has been making problems almost every step of the way to block the implementation of the Wye River accord. "Even after the signing of the memorandum, which reflected more of his position than anybody else's, Netanyahu continues to haggle," a source said. "If we were to calculate it on paper, we would find that since the signing last October the Israeli government has confiscated more Palestinian land than it has given to the Palestinians under the redeployment that was agreed upon in Wye." However, since the Palestinians are not categorically opposed to the idea of extending the deadline, Cairo is not in a position to be more royal than the king. Egyptian officials keep saying that "we accept whatever the Palestinians accept." This is only to be expected. The Palestinians have followed a policy obviously aimed at currying favour with Washington in the hope that the latter would eventually pressure Israel to deliver. Within this framework Arafat has been rounding up opponents of the Wye Memorandum, honouring a commitment to prohibit anti-Israeli incitement. And he has shown little sympathy with a hunger strike staged by Palestinian political prisoners whom Israel, in violation of a pledge in the memorandum, refuses to release. The US views matters differently. Washington's envoy Dennis Ross, in the region to make preparations for Clinton's visit, said Israel has honoured its commitments regarding the prisoners. And Indyk said in Cairo that while the US will keep engaged, "it is up to both sides to live up to their commitments." Netanyahu, for his part, vowed that "no power on earth" would get him to keep redeploying from the West Bank if Arafat did not meet his additional security requirements. Judging by the facts on the ground, the future is likely to be more of the same: the Palestinians express hope while Israel pulls in the opposite direction. Sadly, some sources concede, the only major development that appears to be in sight is an outbreak of inter-Palestinian violence between those who support Arafat's policy and those who oppose it. Dina Ezzat in Cairo, Tarek Hassan in Gaza, Khaled Amayrah in Jerusalem
