NEWS ANALYSIS Shaky at home and abroad, Netanyahu heads to America

JERUSALEM, Nov. 11 (JTA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits to England and the United States this week come at a time of profound confusion over his standing both at home and abroad. At home, Netanyahu emerged from a stormy three-day session of a rarely convened Likud Party convention with his credibility battered. The tumult centered around a move to abolish the system of primaries that determine the party’s list of candidates for Knesset elections. While Netanyahu pleaded with the 2,000 delegates to postpone a decision to abolish the primaries, most of them appeared determined to restore the old system of patronage used to draw up the list. The dispute indicated that the premier might be losing control over his own party’s rank and file, many of whom have been increasingly questioning his government’s policies. Netanyahu was likely to face just as chilly a welcome in London – and an uncertain climate in the United States. The London Jewish Chronicle reported over the weekend that during his visit to Britain, which was slated to begin Thursday, Prime Minister Tony Blair intended to voice firm support for a more conciliatory position from Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The newspaper added that a dozen prominent British Jewish leaders, protesting Netanyahu’s policies, had declined invitations to a dinner in the Israeli leader’s honor. Netanyahu is coming to the United States chiefly to address the largest annual gathering of the organized Jewish community’s leadership – the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations, which opens Sunday in Indianapolis. But his aides also have been trying for weeks to arrange a meeting with President Clinton – a meeting that the White House has been insisting the president’s schedule cannot accommodate. The results of a meeting slated for Friday in London between Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright could determine whether Clinton makes time for the Israeli premier. Albright, who is scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat the following day, was expected to press Netanyahu on implementing a “timeout” on settlement construction and redeploying Israeli forces in the West Bank. The two were also expected to discuss the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which took place last week near Washington. Those talks focused on issues still unresolved from the 1995 Interim Agreement, including a Palestinian airport and seaport in the Gaza Strip, a safe-passage route for Palestinians traveling between Gaza and the West Bank, and the creation of an industrial park at the Karni crossing between Israel and Gaza. Netanyahu’s credibility – at least, his consistency – was stretched as his evaluation of the talks flip-flopped. Foreign Minister David Levy, who led the Israeli delegation to Washington, maintained after he returned home that the talks had made real progress. But Netanyahu let it be known that he saw insignificant progress. But the prime minister subsequently moved around to Levy’s position. At a briefing Monday for British journalists, Netanyahu said the talks near Washington had brought “close to completion” the long-delayed issues of the airport and the joint industrial park. The Palestinians have persisted in labeling the Washington talks a failure. Washington, anxious to salvage what hope yet remains of an upcoming regional economic conference in Qatar, has been carefully avoiding taking sides. Citing the lack of progress in the peace process, some Arab countries have decided to boycott next week’s conference or send low-level representation. The United States, which views attendance as an expression of support for the peace process, has pressed Arab states to participate in what will be the fourth annual conference. For his part, Netanyahu’s policy addresses to the Likud convention raised doubts among some of his domestic political allies and among the Palestinians about where he stands. The premier, in his opening address Sunday, presented a list of demands for permanent peace that were restricted to Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley – and seemed deliberately to omit the Golan Heights. After a day of complaints from Golan settlers and coalition hard-liners, Netanyahu took to the rostrum again Monday and virtually repeated the entire speech. But this time he beefed up his list with an assertion that the Golan is “an area vital for the security of the State of Israel.” He specified the pre-1967 “borderline region – not just the line, the entire region” of the Golan as an absolute requirement in a permanent peace accord with Syria. In both speeches, Netanyahu ruled out a Palestinian state. The Palestinians and the wider Arab world say that the premier’s continuing call for accelerated permanent-status talks is suspect – unless he is prepared to implement now the agreements on further Israeli army pullbacks on the West Bank. If Washington comes down hard in favor of that position, which it may well do after the Qatar summit, Israel could find itself more isolated than at any time since the Oslo accords with the Palestinians were signed four years ago.