Jewish settler leaders were holding a crisis meeting last night amid claims that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, in an effort to reach a peace treaty with the Palestinians, is preparing to relinquish more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and partial control of Arab East Jerusalem.
Mr Barak is to meet President Clinton this morning in Lisbon to discuss recent progress in negotiations with the Palestinians and to prepare for a possible three-way summit with the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat. Mr Arafat has written to Mr Clinton, urging him to step in to expedite the negotiations.
The Lisbon meeting was advanced and upgraded yesterday from a less formal contact between Mr Clinton and Mr Barak, originally planned for Germany.
In semi-secret talks in recent weeks, held first in Stockholm before resuming here, Mr Barak's Internal Security Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, is understood to have made major concessions to the Palestinians - who have always demanded that Israel turn over the entire West Bank to their control and who seek to establish the capital of their independent state in East Jerusalem.
Mr Arafat has been imploring the Israelis in recent days to accelerate the peace effort and has told his Israeli counterparts that Israel's withdrawal under Hizbullah fire from southern Lebanon has prompted criticism from Palestinian and other Arab activists of his moderate stance, his readiness to negotiate rather than fight for territory. "Hizbullah looks like heroes in the Arab world," he said, "while the Palestinians look like losers begging from the Israelis."
Indeed, Mr Arafat's main rival, the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has been warmly praising the Hizbullah "victory" as a campaign for the Palestinians to emulate.
Settler leaders meeting last night claim that Mr Barak, in an effort to secure a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians, is ready to "abandon" about 100,000 of their estimated 200,000-strong population - by handing over control of the land on which they have built their homes to Mr Arafat, leaving them the choice of leaving or staying on under Palestinian rule.
Mr Natan Sharansky, the Interior Minister, accused the prime minister in a letter of "stripping Israel of all its assets". Palestinian officials yesterday confirmed that more than 90 per cent of the West Bank was on offer - albeit excluding the Jordan Valley area - and said they had rejected the proposal because it was not sufficiently generous.
A settler leader warned earlier this week that Mr Barak was likely to be murdered - like his Labour peace-making predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin.
And the Israeli secret service has already beefed up personal security for Mr Ben-Ami, the minister who has been negotiating with the Palestinians. On Tuesday night, 20 demonstrators gathered outside Mr Ben-Ami's home and shouted, "We'll burn your house down."