Israeli right wingers yesterday pasted up placards in Jerusalem and huge banners along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road urging President Clinton, due here this weekend, to "go home". His crime in the eyes of the Israeli right: a perceived pro-Palestinian sensibility. Meanwhile, the Israeli government, many of whose ministers have indicated that they share the unease over Mr Clinton's landmark day trip to Gaza next Monday, is now complaining that the president's scheduled arrival time - 1 a.m. on Sunday morning - is too late to afford the proper public attention and TV coverage, and it has asked him to change it.
But such objections look trifling when compared with the key problem now afflicting the imminent visit: the growing sense that it may not achieve either its original aim, or even its latest emergency purpose.
The initial goal was for Mr Clinton to attend Monday's Gaza session of the Palestine National Council, at which Israeli doubts as to whether the Palestinians have genuinely annulled the anti-Israeli PLO Covenant would be swept aside for all to see. Mr Yasser Arafat, in preparation for that session, yesterday convened more than 100 members of the PLO's central committee to vote on the covenant's annulment. But he also indicated that Monday's session, though it would rubber-stamp the annulment, might not do so by means of a formal vote. "We are following our rules," he said. "Not outside orders."
The response from Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu: No vote, no peace progress. And even if Mr Clinton pronounces himself satisfied with the PNC's deliberations, Mr Netanyahu stressed, that wouldn't be sufficient. "It is Israel which determines issues connected with its future," he said.
The whole long-running row over the PLO Covenant, of course, is symptomatic of the breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian peace partnership. The PNC convened in April 1996 to revoke the covenant, to the satisfaction of the moderate Israeli government of the day. Mr Netanyahu, who doesn't trust Mr Arafat, thinks that session was a trick, and knows that the PLO's constitution requires a two-thirds majority in a formal PNC vote to change the covenant.
The Palestinians deny orchestrating this week's clashes in the West Bank, and blame Israel for sparking them by failing to release Palestinian security prisoners.
The PLO's central committee voted last night, by 81 votes to seven, to confirm the cancellation of anti-Israel clauses in the PLO Covenant.
The US military is sending a small number of Patriot missiles, designed to shoot down attacking missiles, to Israel for brief exercises while President Clinton is there, the Pentagon said.