Israel, Palestinians Welcome President Clinton’s Re-election

Israel and the Palestinians welcomed President Clinton’s re-election and expressed their desire for a continued American role in the peace process.

Palestinian officials said they hoped Clinton’s renewed mandate would give him the leverage to put more pressure on Israel to advance the peace process.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he did not think the second-term Clinton administration would take any such steps.

In an election night interview, Netanyahu told Israel Television, “Whoever is waiting for extreme pressure from Washington is going to be disappointed.”

Relations with the United States are “good, friendly and based on a clear understanding that the state of Israel must make the fateful decisions for Israel, not some friend and partner from across the sea,” he said.

Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s charge that the Palestinians were responsible for the delay in signing an agreement to implement an Israeli troop redeployment in Hebron.

Palestinian officials, who have countered that Israel was obstructing the negotiations by presenting unacceptable proposals, said they hoped Clinton’s re-election would help advance the talks.

“People feel this administration is aware of the requirement of peace and will make commitments to ensure it does work,” senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi told Israel Radio.

The Israeli-Palestinian talks on a Hebron redeployment have proceeded inconclusively since early October.

U.S. Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross, who was expected to return to the region Wednesday to mediate the talks, canceled his trip at the last minute, citing the gaps still separating the sides.

U.S. officials said he had put off his return indefinitely.

“The fact of the matter is that we cannot want peace more than the parties themselves,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

“They are the ones that will have to make the decision themselves. We are ready to be engaged when they are ready to conclude” the agreement, he said.

Israeli President Ezer Weizman, meeting with Jordanian King Hussein in Amman on Wednesday, urged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to conclude the agreement.

Weizman said he was certain the Hebron issue could be solved if the Palestinian leadership showed “a little more willingness to do so.”

The visit, Weizman’s first official trip to Jordan, was in part aimed at mending relations between Israel and Jordan.

Israel’s opening of an entrance to a tunnel near the Temple Mount in September, after which Palestinians rioted for three days in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, had drawn the ire of Hussein, who publicly warned Netanyahu to fulfill peace accords signed by the previous Labor government.

During his talks with King Hussein, Weizman also asked the monarch’s assistance in renewing Israel’s stalled peace talks with Syria.

Asked if he would meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad if invited to do so, Weizman said, “in five minutes, I could have a helicopter here.”