THE TIMING is exquisite — the two women touted as frontrunners for the 2008 US presidential elections arrive simultaneously in Jerusalem to share an international stage critical to their domestic ambitions.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have both been drawn to Israel for the tenth anniversary commemorations of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli Prime Minister slain by a Jewish extremist.

It is a sombre backdrop, but an important occasion for any politician with an eye on the Jewish American vote. That is particularly true for Senator Clinton, who won her New York seat despite angering Jewish groups by embracing Yassir Arafat’s wife Suha in 1999 at an event where the latter accused Israelis of using poison gas. To be fair, Mrs Clinton has a perfectly good excuse. She is accompanying the real star of the commemorations, her husband Bill, the former President, who has been accorded a rock star status that both his potential successors must envy.

Dr Rice has a genuinely urgent mission — to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian disagreements that threaten to stall the momentum created by Israel’s pullout from Gaza in the summer.

Expectations of substantive progress are low, with Israelis and Palestinians facing elections early next year. But Dr Rice called on Mr Abbas to rein in Palestinian militants, and is also expected to press Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, to ease restrictions on the movement of Palestinian travellers and goods out of Gaza.

Not to be outdone, Senator Clinton has lined up a programme described as “presidential-like” by one observer, and is expressing views that will certainly play well back home.

She met Mr Sharon and called him “courageous” for implementing the Gaza withdrawal. “This was an incredibly difficult position for him to take, and it caused great distress within Israeli society. But he did it as a means of demonstrating that he is trying to get back into a process,” she said.

Mrs Clinton also voiced support for Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, the wall-and- razor-wire obstacle denounced by Palestinians as a “land grab”, after a briefing by Israeli commanders at a vantage point overlooking its construction north of Bethlehem.

“This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists,” she said. “The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism.”

She met Israel’s foreign and defence ministers, the army Chief of Staff, Israeli ambulancemen and firefighters, and there were photo-opportunities at the Wailing Wall. But there were no meetings with Palestinians, although she did visit Amman last night along with her husband at the invitation of King Abdullah of Jordan to witness the destruction wreaked by al-Qaeda suicide bombers last week. Israeli and Palestinian reactions to both women’s visits were muted.

Speaking at Yassir Arafat’s graveside after the one-year anniversary of the Palestinian leader’s death — an event at which US representatives were notable by their absence — the Palestinian Minister of Public Works, Mohammed Shtayyeh, played down expectations of Dr Rice’s trip.

“This sort of shuttle diplomacy of Dr Rice is welcome but it is not enough,” he said. “We need direct engagement, someone to monitor the implementation of the roadmap.”

Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Dr Rice could provide “incremental” assistance. “She could help to get things done.”

The facilities offered to Mrs Clinton were, he said, “par for the course” for a US senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Condoleezza Rice

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