The Israeli negotiators returned from the United States Sunday night and immediately headed north to brief Barak who was on his election campaign trail.
Israel Radio, quoting unnamed senior officials, said the head of the Israeli team, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, advocated Israel accept Clinton's suggestions.
However Barak was facing pressure from religious and right-wing groups, even within his own cabinet, not to yield sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest and Islam's third holiest site.
According to unconfirmed reports the U.S. ideas call for dividing East Jerusalem including the Old City, Arab control over the Temple Mount but with some sort of recognition of a Jewish attachment to the site, evacuation of outlying settlements, and a withdrawal from 95 percent of the West Bank.
However the suggestions say there would be a limited return of Palestinian refugees, and Israel should keep the Western Wall, the Old City's Jewish Quarter and part of the Armenian Quarter.
Those reports aroused strong protests. Jerusalem's Mayor Ehud Olmert, of the hard-line opposition Likud Party, accused Barak of being "The first Jew in history who proposes to transfer the Temple Mount to another nation's sovereignty."
"Barak is a vile man," Olmert said using unusually harsh language even for Israeli politicians who are not very kind to their opponents. Barak will be ascribed "to the darkest chapter of Jewish history," Olmert added.
The Likud's leader, Ariel Sharon, said Barak was engaged in "a general sellout" on the eve of the February 6 elections for premiership. At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Health Minister Ronni Miloh said he would quit a government that would give up the Temple Mount.
"This asset belongs to the entire Jewish people," not only those who live in Israel, Miloh argued. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau said in a statement that no one has a mandate for give up the Temple Mount, "site of the ancient Temple which is the basis for our right to the entire Land of Israel."
The First and Second Temples had existed hundreds of years before Islam was created, he added.
Each person has a right to worship in his own way and Israel assiduously protects all religious sites, but that has nothing to do with sovereignty, Rabbi Lau insisted.
Barak told the cabinet - and later had those remarks published in an official statement - that if there is no agreement, and "We slide, Heaven forbid, towards a deterioration, cracks will appear in the other peace agreements and Israel's isolation against this background of violence, will increase."
Egypt has recently recalled its ambassador and Jordan refrained from sending its newly appointed top envoy.
The prime minister warned that suspending a solution for five to 10 years - Sharon has suggested an agreement that would be implemented in stages over years - entails the risk that Israel would then face "an entirely new Middle East" with its enemies possessing non-conventional weapons, a wave of Moslem fundamentalism, and a surge in organized terrorism.
Accordingly Barak said, "We will never concede on our vital interests. At the same time we must examine every idea worthy of consideration, even if it is painful."
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