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JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has missed any chance to bask in the afterglow of his successful U.S. meeting with President Clinton.

His return home has instead been engulfed in a political storm by his own governing coalition over whether he promised Clinton he would block a new Jewish neighborhood in Har Homa, an empty hill in southeastern Jerusalem.

While reporters and analysts sensed a new warmth in relations between Netanyahu and Clinton, this warmth sent shivers up the spines of Netanyahu's hard-line critics who are suspicious about where he is taking the peace process.

The Har Homa project, formulated in 1991, had the backing of Yitzhak Rabin. It calls for the construction of 6,500 housing units on a plot of about 460 acres, two-thirds of which was expropriated from Jewish owners. One-third was expropriated from Palestinians.

Proponents of the plan see the hill, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, as a bulwark.

As Israel prepares to turn over rural portions of the West Bank to Palestinian self-rule over the next two years, Har Homa's advocates want to prevent the creation of an Arab territorial continuum stretching from Bethlehem to Jerusalem's southern outskirts.

To counter this possibility, they want to surround Arab areas near Jerusalem with a chain of new Jewish neighborhoods stretching from south of Jerusalem to the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim in the east.

The original decision to build Har Homa was made by the previous Labor government in April 1991, but the move was repeatedly delayed for political reasons.

Israel's zoning and planning committees already approved some 2,000 housing units, of 6,500 to be built on the site.

Netanyahu's visit, the fourth to Washington since his election as prime minister, marked his first trip to the United States during a period of calm in U.S.-Israel relations.

He and Clinton went out of their way to heap praise on each other.

"I want once again to congratulate him for the agreement that was made with Chairman [Yasser] Arafat over Hebron. It was a brave and wise thing to do," Clinton told Netanyahu at the beginning of the pair's Oval Office meeting.

Netanyahu, who was not scheduled to address the media before the meeting, thanked Clinton. "We have seen him personally and his staff make a tremendous contribution for peace. I think their contribution for the Hebron agreement was decisive," Netanyahu said.

"And it reflects and reaffirms the leadership for peace that President Clinton has shown throughout his term of office."

Netanyahu was the first in a monthlong parade of Middle East leaders to visit the White House, and both he and Clinton revealed few details about their discussions on the next stage of Israeli-Palestinian talks and on efforts to restart Israeli-Syrian talks.

What was left untold is perhaps causing the most concern among conservative critics of Netanyahu.

Likud Knesset member Ze'ev "Benny" Begin, the prime minister's most scathing political foe on the right, said Monday that his premiership had "seriously deteriorated over recent months, and most especially in the past two weeks."

Begin, who resigned his Cabinet position last month to protest the Hebron agreement, routinely blasts the Netanyahu government for failing to stop the Palestinian Authority from maintaining offices in eastern Jerusalem.

Citing reports in the Israeli media that Netanyahu had decided to temporarily delay plans to build at Har Homa, Begin has now introduced a motion for the Knesset to discuss "the dangers of dividing Jerusalem."

The wording deliberately echoed one of Netanyahu's most effective and most controversial election slogans from last year: "Peres will divide Jerusalem."

That slogan, suggesting that former Prime Minister Shimon Peres' dovish attitude toward the Palestinians would extend to granting them future control over parts of Jerusalem, has now come full circle to haunt Netanyahu.

In recent days, right-wing groups have put up billboards on main highways proclaiming that "Bibi will divide Jerusalem."

In fact, Begin's fellow Likudniks struggled hard to persuade him not to title his Knesset motion, "The prime minister has divided Jerusalem."

Anger directed at Netanyahu from his right flank also focuses on reports from Washington that Netanyahu had signaled a new willingness to compromise his stance regarding the Golan Heights.

While Netanyahu reaffirmed publicly in Washington his opposition to a complete withdrawal, he was deliberately vague on the question of accepting a territorial "compromise" over the strategic Golan.

Clinton and Netanyahu said little about the Syrian negotiating track during their joint news conference last week.

But U.S. officials, during unofficial briefings for reporters, seemed more optimistic after Netanyahu's visit that a formula would be found for resuming the Israeli-Syrian talks, which were suspended last March.

Indeed, American officials now expect the talks to restart within two months, according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

The right wing is also concerned about what it views as Netanyahu's ongoing caution about Jewish building in the West Bank.

For their part, settler leaders repeatedly complain that Netanyahu's promises to them have not translated into specific permits and funding for new construction projects.

Jewish settlers in Hebron, for instance, were incensed this week when Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai refused to grant them a permit to build more.

Netanyahu, however, may take some small consolation from the fact that problems with his hard-line right wing have driven deep wedges into the official opposition.

The Labor Party was torn this week in a debate over whether to link up with the conservatives in a no-confidence motion against the premier over Har Homa.

Labor doves insisted that this would be a piece of unpardonable political opportunism, but others in Labor sounded as furious as Begin and his friends over Netanyahu's refusal to move ahead with construction projects in eastern Jerusalem.

"When it comes to Jerusalem, there is no room for shilly-shallying," said Labor Knesset member Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who recalled that the Har Homa project had first been approved when he served as housing minister under the previous Labor government.