Arafat to meet with Clinton amid escalating violence.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

WASHINGTON _ In what may be the last hope for President Clinton's efforts to broker a Middle East peace deal, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat agreed to fly to Washington for a meeting Tuesday with the president.

White House spokesman Elliot Diringer said the meeting was set after a 45-minute phone call Monday between Clinton and Arafat. Diringer said the president "expressed concern" about the growing violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and "urged all parties to do everything in their power to stop it."

Earlier Monday, a car bomb in the Israeli resort city of Netanya wounded at least 20 people, one critically. It was the latest episode in an escalating pattern of violence that has put pressure on the Israeli government to halt peace negotiations in the face of terrorism.

Israel's deputy prime minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said on Israeli television, "This attack is a serious attack, so serious that as far as I am concerned we should stop everything and think about where we go from here."

Although Diringer rejected the notion that the Arafat meeting was Clinton's last-ditch effort to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians before leaving office Jan. 20, there are strong indications that both sides are increasingly pessimistic that a settlement is possible in the time left.

The influential Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Israel is already planning an international public relations campaign to pin the blame for stalled negotiations on the Palestinians.

Clinton has proposed a framework for final peace talks characterized in Washington and Israel as the best deal Arafat is likely to get for many years, perhaps ever. Clinton proposed that Arafat drop his demand that all Palestinian refugees displaced by the creation of Israel in 1947 be allowed to return to their former homes. In return, Clinton's proposal would give the Palestinians some form of sovereignty over portions of Jerusalem, including the holy site revered by the Israelis as the Temple Mount and by Arabs as Haram al-Sharif (Noble ...