Prime Minister Olmert will arrive in Washington this month amid what the American Jewish leaders fear could be a perfect storm triggered by Israel’s hopes for billions in American aid to defray the cost of withdrawal from the West Bank.

American Jewish leaders have rushed to Israel in recent days in an effort to head off the potential request Mr. Olmert is now considering this week after broaching his ambitious plan to consolidate settlements in the West Bank in and around Jerusalem by December if a negotiated peace process is spurned by the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Daniel Ayalon, denied that Mr. Olmert would seek such an aid package, but other sources in the Jewish community said the matter was still a live one.

The diplomacy surrounding Mr. Olmert’s visit to Washington, scheduled for May 21, discloses that America’s pro-Israel lobby can often wield influence in the reverse direction its critics often charge. White House and National Security Council aides last week discreetly passed messages to some Jewish leaders urging that the new prime minister’s first visit with President Bush should focus primarily on large strategic questions and not on the details of a proposed aid package.

To that end,a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Mortimer Zuckerman, and the executive vice chairman of the group, Malcolm Hoenlein, are in Israel meeting with senior Israeli officials this week.

“This is the time for an opportunity of the discussion and directions that the Olmert government plans to pursue and to solidify the personal relationship between the president and prime minister,” Mr. Hoenlein said yesterday. “The time for detailed proposals will be later on.” Mr. Hoenlein is scheduled to meet with Mr. Olmert on Sunday.

Mr. Ayalon said yesterday through his spokesman: “This is a meeting between two great friends and allies who respect and trust eachother and will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing both countries. Prime Minister Olmert is not an unknown quantity in Washington and U.S. officials are looking forward to seeing him.”

For Israel’s part, proponents of the request for aid argue that they were promised just more than a year ago that America would help with the costs of disengagement from Gaza. But the timing of Israel’s withdrawal coincided with Hurricane Katrina, and the prospect of a new American foreign aid investment soon disappeared as quickly as the Gulf Coast homes and infrastructure the White House pledged to rebuild.

Nonetheless, since last fall Israeli officials and some pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington have quietly worked together on a supplemental aid request to defray the $1 to $2 billion Israel spent on dismantling settlements from Gaza and relocating its citizens who had lived there. Rough estimates from the Olmert camp suggest the cost of the prime minister’s consolidation plan for the West Bank would be ten times that of Gaza.

“It was $1 or $2 billion originally. But after Katrina, nothing came of it. What that means from a financial point of view to the United States, I don’t know,” an Israeli official said yesterday who asked to remain anonymous.”Now we are talking about 10 billion as a possible number. Some of this would take the form of loan guarantees.”

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid, which runs at over $3 billion per annum. Most is for defense and largely due to built-in provisions of the peace treaty the Jewish state signed with Egypt in 1978.

There are two primary problems with Israel asking for an aid package now, according to Jewish community officials in America and one Bush administration official. First, the president is already involved in a tough sell to conservative members of Congress for funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This being an election year and Mr. Bush will likely push for government spending to be reined in to appeal to his fiscally conservative base.

Another problem is that Mr. Olmert’s aides have yet to brief the president on his new consolidation package, a plan that was unveiled in broad terms this week. The proposal envisions disengaging from some West Bank settlements perhaps as soon as December.

Should the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority reject an offer to negotiate a final settlement, some Israeli observers have said Mr. Olmert will seek to draw Israel’s final borders by the end of 2008, while President Bush is still in office

On May 24, Mr. Olmert will address a joint meeting, though not a joint official session, of Congress. He will meet Mr. Bush at the White House on May 23. But beyond this stagecraft, it’s unclear what else Mr. Olmert will end up receiving in terms of support for his unilateral disengagement plan.

While the White House has declared it will not have dealings with Hamas, the European Union has been less firm, and Mr. Bush will need his allies’ goodwill to support sanctions or tougher measures against Iran.

“Looking at this from an American perspective, this would be a terrible time to ask for the aid package, given all the budgetary difficulties,” a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Morris Amitay, said yesterday.

When asked if Israel could expect the money it believes it was promised for the Gaza withdrawal, Mr. Amitay used a Yiddish expression: “It’s farfallen, forget about it.”