Mr Louis Farrakhan was the epitome of cool. Immaculate in dark suit and trademark bow-tie, flanked by his similarly neatly-clad bodyguards, the leader of the Nation of Islam crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into the West Bank yesterday.
He waited calmly for the media scrum to settle down, then delivered a serene message of gratitude to Mr Yasser Arafat for having invited him to the West Bank, and to the "Israeli authorities for granting me permission to enter Israel".
In marked contrast to Mr Farrakhan's sang-froid, the Israeli government, which did not at that point actually know it had let him in, is getting extremely hot under the collar about the visit.
Yesterday morning, the diplomats at the Foreign Ministry were still languidly debating what they might do if Mr Farrakhan were to turn up at the border, mistakenly believing that his earliest possible arrival was still several weeks away.
Informed that he had already crossed the bridge on an ordinary tourist visa, one ministry chief hurriedly demanded that he apologise for a history of anti-Semitic comments as a condition for moving on from the West Bank into Israel proper.
The Israeli cabinet secretary, Mr Danny Naveh, meanwhile, urged the government's legal advisers to find the means to have him deported.
Supremely unruffled, Mr Farrakhan spent the afternoon in the West Bank, went to see Mr Arafat in Gaza in the evening, and was planning to come to Jerusalem last night or today.
The Chicago-based Mr Farrakhan, organiser of 1995's "Million- Man March" in Washington, is arguably his country's most important African-American leader. He has for years maintained close ties with some of Israel's most bitter critics in the region, notably Libya's Col Muammar Gadafy, from whom he has accepted substantial funding.
And earlier in this visit to the region he travelled to Iraq - ignoring State Department advice and violating a US travel ban.
Israeli and Jewish misgivings about Mr Farrakhan, however, extend beyond the "friend of my enemy is my enemy" syndrome. Although he has never supported violence against Jews, and although he again yesterday denied that he was anti-Semitic, he does espouse anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of government, of the world banking system and of the media.
He made some of his first big headlines in the US with a 1984 speech in which he called Judaism a "dirty religion".
American Jewry has long been divided about how to handle Mr Farrakhan. Many leaders have boycotted him. Several attempts at dialogue have foundered. One such effort last year, initiated by Mr Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress, was cut short after Mr Farrakhan delivered a speech likening the suffering of Iraqis under UN sanctions to the Holocaust.
It seems probable that one of Mr Farrakhan's motivations for visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories is to raise his profile as an international Islamic figure. Yesterday, though, at his impromptu media conference, he said only that he was "here on a mission of peace".
The Israeli cabinet yesterday held another inconclusive discussion on the scope of the overdue Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank. Despite US pressure for speedy progress on the issue, ministers are planning to tour the West Bank next week before taking any final decisions.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report.