Israelis Looking Carefully at Thaw in Cold War : Foreign policy: Jewish state is concerned that relationship with United States may suffer.

The startling changes in superpower relations and the emergence of a new world in Europe have created an atmosphere not so much of joy as of uncertainty in Israel.

Government officials and political observers are carefully monitoring the fast-moving events to see how they might affect Israel, a state born out of World War II and nurtured during the Cold War.

Foremost, there is concern that Israel’s role as a key ally of the United States may be in jeopardy because of reduced tension between Moscow and Washington. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has gone out of his way to deflect that worry.

And while other parts of the world are changing, Shamir says, the Middle East remains an implacable problem.

“We cannot see yet in our region any signs of glasnost ,” Shamir told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council last month, referring to the Soviet program of openness. He sought to minimize the possibility of diminished value in the U.S. alliance with Israel.

“Loyal and firm allies are important to every country and under all circumstances,” he said. “This applies especially to a superpower, and especially because of the constantly changing circumstances. Israel is such an ally of the United States, and our alliance is as steadfast as ever.”

Other observers are less certain that the U.S.-Israeli alliance can remain untouched by the easing of East-West tension. Martin Indyk, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told a Tel Aviv University audience that in the post-Cold War period Israel’s usefulness to the United States could be reduced.

“To the extent the Cold War really is over,” he said, “there is a feeling that we no longer have to be combating and containing the spread of Soviet influence, and that means we need those partners to help in this effort less than we did before.”

Dore Gold, an analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, seconded Indyk’s appraisal in a recent article in the Jerusalem Post.

“Improved U.S.-Soviet relations are more likely to lead to a certain American apathy or indifference about events that previously would have elicited some kind of strong response,” he wrote.

Gold pointed out that subtle factors could adversely affect Israel should the United States reduce its interest in Israel as a strategic partner.

First, he said, Israel could lose America as an automatic deterrent to attacks from hostile neighbors, notably Syria. A reduced U.S. military presence in Europe could make it more difficult for the United States to resupply Israel in time of war, and in this part of the world days--even hours--can be crucial.

“A fundamental cutback in the U.S. military presence in Europe would sharply increase the distance of the most closely deployed U.S. forces to Israel and the Middle East,” Gold said. “The timing of any American intervention in this region . . . would be entirely altered.”

On the other hand, he predicted, Israel could turn out to be a backstop for a reduced U.S. role in Europe--if, for example, the United States needed a new place to park naval forces now stationed in places like Spain and Italy.

The Israeli government seems to be unconvinced that a new era of East-West understanding will spill over into the Middle East. Word that the Soviet Union was urging Syria to give up its quest for military parity with Israel was greeted cautiously.

In a recent briefing for foreign reporters, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin noted that Moscow was still supplying Syria with arms.

“What we have seen is more financial considerations in providing arms,” Rabin said. “There is a continuation.”

Europe’s vastly changed political landscape caught Israel in an emotional bind, especially as regards the possible reunification of Germany. Memories of the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany colored Israel’s official reaction.

Shamir, speaking on television after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall began, commented: “When Germany is being spoken about, the Jewish nation has something to say. There are specific fears, and for us it is an extremely grave problem.”

Ariel Sharon, a former general, defense minister and now minister of trade and industry, was more severe: “It is forbidden for us, the Jews, to forget what the Germans did to us when they were unified.”

The democratization of the East European states appears to have opened new diplomatic vistas for Israel. Except for Romania, all the countries of the East cut their diplomatic ties with Israel after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Now, Hungary has already renewed full ties with Israel. Finance Minister Shimon Peres paid a visit to Poland and received word that Poland may do so in the first part of next year.

Possible advances by Israel in East Europe were noted ruefully by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. They noted that the Palestine Liberation Organization seems to be lagging in its recognition of the changes being put in place.

A political analyst complained about a recent trip to Romania by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. Romania and Albania are the only East European countries still unaffected by the wave of democratization.

“What was Arafat doing in Romania?” a Palestinian analyst asked. “Romania is the voice of the past.”

Changes abroad are providing a new context for Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, who have been in revolt for two years against Israeli rule. The intractable nature of the Israeli-Arab conflict seems more and more to be out of step with the times, observers here say.

The Jerusalem Post predicts that in the not too distant future Israel will find itself wholly on its own in battling its Arab neighbors as an indifferent world moves on.

In Shamir’s eyes, the Post said, “nothing has apparently occurred that might warrant a reexamination of received political wisdom.”

“He could not, however, be more wrong,” it said. “It’s a wholly new kind of court in which Israel, as well as its Arab neighbors . . . may soon be required to pursue their contests.”

In arguing that the new world order erodes old concepts of sovereignty and dominance, Hanan Bar-On, a scholar and former Foreign Ministry official, warned: “Persistence in the political and military status quo not only has consequences in the military and political field but tends to make any society, ours first and foremost, irrelevant to a world which is today entering a new environment.

“The Middle East status quo could make this part of the world into a backwater with very little relevance to the world at large or even the Jewish people.”

The Shamir government resists suggestions that Israeli policy is fossilized and that the government has failed to seize an opportunity for change in a dynamic world. Shamir frequently points out that no democratic wave is sweeping the Arab world and that it would be dangerous for Israel’s policies to undergo radical change.

“Among our neighbors, democracy is still unknown,” Shamir said in a recent speech. “Totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, violence and terror still prevail. . . . And immense energies are wasted on attempts to isolate and delegitimize our state and mobilize an international coalition against us.”