NEWS ANALYSIS : Dream of Unity Rises Again in Arab World : Regional politics: Egypt and Syria have patched up their rift. But other conflicts remain.

The Arab world, struggling for a new foothold after a decade of war, intramural squabbling and economic crisis, has launched a drive for political reconciliation that has awakened hopes for unity in the Middle East for the first time since the Camp David accords.

Some of the most troublesome regional conflicts still elude a solution. But Egypt’s rapprochement with Syria in December and other recent moves toward reconciliation signal a new attempt by the Arab world to close ranks and revive--in a calculated, pragmatic way--a modern vision of the old dream of Arab unity, diplomats and political analysts say.

Recent moves to patch up old squabbles among Arab nations also reflect what many analysts say is an end to the Cold War in the Middle East, now less of a potential flash point for conflict between the superpowers and more an area of complex economic and political dilemmas needing solutions on a regional scale.

Arab regimes, analysts say, are focusing less these days on philosophical debates and more on the challenges of an economically united Western Europe and a new, restless Arab middle class that could be the greatest threat to some of the region’s dictatorial leaderships.

“The historical images and scenarios are changing. The Middle East of today is a Middle East that is undergoing domestic and inner change, and it is a Middle East in a different world,” said Tahseen Basheer, an Egyptian political analyst and former spokesman for the late President Anwar Sadat.

“In the ‘80s, everyone was trying to change the established order by force, and all of them failed. . . . It came to naught, and the Egyptian way of doing it, in small, patient measures, has paid off,” he said. “So now in the ‘90s, with a lot of new challenges deep from within, they realize that instead of competing with each other, they need to coalesce their regimes, to help each other and not to undermine each other.”

The most dramatic of the recent moves was the restoration in December of diplomatic relations between Egypt--a virtual outlaw in the Arab world a decade ago when it made peace with Israel--and Syria, the most intractable critic of any resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict short of the elimination of Israel.

Though most Arab countries warmed up to Cairo last year, readmitting Egypt to the Arab League and restoring full relations, Syria had remained aloof. But a variety of regional and international developments combined to force Damascus into reconciliation, according to diplomats and political sources here.

Many of the same forces have prompted other moves toward Arab harmony in recent months. The results: at least partial reconciliation between renegade Libya and two of its closest neighbors, Egypt and Jordan; talk of reunifying Yemen with Marxist South Yemen, and even some reports that radical Palestinian factions nurtured by Syria might seek reconciliation with Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization.

Perhaps most important in the region’s changing scene has been the Soviet Union’s virtual withdrawal from the Middle East as an arena for international conflict, most analysts agree.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, conflicts in places like the Israeli-occupied territories and Lebanon assumed alarming international proportions because of the historic U.S. support for Israel and the Soviets’ support for regimes like Syria and Libya that have sought the elimination of Israel.

In the last two years, however, the Soviet Union has made it clear to Syria and other Arab countries that it no longer sponsors strategic parity with Israel. Moscow says it will provide defensive weapons to countries like Syria but not arms for an offensive against Israel--effectively backing away from a regional arms race with the United States.

At the same time, Moscow has warmed its relations with Israel and Egypt. And, while not actively participating in the U.S.-brokered peace process with the Palestinians, Moscow has encouraged the PLO to adopt a more moderate diplomatic stance, including tacit recognition of Israel and renunciation of terrorism, that would allow the process to move forward.

“The world of polarization in the Middle East vis-a-vis the superpowers is coming down,” said one Arab diplomat.

Syria, faced with reduced Soviet support and increased isolation from other Arab states because of its support for Iran in its war against Iraq, had little choice but to reconcile with Egypt, which is rapidly regaining its position at the diplomatic forefront of the Arab world, analysts said.

Economics have also spurred the new move toward Arab unity, particularly in countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, where there are worries that the 1992 economic unification of Western Europe will threaten some of their most important export markets.

The North Africa tier recently launched an official multi-state union to provide a united economic front. Similar regional groupings have emerged among the oil-rich Persian Gulf states and in the central region, where Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Yemen have formed the Arab Cooperation Council.

“Regional groupings are the wave of the future,” one Western diplomat said.