Hope for Acceptance in Region Fades as Arabs Express Anger

Barely a month has passed since Israelis and Palestinians broke off peace talks, and already Israel is beginning to feel political and economic costs.

Arab countries renewed their call for an economic boycott of Israel. Oman postponed a planned opening of an interest section in Israel and denied Israeli diplomats routine visas to the Persian Gulf state. And conference organizers from Amman, the Jordanian capital, to Beijing came under pressure to withdraw invitations to Israeli scientists, booksellers and lab workers.

While packing little practical punch, these actions hold enormous symbolic significance for Israel, where each hard-won step toward acceptance by its Arab neighbors has been celebrated as a major achievement.

Barring a breakthrough with the Palestinians, Israel may be headed toward a period of isolation in the region.

Since Israel and the Palestinians signed their first agreement in 1993, the peace process has suffered a number of setbacks. It was shaken by a series of deadly bombings in the winter of 1996 and again, in September, by an eruption of violence after Israel opened a disputed entrance to a tourist tunnel in Jerusalem’s Old City.

But the current crisis, which comes against a backdrop of profound mutual distrust, is worse, many analysts say.

Neither side any longer seems certain that the peace process will yield what it desires: for Israelis, a secure peace; for Palestinians, a state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat of indirectly encouraging a renewal of terrorist attacks against Israel.

The Palestinians, angered by Israel’s recent decision to begin construction of a Jewish housing project in disputed East Jerusalem, have accused Netanyahu of seeking to destroy the existing agreements, which are based on trading land for peace.

In late March, Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo and adopted a resolution urging Arab League members to renew the economic boycott against Israel and halt budding diplomatic, scientific and cultural ties.

The action was unlikely to affect diplomatic and economic ties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan, which have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state.

But even in those nations, there have been growing signs of frustration and anger with Israel.

In Egypt, anger against Israel has boiled over into anti-Israeli demonstrations at the University of Cairo and other college campuses.

In Jordan, growing public antipathy toward Israel found expression last month in a show of public support for the Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls March 13.

The soldier was arrested, but crowds of well-wishers temporarily blocked roads leading to his village.

The cooling of relations with the Arab world has contributed to a fading feeling of hope among Israelis that the immediate future will be better than the past, according to Jerusalem political consultant Roberta Fahn.

“I don’t think we’ve crossed any red line in the sense that the situation can’t change back,” Fahn said. “But what is different from a few months ago is that the sense of hope, the feeling that Israel was becoming a normal player in the world, with its citizens having the same kinds of options as any other, is gone.

“Every morning, you wake up and there’s just no good news,” she said. “Your worst fears smack you in the face.”

In another indication, tourism to Israel, which had boomed with the advent of Middle East peace and dropped sharply last year, continues to reflect the current tensions.

It is running 25% to 35% behind spring of 1996, according to Daniel Chrust, head of the Israel Tourist and Travel Agents Assn.

“The real problem is that we see no hope for a recovery,” he said.

Batsheva Sobelman of the Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.