Verbal Warfare Escalates in Middle East

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, considered a moderate in the Cabinet, issues a fiery, red-faced warning to Lebanon that anti-Israeli attacks will be met with the harshest of reprisals: “blood against blood, life against life, child against child.”

Arab newspapers and radio stations, many of them government-owned, revive ugly caricatures and language associating Israeli behavior with fascism and Nazism to criticize the Jewish state’s recent airstrikes against Lebanon. Levy and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak are branded “new Nazis” and “little Hitlers.”

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is quoted as telling European diplomats that Barak, the man he has often called his “partner” in peace, once sought to kill him and is now humiliating him so thoroughly in front of his own people that extremists may try it again.

The Middle East, which barely two months ago appeared to be marching steadily toward a regionwide peace, is suddenly awash in extremist, even outrageous, rhetoric that reflects both widespread frustration over the paralyzed peace process and, many say, the depth of old enmities between Israel and the Arabs.

“It shows that a lot of the talk about peace is really skin-deep,” political scientist Gerald Steinberg said. “When it’s so easy to revert to this kind of language, it shows that the ethos of the peace process, the concept of mutual coexistence, acceptance and cooperation, has not really sunk in.”

The latest verbal warfare began after Israel’s separate peace negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, which had seemed so promising last fall, each ground to a halt in recent weeks. But it escalated even further three weeks ago after Barak ordered air raids on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure in retaliation for the deaths of seven Israeli soldiers at the hands of Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

The Arab world was outraged by the bombings, which destroyed three power stations and injured 20 civilians. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose nation was the first to make peace with Israel more than two decades ago, paid an exceedingly rare visit to Beirut last weekend to express solidarity with the Lebanese. And other Arab leaders have spoken out too, demonstrating a degree of pan-Arab unity that is far from typical these days.

Now, with the recriminations, threats and ugly imagery flying, prospects for restarting the peace talks any time soon appear remote. U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross has been here throughout the week trying to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but he appears to be making little progress. And each side blames the other for the impasse, and for the increasingly acrimonious atmosphere.

Across a widening gulf, many Israelis and Arabs appear stunned at the charges and threats issuing from the other side, and at the ease with which they have slipped back into the imagery of the past.

In fact, Levy’s speech to the Israeli parliament on Wednesday came during a special debate on recent Arab incitement against Israel, including comparisons between Israel’s behavior and that of the Nazis.

The official Syrian media also accused Israel this month of grossly exaggerating the Holocaust, the World War II genocide in which 6 million Jews perished, to win international support. In a nation where Holocaust survivors and their descendants are estimated to make up a third of the population, such words have deep, and potentially lasting, resonance.

In his speech, Levy said such denials and cartoons were an effort to “spread poison and hatred” about Israel. He began by reiterating government warnings that Israel would respond harshly to any attacks on its northern border communities, but then suddenly slipped into almost biblical language, outlining a foreign policy akin to “an eye for an eye.”

“If Kiryat Shemona burns,” he said in reference to the largest Israeli border town, “Lebanon will burn. One thing turns on the other--blood against blood, life against life, child against child.”

Levy’s remarks drew an immediate outcry from Arab Israeli and leftist legislators and sparked anger in the Arab world that continued throughout Thursday. Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss called him racist and arrogant, and Syrian media again likened him to the Nazis, with Syrian television repeating a broadcast of his angry speech frequently during the day.

Even before Levy’s comments, however, many Arabs were upset with Israel’s behavior and disappointed that Barak so far has not lived up to the Arab world’s expectations for pushing the peace process forward, with Syria and the Palestinians alike.

“It’s a reaction to the recent realization that Israel wants to get peace without paying the price by giving up enough land,” said Palestinian political analyst Ghassan Khatib. “They want to keep the cake and eat it too. So the tone is reflecting a reality in the peace process.”

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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in Cairo contributed to this report.