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Arabs say Israel throws away improved image

CAIRO: Israel's military operations in Lebanon have undone the modest gains Israel's image had made in the Arab world in the years since it made peace with Jordan and the Palestinians, diplomats said on Tuesday.

But the diplomatic search for a settlement in south Lebanon could eventually bear fruit by setting a precedent for a deal between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights, they added.

The Arab man in the street, brought up to believe that all Israelis are irredeemably belligerent, had only recently begun to look at his neighbours with a more discriminating eye.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres, one of the few Israeli leaders with a relatively untarnished reputation in the Arab world, was set to go down in history as a man of peace.

But pictures of Israeli warplanes and artillery killing Lebanese civilians with impunity, coupled with earlier images of Israeli soldiers imposing collective punishments on Palestinians, have revived all the old hostile stereotypes.

Newspapers in Egypt, for example, have freely used words such as barbaric, savage, arrogant and criminal to describe the way Israel has hit civilian targets and driven hundreds of thousands of Lebanese out of their homes.

The government newspaper al-Ahram portrayed Israel as half of a double-headed monster, spewing bombs from its maw. The other half was "terrorism" -- a reference to the Muslim militants fighting the Egyptian government at home.

"Events in Lebanon are definitely a long-term setback to peace at the level of the general public. It's reinforcing all the negative images," said an Arab diplomat based in Cairo.

"Even if they go back to negotiations, the effect will remain at that level. Israel's methods for persuading the Lebanese to negotiate have badly backfired. Attacking power stations -- it takes us back to the old days," he added.

"The Arab perception in the street was that Peres was the moderate. Now they are having second thoughts. Syria looks positively benign in comparison," said a Western diplomat.

The image of the United States has suffered too, but Arab governments recognise they cannot bypass the special status Washington has as mediator between Israel and its northern neighbours Syria and Lebanon.

As negotiations continue, hand in hand with the violence across the Israeli-Lebanese border, the diplomats said it was difficult to tell what shape a settlement would take.

Lebanon wants Israeli withdrawal from the south of its country, while Israel wants a ban on Hizbollah attacking the soldiers it sends across the border -- clearly incompatible demands.

But an extra factor holding up agreement is that both sides -- essentially Israel and Syria -- realise that the stakes are higher than the mere fate of the Hizbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon and of the Israeli-occupied border strip, they added.

"The whole situation is an analogy for the Golan. The issues are much the same. Who moves first? What does security mean?

"It might set a precedent so in the negotiations they are showing just how far they are prepared to go. If the settlement is long-term, they might have advanced one step towards an overall agreement," one diplomat said.

Syria and Israel have been talking about the Golan Heights on and off for more than four years but they cannot agree on how to phase Israeli withdrawal with a normalisation of relations.

The diplomats said Peres was playing a dangerous game, running the risk that he might end up with no substantial gains in Lebanon while throwing away the goodwill of all Arabs.

Peres has already antagonised sections of the Lebanese population who originally had no great sympathy for Hizbollah and he has no guarantee that without deploying ground troops he can stop Hizbollah firing Katyusha rockets over the border.

"So far Peres is the loser. He didn't define his goals and he's failed to prove he's a soldier. He tried to save Israeli lives by relying on planes and artillery against guerrillas. That's notoriously ineffective," said the Western diplomat.

"(Syrian President) Hafez al-Assad is the only clear winner at this stage. Having powerful foreign ministers knocking on his door legitimates him. It confirms him in control of Lebanon and shows that Israel has to go through Damascus," he added.-Reuter