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Other models and terms available at similar savings! Sale ends 9/30/96. While supplies last. Make an intelligent decision. Buckle up . Wishing Our Friends and Customers A Happy and Healthy New Year! t every critical juncture in Arab-Israeli negotiations, Israeli officials have sought to answer three key questions: 1. Can we trust these and fu- ture Arab leaders to maintain an agreement? 2. What assurance and guar- antees can be part of agreements that will insure compliance or de- ter their unraveling? 3. Are Arab attitudes toward Israel changing? Regardless of whether the for- mula for reaching additional Arab-Israeli agreements is "land for peace" as the Arab states ve- hemently advocate, or "land for security" as Israeli Prime Minis- ter Netanyahu strongly prefers, Israelis need to know their Arab partners and whether Arab soci- eties intend to preserve peace and security. From Israel's establishment in 1948 until after the 1973 war, Arab leaders uniformly and reg- ularly spewed hatred against Is- rael. Those Arab leaders who had seized political power after World War II claimed a public monopoly on truth. Most con- trolled the radio and press and turned them into branches of government. The Arab media be- came a barometer for under- standing Arab attitudes toward Israel. With the serious beginnings of Arab-Israeli negotiations after the 1973 war, segments of the Arab media reluctantly accepted Israel as a reality. Today, most of the Arab media portrays Israel as a militarily superior Jewish economic giant enjoying unlim- ited American support unnatu- rally placed in the middle of the Muslim and Arab world. Deep pockets of Arab distaste for the Jewish state remain, but blanket uniformity of Arab dislike for Is- rael, at least as portrayed by the Arab media, is gone. What does the Arab media say about Israel today? Perhaps it is all too obvious, but the only ac- curate generalization is that no Arab capital, no Arab leader, and no Arab media outlet is in love with Zionism or the policies of Is- raeli leaders. After that, important distinc- tions exist. Militant Islamic groups, such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, are not only anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, but their rhetoric are uniquely A Dr. Kenneth W. Stein is a pro- fessor of Near Eastern history and political science at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. spliced with passionately anti- Jewish feeling. These groups and their media outlets see the Unit- ed States as inherently evil. The Syrian Arabic media tends to be the most shrill, nasty, and ven- omous in their treatment of Is- rael and Zionism. When Palestinian Arab politi- cians are quoted, they spend al- most equal time criticizing Israeli policies as they do chastising Arafat's autocracy. Egypt's me- dia attitudes toward Israel can be differentiated between anti- government newspapers that are also pro-Islamic and the more secular press which tends to be pro-government. The former rants against Jews, while the lat- ter almost exclusively criticizes Israeli policies and Washington's support for Israel's political po- sitions. The secular press in Egypt easily criticizes Clinton and Christopher personally and by name, a tendency less seen in the Syrian press. And the Jor- danian press, though often times critical of Israel, is by far the most restrained in its use of negative language. Those writing in the Palestin- ian Arab press, fearing reprisals from Arafat's security devices, rarely criticize the PLO leader directly; that is usually done in Arab media outlets outside of Arafat's geographic jurisdiction. Since Netanyahu's election, the Palestinian leadership has been emphasizing the need for the new Israeli government to ad- here to the agreements already accepted by previous Israeli gov- ernments. Venom expressed against Zionism and Jews ap- pears less frequently as com- pared to earlier periods in Israeli-Palestinian relations. In- stead, Israeli policies are assailed, such as those on Jerusalem, the settlements, closure of the ter- ritories to Palestinian workers, and withdrawal of Israeli forces from Hebron. Regardless of who has been Is- rael's prime minister, the con- trolled media in Damascus has focused on the uncompromising demand for Israel to return all of the Golan Heights to Syrian sov- ereignty and its desire for Europe and the United States to pres- sure Israel into concessions. Habits of the heart and mind are difficult to change. Signa- tures on diplomatic documents do not erase decades of distrust. Yet, in a quarter century of Arab- < Israeli negotiations, some slight but significant changes have oc- curred in Arab media portrayal of Israel, Zionism and Jews.