The New Face Of Israel CHANGING THE RULES United States leadership. Smerling predicted Sharon will attempt to soft- en his public image, much as he did while campaigning the last few Months, from that of a military leader responsible for Israel's engagement in Lebanon to that of an elder statesman. For its part, the Arab world, say Arab analysts, will be watching the United States' interaction with Sharon, and will be looking to see if the Bush administration will break from what they see as one-sided poli- cies during the last eight years, said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle East history and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. "I think, because of his record, Sharon will probably be held to a dif- ferent standard than another Israeli government," Khalidi said. 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Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations predicted that Sharon will have strong support, at least early on, from key conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. These Republicans, he said, had embraced hard-line Israeli politics when Clinton took office as a weapon with which to criticize the Democratic president. But many members of Congress have also been strong advocates of the peace process, and some may be less inclined to support an Israeli leader who takes a tougher line on conces- sions for peace and is still seen by some to be the spark that set off the latest wave of Palestinian violence. At least one former Likud prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was successful in reaching out directly to Congress, and analysts and pro-Israel activists say Sharon will have to do the same. Howard . Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, said that meetings have already started between the Sharon government and officials in both the White House and in Congress. "One can't overstate the importance of personal relations in diplomacy," Kohr said. "And it's critical on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress want the attention as well, and they have an expectation about having a relation- ship with someone that they intuitive- ly know is one of our closest allies." AIPAC officials have gone on the offensive in recent weeks, seeking to educate lawmakers in the new Congress about the facts on the ground and the causes of the latest casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Zionist Organization of America, a persistent critic of the Oslo peace process, will take a different tack. The group has hired a third lob- byist on a temporary basis — just to help make the case for Sharon to members of Congress. "The argument we will be making is that Sharon was right about the dan- gers of Oslo, right about his expres- sions of horror at [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat's pro-terror policies," said ZOA President Morton Klein. "We will urge them to be supportive of a new prime minister who has expressed strong concerns about the dangers of Oslo despite the fact that it was politically unpopular to do so." Tough Sell It is still too early to predict how the view from Capitol Hill will affect aid to Israel and other legislative issues important to the Jewish state. Foreign aid has often been a con- tentious issue in the budget process and pro-Israel activists have had to fight hard in recent years — for a vari- ety of reasons — for Israel's nearly $3 billion in annual U.S. aid. A senior Democratic congressional aide said that with a new administra- tion in the White House and the pos- sibility of a small foreign operations budget allocation, getting this year's appropriation through Congress may be the toughest in years. An early test of the mood in Washington could be the renewed effort to get supplemental aid to help Israel pay the costs of last year's unilat- eral withdrawal from Lebanon and expand its anti-missile capability. The Clinton administration request- CHANGING THE RULES on page 24