Both sides show tense restraint
The first confrontation between the Arab world and Israel's newly elected Likud Government has ended with a relatively discreet raising of warning flags by the Arabs and mild finger-wagging by Israel.
However, the very restraint reflected a mutual awareness that the Middle East atmosphere is so charged in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu's election victory that neither side wants to risk a spark.
A communique issued on Sunday by the Arab League summit meeting in Cairo warned Israel that if it does not abide by its previous commitments to withdraw from occupied territory, Arab states would 'reconsider steps taken in the context of the peace process'.
Such a setback, the statement warned, would carry the region back into 'a whirlpool of tension'.
The wording annoyed Israel. 'One-sided demands that harm security are incompatible with peace negotiations,' said Mr Netanyahu. 'Negotiations must be conducted without preconditions.' If the Arab statement was sharper than Israel would have liked, it fell well short of an overt threat of war or even of a freezing of the developing relations between Israel and the Arab world as hardliners had urged.
Since Mr Netanyahu's election, the Israeli Government has been sending signals to the Arabs that its intentions are peaceful despite the hardline rhetoric espoused by the Likud leader in the past.
Mr Netanyahu himself has said that peace with the Arabs is his major goal.
Although Mr Netanyahu has refrained from expressing willingness to meet with Yasser Arafat, whom he has dismissed in the past as a terrorist, Foreign Minister David Levy has declared that he himself would meet with the Palestinian leader.
The first test on the ground of the new Government's policy will come in the next few days in the West Bank City of Hebron, the only Palestinian city still controlled by Israeli troops.
