A Mood of Relaxation

TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin, who has lived in Israel for 24 years, was slightly jolted last week to receive a stern warning from the Israeli Defense Forces that unless he did something about the poor condition of the bomb shelter in his basement, he might face a fine and trial. He was somewhat relieved to discover, however, that similar warnings had been sent to nearly every one of his 62 neighbors in Jerusalem's Nayot section, including a teen-ager who was using his family's shelter as a study room by day and a discotheque by night. Nonetheless, writes Levin, the incident had a sobering effect after a year of peace. His report:

DOES this mean we're expecting another war?" my son Donnie, 12, asked when the letter arrived. "Not necessarily," I replied. "But it does mean that the army wants you to get your bike out of the bomb shelter." "And our trunks," added my wife.

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During the Arab siege of 1948, Israelis encouraged each other with the saying "Yihye tov" (It will be good). During last year's fighting along the Suez Canal, they said, "Yihye beseder" (It will be O.K.). Now they don't say anything, because things are better than ever before.

Today the grinding war of attrition seems strangely remote. No longer do people walk down Jerusalem's King George Street with transistors pressed to their ears. No longer do newscasts begin with casualty lists; only 15 soldiers were killed by enemy action during the past year, by guerrilla mines or bullets. No longer do old friends meet regularly at funerals. At one funeral a young man in uniform murmured, "Who knows? I may be buried in the next grave." About a week later he was.

Not only do we not meet friends regularly at funerals, we hardly see them at all. Who has time, with all the American tourists flooding the country? In one week last month, nine relatives from the U.S., four close friends and two friends of distant cousins were in Israel. With jumbo jets disgorging hundreds at a time, and more than 100 flights per day going in and out, Transport Minister Shimon Peres complains, "We prepared for 3,000 tourists a day. We did not expect 10,000." Tourism in the occupied territories, from

Sharm el Sheikh to the Golan Heights, is also thriving.

The cease-fire has gradually eased Israel's siege mentality. Police roadblocks have been replaced by radar traps to curb speeding. Strikes have increased. The "Black Panthers," mainly underprivileged young people from Eastern countries, have taken to the streets to protest discrimination. Black-frocked Orthodox Jews have renewed their fight for an end to Sabbath desecrations by stoning buses. Four high school students sent back their draft notices, declaring: "We are not ready to serve in an occupying army."

Alarmed by such signs of relaxation, Golda Meir asked Israel's parliament: "What has happened to us in the past year? We are behaving as if there were no danger ahead of us, as if we had already achieved the peace we long for."

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Israel's new mood is not a sign of weakness. But it is true that as the rewards of peace relieve the fears of the nation, the distaste for a resumption of hostilities is growing. For the first time last week I heard an army officer say that it might not be a bad idea to withdraw a certain distance from the entrenched positions along the Suez Canal. "After all," he said, "we Israelis are not made to be moles."

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