ISRAEL

TEL AVIV — The shouts of “death to the Arabs” lasted only a few seconds. Fewer than five hours after 13 Israelis were killed and 150 wounded by two suicidal bombers, thousands of Jerusalem soccer fans gathered at the city’s stadium to cheer the local team in its important match against a Macedonian opponent. Before the kick-off, police and political pundits had feared that the sports event might turn ugly with racist demonstrations against the Palestinians. But for many Israelis, who in similar circumstances in the past were accustomed to witnessing extremist displays of outrage, the stadium roar was a great relief. The return to normalcy was especially refreshing because the shop and stall owners at the Mahane Yehuda market, where the two human bombs exploded, and their low-income customers are cut from the same social cloth as the soccer fanatics. Both are bastions of support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition.

There are several explanations for the relatively composed response of the crowd to the latest carnage. Terrorist attacks, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, have occurred under all Israeli governments. Thursday’s incident at the outdoor market was the fourth in 30 years there. The Cabinet, unlike in the past, was not the target of political anger. When followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane arrived to incite traumatized shoppers, they were promptly expelled by the shop owners.

Another reason is simple fatigue. Thirty years of war and empty promises of peace--since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their accords in September 1993, nearly 200 Israeli civilians have been killed in terrorist incidents--have largely desensitized most Israelis to spilled blood in the heart of their cities. Furthermore, ordinary Palestinians, instead of celebrating Israeli casualties as in the past, were saddened by the bombings and openly sympathized with the victims and their families.

But the most plausible explanation is that both Israelis and Palestinians have tuned out the politics and rhetoric that invariably attend such terrorist attacks. There is a growing sense that all interested parties to such attacks--politicians, sponsors of terrorism, security chiefs, media gurus and self-proclaimed “terror experts”--merely recite party lines.

Two nights before the attack, Netanyahu boasted on television that “since we came to power 14 months ago, the number of terrorist incidents has drastically went down. The Palestinians realized we were tough and meant business when we demanded peace with security.” The screams, blood and smoke that filled the market days later only magnified the emptiness of his boast.

Meanwhile on the left, the newly selected leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, uttered another well-digested cliche, a favorite of the left. “We have to continue with the peace process while fighting, with determination, terrorism.”

Israeli security experts chimed in with their usual line. Karmi Gilon, a former head of the Shabak, Israel’s domestic security agency, said that “there is no magic formula to squash, overnight, terrorism, and the best way to fight it is by penetrating the Hamas and other Muslim fundamentalist groups and obtaining good intelligence.”

The Palestinian reaction was equally predictable. Yasser Arafat, chairman and undisputed ruler of the Palestinian Authority, telephoned Netanyahu to express his “condolences to the bereaved Israeli public.” Then, he and his aides blamed the Israeli government’s decision to build Jewish neighborhoods in heavily populated Palestinian quarters of Jerusalem for provoking the attack. While they were at it, the Palestinian leaders accused the government of dragging its feet in making peace. Nevertheless, Arafat professed his belief in peace and promised that “the perpetrators of the crime will be found and punished,” a vow increasingly greeted with skepticism these days in Israel. Even after Arafat’s security forces arrested and interrogated scores of activists and supporters of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are suspected of carrying out the attack, Netanyahu and his Cabinet were not impressed.

Finally, the Israeli government responded to the market attack with measures that have heretofore distinguished themselves as singularly ineffective in deterring terrorists. The borders were closed. Negotiations stopped. Threats were made to dispatch Israeli soldiers into Palestinian-controlled territory, since Arafat’s security forces were obviously not doing their job. Economic sanctions were imposed, thereby aggravating the misery of impoverished Palestinians.

And as usual, the Palestinian Authority wasn’t intimidated. “We are not scared,” said Col. Jibril Rajub, head of the Palestinian security apparatus on the West Bank. “If the Israelis want war, they will get it. We are ready.”

These Pavlovian reactions to terrorism, Israeli and Palestinian alike, only deepen the impression that the Israeli public is but an audience for a well-staged play whose actors seem increasingly tired of reciting their lines. It all adds an extra dimension to the sense of helplessness that afflicts most ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.

Is there a solution to the vicious circle of political violence? The answer is still peace, but in order to achieve it, both sides have to come to terms with some basic realizations. One, the Israeli leadership and public must end the physical occupation--the roadblocks, curfews, military control and daily humiliations inflicted on Palestinians by young Israeli soldiers. They must also throw off the psychology of the occupier. Many Israelis refuse to admit that they behave like masters, denying Palestinians their basic rights to be treated as equal human beings. As for Arafat and his people, they must accept the notion that Israelis have very good reasons to distrust their repeated declarations of peace.