Insider : With Relations Cooling, Israel Being Careful With U.S. Card : A $4-billion arms deal with the Saudis draws nary a peep. The silence says plenty about the gap between the allies.

WASHINGTON —  Last month, the Pentagon quietly notified Congress that it planned to sell $4 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Included were more than 1,000 armored vehicles, 2,000 anti-tank rockets, 27 big-bore howitzers and upgrades for AWACS radar planes.

Ordinarily, any such sale would have provoked a raft of protests--from Israel, from American Jewish groups and from staunchly pro-Israel members of Congress. Previous arms transfers--even much smaller ones--sparked banner headlines in both countries.

But this year there was nothing but silence.

Why is this sale different?

Government and private analysts cite two subtle but important reasons: The weapons involved aren’t as threatening to Israel, and U.S. lawmakers want to keep American weapons factories running to offset the decline in America’s own defense orders.

But to many, the absence of any protest also may reflect a more fundamental change--a cooling in the diplomatic relations between Israel and the United States as a result of the hard-line stance by the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on dealing with the Palestinians.

“There has been a change,” said Michael Eisenstadt, military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Israel may have diminished political stock in Washington, and the Israelis will be very selective how they spend it. They will be very careful in picking battles with regard to arms sales--a lot more selective.”

Critics contend that there has been a distinctly anti-Israel tilt in Bush Administration statements and actions in recent months, reflecting growing White House impatience with the slow pace of the peace process and the seeming intransigence of the conservative Israeli government.

They particularly cite Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s taunt to Israel last month: “When you’re serious about (peace), call us.” To bolster his point, he publicly recited the White House telephone number.

“Clearly, the nature of the relationship with Israel has changed,” concedes Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.), one of Israel’s most vocal allies in Congress. “For the last six months or so, the U.S. has wrongly found it appropriate to engage in front-page public diplomacy, trying to scare them or blackmail them and openly courting Arab countries,” Smith asserted. But he conceded that he is unlikely to stop the sale.

California Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), another strong pro-Israel voice in Congress, said the latest sale “hasn’t reached the threshold of attention that a highly visible plane sale would reach now and similar sales have reached in the past.”

But he put President Bush on notice that Israel and its friends are not moribund--merely keeping their powder dry in case the Administration proposes a sale of attack planes or other weapons that pose a more formidable threat to Israel.

“I think the Administration and the Saudis want to view these sales as a dry run for an aircraft sale,” Levine said. “That would be a grave mistake.”

An official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee--AIPAC--the most influential pro-Israel lobby in the United States, said that it has not pulled out all the stops to oppose the sale because it believes the weaponry is not a direct threat to Israel.

“It’s those sales that pose a threat to the stability in the region and Israel’s security that were actively fought,” the official said. “This one doesn’t . . . fall into that category. Our concerns were raised . . . but the community is not likely to actively oppose the sale.”

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, agrees. “The equipment itself is not offensive in nature, as some of the sales in the past have been,” he said. “The climate in general is a little different, too. The Administration is concerned with trade deficits, it’s concerned with jobs, and one weighs that against the danger to the security of Israel.”

Foxman and others noted that because of the geography of the Mideast, armored personnel carriers in Saudi hands don’t pose as serious a threat to Israel. Unlike long-range aircraft or missiles, the weapons in the latest sale are more likely to be used to counter a ground attack from one of Saudi Arabia’s immediate neighbors rather than to invade Israel.

The Administration also argued that the Saudis already have 155-millimeter howitzers and AWACS (airborne warning and control system) surveillance planes, so a few more guns and some more sophisticated equipment for the aircraft would not alter the military balance in the region appreciably.

The Pentagon, announcing the sale, said it will “contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States” and “will not affect the basic military balance in the region.” The language was pure boilerplate, identical to that justifying other transfers.

But officials privately reminded members of Congress that the sale--along with last year’s $3-billion sale of M1 tanks to Saudi Arabia--comes at a critical time for the American weapons industry.

Faced with near-certain cuts in Pentagon spending, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has threatened to close production lines--particularly for big-ticket items like tanks and airplanes--unless overseas buyers can be found.

Foxman and Smith, the Florida congressman, say the current Saudi sale may mark the beginning of a trend--an arms transfer that is justified in order to help bolster domestic employment and keep alive the so-called defense industrial base--the factories, technology and workers engaged in arms production.

“We know that’s the case the Pentagon is making--that we need these sales to keep production lines open in case the United States needs further access to these weapons,” Smith said. “But I can see no justification beyond that of the U.S. weapons makers. We’re turning these enormously dangerous weapons over to a country that doesn’t have the people (trained) to use them.”

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman at the Israeli Embassy said Jerusalem’s policy on arms sales to Saudi Arabia has not changed. “We remain opposed to arms sales to countries with whom we are at war and who have not recognized Israel’s right to exist,” she said.