Israel Courts Arab Business Partners--Gingerly : Mideast: Delegation to economic conference in Jordan will stress that Jewish state does not seek to dominate the region.

JERUSALEM —  Walk softly and don’t carry big expectations.

Those are the guidelines Israeli business leaders and government officials seem to have set for themselves as their trimmed-down delegation arrives today in Amman, Jordan, for a Middle East economic conference billed as one of the largest ever in a region divided by war and hatred.

Israelis are trying to address Arab fears of economic domination that were fueled by Israel’s debut last year with a huge and eager delegation at the first regionwide economic summit in Casablanca, Morocco.

This time, when nearly 2,000 business and political leaders from 60 countries gather today for the three-day Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit, the Israeli delegation led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will account for only about 100 of them--fewer than a quarter of the Israelis who attended last year.

“We learned our lessons in Casablanca,” said Dan Gillerman, president of the Israeli Chamber of Commerce. “We are coming with a smaller delegation and one that is more representative of the private sector rather than political.”

Politics will still be high on the agenda, of course. Israel views trade and economic relations with the Arab world as the safety net of its peace agreements: Arab governments and business sectors must see they have a financial stake in peace, and peace must translate into economic development, if the Arab people are to accept Israelis.

For Israel, the meeting shows that the Arab world’s 45-year economic boycott of Israel is breaking down, and creates pressure to have it officially lifted.

In this regard, the Casablanca meeting was a groundbreaking political event, demonstrating to the world that Arabs and Jews could sit down at the same table to talk business. They did, although relatively little came out of it that was concrete: Israel is expected to double its trade with Egypt this year, but that still totals only about $80 million a year. Israel and Oman did open trade relations, but Israel nearly had to twist Jordan’s arm to sign a bilateral agreement last week in the nick of time for the conference.

Most of the rest of Israel’s trade with the Arab world remains under the table, uncounted as it passes through third countries.

Israeli business leaders hope the Amman gathering will be more of a real business meeting, with nuts-and-bolts sessions between Arabs and Israelis looking for joint ventures, new investments and open trade.

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“Casablanca was an opening,” said Shmuel Dankner, chairman of Dankner Investments Ltd. in Tel Aviv. “The achievement there was the fact it took place, and we were all a little astonished to be meeting openly. Of course, you don’t do things in one meeting, but I think we will make use of Amman to actually talk to the point.”

Dankner, who is looking for joint ventures in petrochemical, plastics and telecommunications industries, has meetings scheduled with potential partners from Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf states. He thinks that Arab concerns about being devoured by the larger Israeli economy are overblown.

“Whether you do something with the other side depends on specific projects. It has nothing to do with giants and dwarfs. In a joint venture, I want to be an equal partner, not a minority and not a majority,” Dankner said.

But Arab commentators are warning against getting too close to the Israelis or, even worse, moving toward a common market with Israel, whose economy is larger than all its neighbors’ combined. Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians are moving at the fastest rate toward economic cooperation, but per capita income in Israel is more than $15,000 a year, compared to slightly more than $4,000 in Jordan.

Palestinian analyst Bilal Hassan wrote in Saudi Arabia’s Pan-Arabic daily Asharq al Awsat that the strongest economy naturally has the most to gain from a common market, “and that is what Israel aspires to--namely, to lead the proposed Arab Common Market and lead the Arab policy-making that ensues from it.”

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The Israelis are arriving at the conference with a glossy book of scores of ideas for regional investment projects totaling about billion. While some may be pipe dreams, others are already in the pipeline with feasibility studies and interested investors. The list includes Dead Sea tourism developments, a canal linking the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, an Israeli-Jordanian airport, a joint seismographic center and roads linking Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

But to Sayyed Zahra, a commentator in the Bahrain-based newspaper Akbar al Khalij, this is an “arsenal of projects” proving that Israel is trying to reorder the region’s economic relationships to serve its own interests.

“The Israelis do not want to leave anything to chance. They do not want to leave a single gap or leave a single field out of their control. The Israelis want, in other words, not to leave the Arabs who are going to the conference with any opportunity to take the initiative, nor any scope to propose anything in any field,” Zahra wrote.

In other words, this is war by another name.

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You might say the Israelis have been in basic training, looking for ways to address these fears of Israeli imperialism, in at least three brainstorming sessions under the tutelage of Foreign Minister Peres, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and the Chamber of Commerce’s Gillerman.

They have honed these messages:

* Israel’s main markets are and will remain the United States, Europe and Asia.

* They want to enter the Arab market but are in no hurry. They will move only as fast as the Arab world is ready to accept them, while encouraging two-way trade.

Israeli business leaders say they are going to Amman with limited expectations about closing any deals but with a long-term view that business opportunities will open up throughout the Middle East in the coming three to five years.

At the conference, organizers plan to announce the creation of a Middle East Development Bank, a regional business council and a tourism association. The United States, which will be represented by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, supports the bank as a way to bolster Mideast peace.

The conference is sponsored by the World Economic Forum of Geneva and the government of Jordan.