ARAB AFFAIRS - Oct. 25 - Media Ease Off.

On their state-controlled TV stations and in their newspapers, most Arab governments have turned down the volume on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the tone - one of unalloyed hostility towards Israel, deep distrust of US policy and certitude that the very survival of Muslim shrines in Jerusalem are at stake - has remained as vigorous as it has been since the deadly clashes began in late September. While the militant tone has been driven by the state media, it has also mirrored the flood of public sympathy and political activism in support of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The fevered programming on nearly all Arab radio and TV stations that began with the outbreak of violence has eased off. In Jordan, the government has ordered each of its 160,000 civil servants to donate one day's pay to a fund for the Palestinian Intifada. In Egypt, many private companies and several government ministries have asked their employees to do the same. (See the Arab summit decisions above).

However, the bloodshed in the Palestinian territories is still the lead news story in the region. Jordanian newspapers, serving a readership that has close family and business ties with Palestinians in the West Bank, print the name of every Palestinian casualty. The Egyptian state radio has reduced but not eliminated its frequent broadcasts of old songs exhorting Arabs to fight to recover Jerusalem from Israel. In Kuwait, the photographs of every Palestinian brought to hospitals in the country have been put on the front pages. Commentators, crossing a line in their especially pro-American country, have started using bluntly anti-Zionist language in articles about Israel.

Arabic-language all-news satellite TV stations continue to provide a platform for many of the radical anti-Israel groups, which had very limited access to pan-Arab audiences before the clashes. Hizbollah took a leap in its own propaganda campaign when it arranged recently to have its TV station broadcast 24 hours a day on Arab satellite networks. The filmed death of Mohammed Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot by Israeli soldiers in Gaza as he cowered next to his father, remains a staple image in the media and on Arabic internet sites. In Cairo, meanwhile unsolicited messages have been showing up on mobile telephones, urging people to boycott American products and businesses. "We need your help to stop the murder of Palestinian women and children", the message reads. Hisham Fahmy, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which has set up a monitoring committee to access the impact of the boycott movement, said: "I think all of our members are worried a lot". Tension in the region, intensified by the terrorist bombing of the Cole in Yemen and the orders to US forces in the Gulf to go on high alert, has prompted some companies to take precautions to protect their US employees. Phillip Morris in Egypt told its non-Egyptian staff to evacuate their dependents at the start of the Palestinian-Israeli clashes and has not yet suggested they come back.