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So it was not surprising that when the United States repeatedly struck Iraqi military targets this week in response to the latest Iraqi aggression, Israeli citizens rushed to trade in their Gulf War gas masks for new ones.

But Middle East analysts have mixed views about the likelihood that the latest U.S.-Iraqi confrontation could spark another attack on Israel or scuttle the Middle East peace process.

"There will be zero impact on the peace process," said Adam Garfinkle, executive editor of the National Interest, a foreign policy journal in the United States.

Still, Israel and its Arab neighbors have already split in their reaction to the Clinton administration's decision to unleash cruise missiles at Iraqi military targets in southern Iraq early this week.

Administration officials said the attack was in response to Iraqi attacks against Kurds in a protected no-fly zone in northern Iraq and was also a pre-emptive move against threats to Iraq's neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he understood Clinton's decision to take action and backed the principle "that aggression of this kind must not go unpunished."

Seeking to reassure Israelis after meeting in his Jerusalem office with U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk, Netanyahu added, "We do not see right now a danger of the conflict spilling over into this region, but we do have to be vigilant."

Indyk also briefed Foreign Minister David Levy and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai.

Netanyahu said the United States had kept him abreast of all developments and that the briefing after the attack was not his first.

Several American Jewish groups, including the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella organization, expressed support for the U.S. action.

For their part, Jordan and the Palestinians — both of whom stood as pariahs in the Arab world because of their support for Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War — criticized the American strike.

Palestinian legislative council member Ziad Abu-Ziad said the military action was an attempt by Clinton to boost his re-election bid and that it would harm the peace process.

An escalation of the conflict could force moderate states such as Jordan to take a more extreme position, potentially complicating the peace process.

"If things heat up, King Hussein will have to retreat or move to a more pro-Iraqi position" to maintain the support of his people, said Daniel Pipes, editor of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Quarterly.

Much has changed in the Middle East since the Gulf War, including improved relations between Israel and the Arab world and between the United States and the Arab world.

Despite these advances, a "significant minority of the population of the Middle East will support Saddam," Pipes said.

The rest of the Arab world was also largely critical of the U.S. move. Their response was a far cry from the days of the anti-Iraq coalition among Arab and Western nations, meticulously constructed by then-President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker in the build-up to the Gulf War, which erupted in January 1991.

Their response can be attributed, in the view of some analysts, to the traditional regional indifference to the fate of the Kurds.

Back in 1991, even hard-line Syria set aside its reservations over American intervention, and dispatched forces to the Saudi Desert to help beat back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

But Kuwait, Arab and oil rich, is a far cry from the long-oppressed Kurds in northern Iraq, whose internal divisions precipitated Saddam's armed intervention.

In addition, according to Israeli analysts, Arab states fear a breakup of Iraq, and the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the north and, perhaps, a new Shi'ite state in the south.

Indeed, the internal Kurdish strife in the U.S.-protected zone in the north of Iraq has become, in the wider Arab view, a source of concern for future instability in the region.

Since 1991, moreover, most Arab states have begun rebuilding dialogues with Iraq — and are loath to see these relationships — some of them lucrative — destroyed for the Kurds' sake.

For Garfinkle, who has been studying the Kurds, the real test is if Saddam retreats or tries to strike in Sulaymaniyah, another Kurdish area in northern Iraq.

For now, he said, Israel is safe.

"It's not like [Saddam] has a Scud loaded up aimed at Israel," he said.

But others are more cautious.

"When Kurds are fighting Kurds, Iraq brings Israel in willy-nilly," Pipes said.

And that's what some Israelis believe.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in an attempt to draw it into the conflict and break up the Allied forces.

During the war, Israel distributed gas masks to its citizens, and instructed them to create a sealed room in their homes with plastic sheeting and tape, in an effort to counter suspected chemical warheads on the Iraqi missiles.

All the Scuds aimed at Israel carried conventional warheads. The attacks resulted in the direct deaths of two Israelis and extensive property damage. At least a dozen other Israelis died from indirect causes, including heart attacks.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Israelis crowded gas mask distribution centers to trade in their old masks — some of which were later declared by the Israel Defense Force as defective — with new ones.

Some of those at a Tel Aviv distribution center denied that the latest developments had prompted them to show up.

"I'm moving apartments, and I decided this was a good time to get a new mask," the domestic news agency Itim quoted one Israeli as saying. "I don't even have a radio to hear the news."

But others on line said they preferred to play it safe.

One woman, Tami, said that even before the Gulf War, "they said there was no chance of anything happening — and we saw what happened in the end."