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With the Mideast peace process crippled and his homeland returning to the political defensive, Israeli journalist Oz Frankel said the Jewish state's "status is moving backwards four to five years."

"Like the '70s, Israel has to fend for itself," Frankel told Congregation Beth Ami in Santa Rosa recently. "One step forward and a couple of steps backward will be the scenario for the next few years with the peace process."

Frankel, a Jerusalem radio reporter in the 1980s and a political writer for the Jerusalem Post in 1990, spoke during Israel's recent 49th Independence Day celebrations. As Israel nears the half-century mark, it faces stormier political times after a few years of relative peace in the wake of the 1994 Oslo Accords.

Frankel's remarks came on the heels of a recent U.N. resolution supported by 143 countries calling for an immediate halt to construction of Jewish housing at Har Homa in eastern Jerusalem. Only Israel, the United States and Micronesia voted against the non-binding measure.

Currently a doctoral candidate in comparative history at U.C. Berkeley, Frankel has covered Israeli elections, the peace process, the Israeli cabinet and foreign ministry. His views, he stressed, were strictly his own and did not reflect any newspaper's editorial policy.

Citing Israel's withdrawal from Hebron as an example of the country's forward-and-backward momentum, he noted that the pullout is seen positively by those supporting the Oslo Accords and negatively by the Likud and rightist supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's personal political crisis — the so-called Bar-On affair — is also fanning the embers of old Israeli social divisions and causing them to flare up, Frankel said.

Israel's state attorney recently decided not to indict Netanyahu and his allies, all of whom are Ashkenazi, in the Bar-On affair, but said charges will be leveled against Knesset member Aryeh Deri, a Sephardic Jew. Deri, head of the ultra-religious Sephardic Shas Party, allegedly agreed to back the Hebron pullout in return for Netanyahu's naming Roni Bar-On as attorney general. Bar-On allegedly in turn was to reach a plea bargain deal with Deri in corruption charges he already faces.

The state attorney's decision has reopened old rifts between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Israelis.

In addition, the Israeli public's fear of terrorism, heightened by the Purim suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, is aggravating old wounds.

"There is a geography to terror," Frankel said. "Terrorism in Tel Aviv has a greater impact on Israelis than terrorism in Jerusalem or other areas. When it happens in Tel Aviv it has a huge impact on national morale."

Frankel also suggested that "Israelis are getting ready psychologically for war, especially with Syria."

Despite growing media and public talk of war with Syria, Frankel said: "I don't think war will happen, as Israel's military might is so great that even [Syrian President Hafez] Assad won't risk it."

Still, this return to a war-ready mentality is a departure from the unprecedented Israeli mindset that peace could break out in the wake of the Oslo Accords.

Also worrisome to Frankel is the Americanization of Israeli culture and politics. Israel's "best and brightest" don't want to engage in political activity, which they see as contaminated, he said. As in the United States, he added, Israel is also experiencing a widening gulf between rich and poor, combined with an expanding rift between religious and secular citizens.

Frankel wasn't entirely pessimistic, however: Average per capita income for Israeli citizens has grown substantially, and civil liberties are becoming more progressive. The Gay men and lesbians openly serve in the Israeli army, he said, and their partners are eligible for survivor benefits.

The talk was co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Agency of Sonoma County, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Congregations Beth Ami and Shomrei Torah. It was the first of three events honoring Israel's independence.