Arens: Mr. Hard-Liner

Moshe Arens, who is slated to become Israel's new Foreign Minister, has something in common with his predecessor, Shimon Peres: he looks and acts like a gentleman diplomat. But while Peres, the head of the Labor Party, played the moderate during his two years in the post, Arens is expected to act the hard- liner. Arens, 63, was one of the few Israeli politicians who refused to support the Camp David peace accords with Egypt in 1978, and no one expects him to display any less determination in pressing his opposition to negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Warns a U.S. official who counts the former Israeli Ambassador to Washington as a friend: "It will be tough to strike a deal with Arens." He adds, "But if you have a deal, it sticks."

Born in Lithuania, Arens went to the U.S. as a teenager, served in the U.S. Army and earned engineering degrees from M.I.T. and Caltech. He emigrated to Jerusalem shortly before Israel became a state, and during the war for independence served in the armed Jewish underground movement headed by Menachem Begin, who became the young American's mentor. After engineering careers in academia and industry, the bookish and brainy Arens entered politics in 1974, and was elected to the Knesset as a candidate of Begin's Likud.

Appointed Ambassador to Washington at the height of his country's invasion of Lebanon, Arens made enemies at the State Department by misleading Washington about Israeli intentions in the conduct of the war. But he also won admiration for his skillful management of Washington's vaunted Jewish lobby, even though his most cherished project, the Israeli-built Lavi jet fighter, turned out to be a $1.8 billion failure. From 1983 to 1984 Arens served as Defense Minister, a post that did nothing to lessen his commitment to Israeli control over the occupied territories. In 1986 Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir put Arens in charge of Israeli-Arab affairs. According to Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and Labor supporter, Arens' primary goal "will be to try to dislodge the United States from a dialogue with the P.L.O. If there is someone who can present the case to the United States intelligently, it is he."