Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat used to joke that no Iraqi missile would come to his city because there is no place to park. Last week a Scud-B launched in western Iraq flashed toward a crowded Tel Aviv neighborhood of cement-block houses–and cratered a dirt parking area. How many miracles could there be? By Sunday, two Iraqi missile attacks had shattered Israeli walls and windows but somehow caused no serious injuries. As siren after nerve-racking siren warned of possible new barrages, people simply hunkered down in their gas masks and waited for the next bang. “There is no need to panic,” Mayor Lahat told people as he walked the streets. “Whoever lost a house, we’ll take care of them. We’ll build them a bigger and better house.”
With grit and spirit, the nation that never turns the other cheek managed to refuse Saddam Hussein’s early invitations to transform the gulf conflict into an Arab-Israeli holy war. After each Iraqi attack on Israel, George Bush was on the phone with Prime Minster Yitzhak Shamir offering sympathy and urging restraint. Israeli officials threatened the kind of devastating reprisal they had unleashed in the past (box, page 26), but left it up to Saddam Hussein to guess when they would strike. The nation that always fights its own wars recognized that U.S. air power had already launched an intensive campaign against Iraq’s mobile missiles, said Defense Minister Moshe Arens, and “we are not sorry to depend on them.” On Saturday, U.S. forces rushed more Patriot missile to Israel complete with American operators–the first U.S. troops ever stationed in Israel with a combat mission.
Israel was gambling its peaceful future that Arab foes will not read its restraint as a new weakness to be exploited. Its fundamental doctrine demanded a retaliation massively greater than any attack. Shamir faced unrelenting pressure from fellow Likud hawks like Housing Minster Ariel Sharon, who is challenging him for the party leadership and was already clamoring that Israel risked becoming “an American protectorate or satellite [that] cannot exist by itself.” On the other hand, American forces were pulverizing the military machine of Israel’s foremost enemy with extraordinary thoroughness. And a quick victory could net Shamir years of grateful support–and military assistance–from a Bush administration that had often clashed with his hard-line policies in the occupied territories.
It helped that the first Scuds caused so little damage. Israeli hospitals treated hundreds of people–some for superficial wounds and many more who, fearing that Saddam Hussein had launched chemical weapons, accidentally poisoned themselves administering the antidote atropine. The psychological damage was also growing. Millions of Israelis had been ordered to closet themselves in sealed rooms and don gas masks for two actual attacks and four false alarms. It was a perfect metaphor for the mood of the country: tense, claustrophobic, angry, impotent. After a Scud blast exploded the windows in her Tel Aviv home, teenager Ronit Israeli swore that “we will give them back twice what they did to us,” “Israel should use their bombs,” said Hagit Davidi, 14, whose three brothers were slightly injured. “Not to kill the Arab people, but to kill Saddam Hussein.”
That was one option. Shamir went into virtual seclusion with his limited Defense cabinet to consider a range of alternatives. Israeli government sources on the outside speculated that the Air Force could simultaneously bomb several sites where Saddam Hussein might happen to be at a given time; the attackers could use penetration bombs to reach his underground shelters. But targeting Saddam Hussein was considered the least feasible option. Alternatively, the Israelis could send the Air Force or their Jericho missiles to hit Baghdad civilian areas in an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Or they could attack Iraqi chemical and nuclear facilities already targeted by the allied forces.
The most obvious option might be least productive. Finding and destroying mobile Scud launchers in western Iraq would be at least as tough for Israel as for the allied forces, Israeli military officials conceded. Israeli jets would have less time for hunting targets because of longer flight distances. In addition, Israel promised not to overfly Jordan or Syria in any attack on Iraq. Jordan’s King Hussein said he would send up his jets to intercept any outsiders penetrating his nation’s airspace without permission. Syria has concentrated reserves and tanks near the southern Golan Heights as an added inducement for Israel to respect Jordan’s territorial sovereignty. There is still one open attack route: in 1981 Israeli jets are thought to have overflown Saudi Arabia on their way to destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Taking the same route 10 years later would deeply embarrass the Saudis, but would be less likely to crack the anti-Iraq alliance.
In part Israel can blame itself for its vulnerability to the Scuds. In the mid-1980s its strategists decided to develop their own surface-to-air intercepting missile, the Arrow. But the Arrow will not be operational until the mid-1990s. As the confrontation with Iraq escalated, Israel received an emergency shipment of two batteries of U.S. Patriots–but the weapons are not yet operational because Israeli crews are still training to fire them. Last week’s delivery of additional Patriot batteries from Europe complete with U.S. crews was meant to give Israel at least a minimal sense of security–and a reason to avoid striking out at Iraq immediately. The batteries would be ready for action “within hours,” promised David Ivry, director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry. “(The Americans) understand our distress. They want to help us defend ourselves.”
The more often Iraqi missiles hit Israel, the more likely a quick Israeli retaliation. As if the Scuds were not enough, Israeli military spokesmen warned that the Israeli Air Force might still fly into action. Israel also stated plainly that it would regard any Iraqi ground incursion into Jordan as a cause for war. Israelis already weary of air-raid sirens and numbing explosions also had to consider that Hussein could still throw warheads of nerve gas into their midst–an intolerable affront to the Jewish state. In Tel Aviv, Major Lahat toured one stricken area and found that “the people are very angry, but they are behaving well.” “Keep smiling,” he advised the neighbors. “This is not the last missile.”
