Israel Warns It Will ‘Hurt’ Iraq if Threat Comes

Israel’s foreign minister warned Wednesday that if U.S. talks with Iraq result in a heightened Iraqi threat to Israel, his country will take the matter into its own hands and make the enemy “hurt.”

“If anyone thinks that through some maneuver in the name of peace, he will be able to continue to threaten with the aim of surprising Israel, he will find that Israel is ready with its might to destroy his security, to hurt him until he is sorry and regrets his action,” Foreign Minister David Levy declared in a speech to the Knesset (Parliament).

“Israel is taking nothing for granted and will make its own decisions,” he said.

The comments marked an end to Israel’s low-profile approach to the Persian Gulf crisis. They represented a clear expression of growing fears that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein may withdraw from Kuwait with his army and weaponry intact. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is scheduled to visit Washington next week and is expected to reiterate Israel’s concerns.

Levy’s comments followed by a day his effort to press the United States not only to expel Iraq’s army from Kuwait but also to destroy Hussein’s military might.

On Tuesday, Levy summoned U.S. Ambassador William A. Brown to argue that by Israel’s reckoning, Washington has explicitly committed itself to the dismantling of Iraq’s developing nuclear potential. He further cautioned that if Baghdad’s existing chemical and conventional arsenal remains intact, “it would be a problem for Israel and a problem for the entire world,” reported a Foreign Ministry official familiar with the talks.

The official insisted that, despite reports in Israeli newspapers, Levy was not implying a preemptive Israeli attack on Iraq. “That is taking the implication too far,” the official said.

The Levy statements came amid gloomy Israeli appraisals of President Bush’s proposal to open talks with Iraq, an offer that Baghdad accepted Wednesday. Although Bush insisted that he intends only to impress on Iraq the risks of staying in Kuwait, Israeli officials compared the decision to Western Europe’s efforts to appease German dictator Adolf Hitler before the start of World War II.

Science and Technology Minister Yuval Neeman likened Bush to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler in return for an illusory “peace in our time.”

Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, a leading Cabinet hawk, demanded that the United States remove Hussein from power.

“For Israel, for the Middle East and for the world, it would have been much better if the United States would not have stepped into the Persian Gulf if the end of the crisis would be that Saddam Hussein stays in power,” he said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed that Iraq be de-clawed. “Stability and peace in the Middle East are very hard to envision if Saddam Hussein remains with the weapons of mass destruction, the war machine that he has, and is building,” he said. “How (the weapons) can be neutralized is something that has to be looked at right now.”

Netanyahu indicated that Israel might take its own action if the United States wavers. “What has guided us throughout is, of course, support for the American-led international effort to reverse Iraqi aggression, but equally, of course, our concern and our resolution is to defend Israel,” he said.

Iraq has threatened to attack Israel if war breaks out in the Persian Gulf. Last spring, Hussein warned that he would “burn half of Israel” with chemical weapons in case of an Israeli attack.

In his comments to Brown, Levy suggested that now is the best time to hit Iraq because it is unlikely that an alliance such as the one now in place in the gulf can be renewed in the future. Levy had summoned Brown after receiving a letter from Secretary of State James A. Baker III explaining Bush’s offer to open talks with Baghdad.

“Israel is threatened by name, and we are taking a risk by adopting a low profile. In the event of danger, we must defend ourselves,” a Foreign Ministry official argued. The official added that Israel took Bush’s recent comments on Iraq’s nuclear potential to mean that the United States is committed to destroying it.

Israeli newspapers found Levy’s performance ominous. The influential Haaretz newspaper commented: “These remarks, coupled with the statement to Ambassador Brown, express a new Israeli policy toward the gulf crisis, following the invitation to Iraq to negotiate with the United States.”

Despite the hints that Israel might take on Iraq alone, military officials have said that Israel lacks the capability to do the job, at least using only conventional weapons.

One military official told reporters Wednesday: “Israel will never have the kind of arsenal that the United States has in place in the Persian Gulf--cruise missiles, B-52 bombers; nor do we surround Iraq on three sides, in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the gulf, like the Americans do.”

Israel possesses nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Government officials insist that the country would never be the first to “introduce” them in the region.