Israel Orders Higher State of Readiness : Defense: Court tells the army to hand out gas masks to Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The Israeli military, not long before the U.N. deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, has gone on a special “selective mobilization” status, amounting to a partial call-up of reserves, a senior officer said Monday.

The action came as the deputy chief of military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Danny Rothschild, told the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that a war in the Persian Gulf is inevitable, lawmakers reported.

Rothschild said that Israel’s role in a likely war is not yet clear, although the country is prepared for any preemptive strike that Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein might order against Israel before the deadline, which falls at 7 a.m. Wednesday Jerusalem time.

A senior officer reported Monday that “a lot of activity” has been seen at missile bases in western Iraq designated H-2 and H-3, the sites from which, because of their proximity, an attack against Israel is most likely to be launched.

In another development, the Supreme Court ordered the army to distribute gas masks to Palestinians in the occupied territories. A Roman Catholic group had brought suit demanding that Palestinians be treated the same as Jewish settlers in the territories.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Defense Minister Moshe Arens and Foreign Minister David Levy held a Monday evening meeting with opposition Labor Party leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin to brief them on the national defense preparations.

But suggestions that the two main Israeli political parties form a coalition government of “national unity,” or a more truncated joint “war cabinet,” were discouraged by Shamir, who said that although he would keep Labor’s leaders fully briefed, he does not want a government that contains opposition members.

Military officials said that “selective mobilization” is a form of partial mobilization, a “new phase” of readiness in which certain critical units are on a “very high state of alert” and are bolstered by reserves.

The critical list includes air force pilots--manning planes on runway standby--air controllers, radar defense personnel, antiaircraft missile battery personnel and coordinators, intelligence specialists and civil defense and damage control experts.

“We haven’t taken the tanks out of storage or mobilized reserve ground divisions,” said a senior source. “But we are moving into new stages. We are not where we were a week ago.

“As for the air force, they are burning up a lot more fuel in flying time, and we’ve taken some planes out of storage. The air force is larger in size than at the beginning of the crisis.”

The chief threat to Israel would come from Soviet-made Scud missiles whose range has been lengthened by the Iraqis to reach all of Israel when fired from bases in western Iraq.

A secondary threat are the long-range, Soviet-made Sukhoi-24 fighter-bombers, which are designed to attack at low altitude, avoiding early-warning radar.

The Israeli air force is expressing confidence that it can deal with Iraqi aircraft, at least keeping them from inflicting major damage.

But there is no sure defense against missile attack, although U.S. satellite intelligence, which is shared with Israel, is believed to helpful in spotting the deployment of missile launchers.

Once missiles are launched, Israeli defenses will have less than 10 minutes’ warning, and Israel would simply have to absorb the blow, although targeting of the Scuds is not precise.

Israeli tends to be loath to order full mobilization of its large reserve forces unless war is indeed inevitable because of the tremendous cost in dislocating the close-knit society.

A high percentage of the adult male work force is in the reserves.

In the buildup to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, some officers recommended full mobilization, but the political establishment overruled the request because of the personal and financial hardship involved.

As a result, Israel was caught off guard and not fully prepared for the onslaught by Egypt and Syria. Although the Israeli military ultimately prevailed, the casualty rate was high.