Israeli Officials Urge U.S. to Press Offensive and Oust Hussein : Enemies: Shamir says security depends upon banishing him. But retaliation for Scuds now is unlikely.

Israeli officials, while restraining a twilight impulse to hit back at Iraq in response to a string of missile strikes, urged Washington on Tuesday to press on with its military offensive and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, an avowed enemy of Israel.

The officials warned against accepting a cease-fire or permitting Iraq to escape the battlefront with its heavy weapons. Israel’s call was for total victory, not just the liberation of Kuwait or the severe crippling of Iraq’s large army.

“Israel sees what is necessary for its security--that this man Saddam Hussein disappear from the international arena,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told reporters after a military briefing in the Parliament building here. “I don’t want to talk about the ways to achieve this. We do not determine the outcome of this campaign. The main thing is that he no longer control developments in the Middle East.”

Some officials have suggested that the Iraqis must be taught a lesson about the perils of following Hussein and that they be encouraged to overthrow him.

“As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, and the Iraqi people don’t draw conclusions about him, the war will continue,” said Economics Minister David Magen.

The entire Arab world must also be taught a lesson, insisted Foreign Minister David Levy, otherwise, Hussein would “become a role model for potential aggressors.”

There was no sign that Israel would launch a belated attack on Iraq to avenge the uneven volleys of Iraqi rockets that have rained on Israeli coastal cities.

“Israel doesn’t have to intervene,” said Agriculture Minister Raphael Eitan, a Cabinet hawk and former chief of staff who asked: “What could be accomplished? Bringing a division of tanks somewhere or blowing something up? For history to say Israel jumped on the bandwagon to reap profits at the last minute?”

Yitzhak Rabin, a former defense minister and a member of the opposition Labor Party, added: “I think it would be a mistake to respond now. It would look like nonsense.”

Still, civil defense officials were reluctant to give the public a definite all-clear. Attacks from chemical-tipped missiles were still considered a long-shot possibility.

“We in Israel have to be ready and prepared. The threat will only be diminished when there is a cease-fire and there is no sign of this yet,” said Danny Naveh, a spokesman for Defense Minister Moshe Arens.

Over a six-week period, Iraq has fired about 40 Scud missiles at Israel. All were armed with explosive warheads; two civilians have died from the blasts and another 300 were injured, mostly by flying glass.

On Tuesday, shoppers and workmen on the streets of Jerusalem listened intently to storefront radios and heatedly debated whether the U.S.-led allies should let Iraqi troops leave Kuwait peacefully. Most seemed to think that the more crushing blows leveled at Iraq, the better. “He just can’t be let to walk away, as if nothing happened,” said Tami Shapira, a shoe store clerk. “His army should be dead and he should be dead.”

There was no suggestion that Israel should lash out now that Iraq’s military campaign is in its dying moments. “What more could we do that the Americans aren’t doing?” asked Rafi Tamar, a shopper on King George Street.

The public overwhelmingly supported restraint, putting Shamir in the unexpected position of being admired for doing nothing.

The quick collapse of Hussein’s land forces made it less and less likely that Israel could weigh in with its own bombing campaign. Some analysts contend that restraint will lead to much soul-searching among Israeli strategists, who have long considered swift, massive retaliation a key weapon in Israel’s deterrence against attack.

Primarily, though, the impending destruction of the Middle East’s top Arab military power, and, perhaps, the fall of Hussein himself appeared to far outweigh immediate concerns. “We made the sacrifice of deterrence consciously,” said Joseph Alpher, who heads the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. “We are gaining to a great extent. The Iraqi threat is being removed and that far outstrips any damage from restraining ourselves.

“Anyway,” he added, “To go in now would be seen as kicking a dead dog.”

Before the war with Iraq broke out, Israeli officials insisted that any attack would be answered many times over; even after missiles struck Tel Aviv and Haifa, tough talk continued. In recent weeks, as the number of Scuds landing in Israel diminished and the damage lightened, the threats faded.

Col. Raanan Gissin, an Israeli army spokesman, said Israel could yet move against the missile launchers in western Iraq if they remain in place at the war’s end. “We will still have the right to defend ourselves,” he said.

But some analysts said it is almost unimaginable that the coalition would allow the Scud launchers to remain. “If the need to retaliate disappears, Israel will not retaliate,” argued Menahem Meron, former director general of the Defense Ministry.

“There were two moments to act,” concluded Yanush Ben-Gal, a retired general and former head of Israel’s northern regional command. “When the first Scud fell and when the ground war began. Now the ground war is moving so fast that even if we wanted to, we couldn’t act.”