This Time, From Gas Masks to Guns

In the weeks that preceded the 1991 Gulf War, an almost surreal calm seemed to unite Israelis. We tried to prepare ourselves: Saddam Hussein, after all, had threatened to “burn half of Israel.” Still, we didn’t really believe he would dare attack. Surely, we reasoned, even Saddam understood that Israel wasn’t Kuwait, that any provocation would invite a devastating response.

Now, though, as the lines of panicked Israelis crowding gas mask distribution centers attest, we know that the inconceivable isn’t just possible but likely. If the U.S. attacks Iraq, many here are certain that Saddam will try once again to become a hero of the Arab world by launching missiles at Tel Aviv apartment buildings. Some Israelis, lacking the shame of deserters, openly declare that they will leave the country if Saddam strikes--Jews fleeing for safety from Israel, the Jewish refuge.

Israel’s passivity during the Gulf War fulfilled our ultimate nightmare. The home front became the battlefield. Yet our response to Scud missile attacks and the threat of germ warfare was confined to placing plastic sheets over our windows and wet towels under our doors. That passivity reversed our national ethos of self-defense and seemed to restore us to a vulnerability that Israel’s existence was intended to prevent.

Still, most Israelis understood that there was good reason then for restraint: An Israeli attack might have provoked Arab nations like Syria to quit the American-led coalition out of fear of appearing to side with the Jews against a fellow Arab state. This time, though, there is no coalition to undo. If Israel remains passive yet again, we fear, the Middle East might begin to see the Jewish state as an unmoving target.

The Gulf War violated the long-standing Israeli policy not to entrust the country’s defense to anyone but ourselves. Though the U. S. genuinely tried to target the Scud batteries, protecting Israel was just one of its war aims. Only Israel’s single-minded intervention could have ended the six-week ordeal of a nation suspended in sleepless anticipation of the next air raid siren.

Almost unnoticed in the current apocalyptic gloom is the fact that a new, rare Israeli consensus has emerged in recent days. Israelis from left to right agree that this time, the country must retaliate for any Iraqi attack and that the response must be commensurate with the provocation. One columnist even demanded that the government recall the gas masks already distributed, as a message to Saddam that we won’t meekly return to our “sealed rooms.”

But however united on the need for retaliation should Saddam attack, we remain bitterly divided about the implications of the Iraqi crisis for the peace process. Left-wingers insist that Israeli security fears over a West Bank withdrawal are an absurd anachronism in an era when long-range missiles threaten Tel Aviv. Right-wingers counter that the Gulf War didn’t end until American ground forces occupied Kuwait, proving the military value of territory.

Israel is the only country where every citizen is equipped with a gas mask. Outsiders may perceive us as a powerful nation suppressing Palestinian independence, but we see ourselves as a besieged state in a region where a dictator who starves his people is hailed as a national savior and terrorists who turn themselves into human bombs are celebrated as religious martyrs.

How, then, do we best ensure our safety? By yielding strategic territory to the Palestinians in the hope that healing one of the Middle East’s deepest wounds will ease the region’s turbulence? Or by resisting a withdrawal that will weaken us and invite aggression by neighbors suffering from psychoses entirely incidental to Palestinian grievances?

That is the dilemma Israelis will have to address when we emerge, in whatever condition, from this latest crisis.