NEWS ANALYSIS Complacent Israelis begin to think seriously about Iraq

JERUSALEM, Feb. 17 (JTA) — With a single offhand comment, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai has sent Israelis into a panic. In a radio interview, Mordechai suggested that Israelis buy plastic sheeting and masking tape to be equipped if and when the order comes to prepare a ‘sealed room’ to deal with an unconventional weapons assault from Iraq. Within moments of the interview earlier this week, supermarkets and hardware stores throughout the Tel Aviv area — the principal target of Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles in the 1991 Persian Gulf War — were jammed with shoppers heeding the minister’s advice. The Israel Defense Force’s distribution centers handed out thousands of gas masks to, and exchanged tens of thousands of gas masks for, citizens made all the more anxious by Mordechai’s comment. With United States forces now poised to possibly attack Iraq any day, the soft- spoken Mordechai has been at pains during the recent nerve-racking weeks to calm the Israeli public. The probability of Scuds again raining down on Israel in the event of an American attack on Iraq is remote, he insists — an assessment that covers biological and chemical weapons as well as the conventional explosives that the Iraqi leader launched at Israel seven years ago. But Saddam’s defiance of the U.N. Security Council, escalating tensions between Washington and Baghdad — and Mordechai’s latest comment on individual Israeli preparedness — have now jolted the Israeli public from its apparent complacency about an Iraqi threat. For seven years, Israelis have been urged to come to IDF distribution centers to exchange their gas mask kits for more advanced versions. But millions of citizens neglected to come. The failure of Israelis to renew their civil defense equipment is part of a nationwide psychological phenomenon that can only be described as denial. After weeks of futile sitting in sealed rooms — none of the Scuds carried biological or chemical warheads — millions of people tore off the tape that sealed these rooms in March 1991 and promptly proceeded to put the entire episode out of their minds. Suddenly, thanks to Saddam and CNN, they are being forced to relive it. And though Iraq has not threatened Israel as it did seven years ago, Mordechai has been explaining that the sealed room is still recommended by chemical warfare experts as the best protection against chemical and biological agents. Underground air-raid shelters, if they are not equipped with sophisticated filtering systems, can become deathtraps in an unconventional attack since chemical or biological agents tend to sink and settle. In a well-sealed room, on the other hand, residents with gas masks can live comfortably for several hours until the initial threat is over. The rooms were not needed in 1991 because Saddam did not fire any non-conventional weaponry — possibly because he was deterred from doing so by the explicit American, and implicit Israeli, threats of a devastating response. This time, in the absence of the constraints imposed in 1991 by the need to maintain the U.S.-led international coalition against Saddam, Israel has broadly hinted that it will respond if attacked, even if the attack is conventional. But is Israel prepared for a war with Iraq? In recent weeks, Mordechai has been trying to explain why there are not enough masks and anti-chemical injections available, why there are long lines at IDF distribution centers and why there is a lack of air-raid shelters. He cannot blame Israeli public complacency for these conditions. Instead, Mordechai says that the government slashed civil defense expenditures two years ago — a decision that seemed reasonable at the time but suddenly seems short-sighted. The IDF, without embarrassment, has scoured Europe and America to urgently replenish its depleted stores of gas masks and other civil defense equipment. Mordechai says that in a matter of days everyone in Israel — citizen, tourist and illegal foreign worker — will have a protective kit. In an interview over the weekend with the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, Mordechai suggested that the United States may delay its attack until Israel’s civil defenses are in place. “I am sure they will take our state of readiness into account,” he said. That would include calling up key reserves in civil defense units, and, presumably, deploying U.S.-produced Patriot anti-missile missile units at vital locations. One such unit has already been set up near the southern town of Arad in the Negev. Of course, everyone here hopes that these preparations will prove unnecessary and that Israel will emerge unscathed from the present crisis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel is not a party to the showdown — nor does it wish to be. It is also hoped that this present emergency will help Israelis, collectively and individually, work through the earlier, traumatic episode in terms of their mental resilience. Just the same, many Israeli households have decided to ignore it all — to do nothing. No mask, no plastic, no tape. No CNN. Indeed, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz recommended this posture in an editorial. To set up sealed rooms again, the paper argued, would signal to Iraq that Israel’s determination to strike back instantly and massively is not as absolute as its leaders intimate. One problem with this argument, however, is that it is based on the cool rationalism of deterrence. But the threat from Baghdad may come at a moment when Saddam is all but destroyed — and no longer amenable to reason or deterrence. In other words, the danger that he may fling any chemical or biological warheads in his possession at the Jewish state may arise not at the beginning of a prolonged U.S. onslaught, but rather when he is defeated and desperate. Whatever the outcome of the Iraqi crisis, the threat of ballistic missiles and unconventional warheads is here to stay in what Netanyahu calls “the real Middle East.” Even if Iraq is neutralized, Netanyahu said this week, Iran and other sworn enemies of the Jewish state are still plotting and assembling their own arsenals of mass destruction.