Israelis take their gas masks out
Israel, Local, 11/8/1997

It is not clear where the current standoff between Iraq and the US will lead, but many Israelis think the threat of being hit again by Iraqi missiles is still real. The threat of Iraqi ground-to-ground missiles raining over Israel has never faded away since the Gulf War in 1991, though there were ups and downs. The lack of progress on the Syrian track of peace talks has increased the worries that in any military confrontation with Syria, Israelis will again have to resign to their sealed rooms.

But lately, with the present strife between Iraq and the US, fears have become real and scores of Israelis lately have been rushing to army gas mask distribution centers to refresh their masks and have them ready should a need arise to use them. Israeli officials maintain that the gas masks in people's possession provide 100 percent protection against all known types of chemical weapons today. Those masks were recently tested and they stood up to both Sarin gas and the VX nerve agent.

According to Israeli military sources, the number of Israelis who have been querying the Home Front Command about gas masks has tripled from 2,000 to 6,000 persons per day. "It is frustrating. It is annoying. We have a detailed program for exchanging and updating gas masks. But we are forced to work in peaks," said Colonel Gilad Golan, head of the Home Front Command's chemical protection distribution branch.

Since the Gulf War ended, the Israeli army has used a protracted media campaign to urge Israelis to update their masks but the average Israeli was indifferent and only a minimum of people reported to gas mask distribution centers. It was only in days of rising tension with Iraq, or with Syria, that the average Israeli would rush to those centers, expressing fears that an upcoming military clash was imminent. Towards the end of the Gulf War, many Israelis dropped their gas masks and even went up to their rooftops to watch missiles hitting their targets. They were confident that Iraq wouldn't use any chemical weapons. Today, they are more convinced that no chemical threat is posed from Iraq.

Unlike the ordinary Israelis, experts on Iraq believe that Saddam Hussein may not have the capability to hit Israel again even if he wanted to. Dr. Ofra Bengio, an expert on Iraqi affairs at Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center for Strategic Studies, said the current encounter in the Gulf is exclusively between the US and Iraq and noted that the fact that Iraq has agreed to negotiations shows that it does not want to escalate the tensions. Other experts believe that Iraq still has about two dozen Scud missiles but that they are in a questionable condition and armed only with conventional warheads.

The trauma of the Gulf War returns to the Israelis periodically. Israelis still bear a skepticism toward their intelligence because they never foresaw the Scud attacks. It is because of past failure by the Israeli intelligence to predict missile attacks on Israel that Israelis tend to limit their dependence on their defense establishment.

The Home Front has been busy over the past six years renovating the chemical protection kits in terms of changing dying batteries or replacing old filters and expired anti-dotes. With the increasing population in Israel, demand for those protection kits has increased. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there are now nearly six million people who need to have gas masks, including two million infants, children and youths. Out of these, there are at least 400,000 people who have yet to apply for their protection kits. They do not seem to be worried by the threats coming from the east.

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