Israel and the Conflict
Avi Shlaim
in Alex Danchev and Dan Keohane, eds., International Perspectives on the
Gulf Conlict, 1990-91, London, St Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 59-79.
The 1991 Gulf War was the strangest war in Israel's war-scarred
history. Even to the question of whether Israel was a participant
in this war there is no simple answer. By any normal standards,
Israel was not a participant in this war. A state of emergency
was declared and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were put on alert but
the order to strike never came. There was no military front, no
offensive military operations and no engagement with the enemy.
By launching his rickety rockets against Israeli cities, Saddam
Hussein, the villain of the drama, did try to draw Israel in, to
transform what he himself had started as an Arab-Arab conflict into an
Arab-Israeli conflict. But Israel refused to be drawn in and
simply took the punches on the chin. It was necessary to keep
Israel out in order to keep the Arabs in the American-led anti-Saddam
coalition. The attitude of the government was somewhat
contradictory: while defining the conflict in the Gulf as involving
Israel directly and insisting on its right to self-defence, it pursued
a consistent policy of non-intervention and non-retaliation. This
policy enjoyed the overwhelming support of the civilian population
which bore the brunt of the 39 Iraqi Scud attacks. Inaction spoke
louder than words.
The upshot was that from the beginning to the end of the Gulf War,
Israel remained a sitting duck. It was most odd that Israel, of
all countries, should choose to play the role of a sitting duck because
its entire military doctrine is geared to seizing the initiative and
going on the offensive. The main tenets of this doctrine are
deterrence, pre-emption, carrying the fighting to the enemy's territory
as swiftly as possible, and self-reliance. All of these tenets
were violated by Israel's passivity during the Gulf War. In fact,
Israel's traditional military doctrine was stood on its head. To
be sure, this was not the first time that Israeli deterrence
failed. But, on those occasions when it did, the other elements
of the doctrine were immediately brought into play. Thus, when
President Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran in May 1967, Israel
launched a pre-emptive attack and when Egypt and Syria launched a
surprise attack against Israel in October 1973, Israel lost no time in
mounting a counter-offensive. What makes the Gulf War unique in
the annals of Israeli military history is not that deterrence failed
but that Israel chose not to respond to a direct military attack.
Israel's inaction in the face of persistent Iraqi missile attacks is
all the more surprising given that its government at the time was
headed by Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the Likud. A previous
national coalition government headed by Shamir collapsed in March 1990
when the Labour Party, frustrated by his intransigent attitude towards
negotiations with the Arabs, walked out. In June 1990, Shamir
formed a new and much narrower coalition government with the support of
the religious parties and two small secular ultra-nationalist parties,
Tehia and Tsomet. This new government was the most right-wing
government in Israel's history and certainly the most hard-line when it
came to relations with the Arabs. Shamir's party colleagues who
shared his ideological commitment to Greater Israel assumed the key
positions in the government. David Levy became Foreign Minister,
Moshe Arens Defence Minister and Ariel Sharon Housing Minister.
The government's principal military advisers were Chief of Staff Dan
Shomron, his deputy Ehud Barak, Military Intelligence Chief Amnon
Shahak and Air Force Chief Avihu Bin-Nun.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 took the Israeli military
establishment by surprise. Although the concentration of Iraqi
troops along the Iraqi border did not go unnoticed, the intelligence
community failed to predict the invasion. Following the invasion,
the intelligence experts were taken to task for their failure to
provide the politicians with accurate information about Saddam
Hussein's intentions and military capabilities.[1] Such
information, however, was extremely difficult to obtain because of the
closed nature of Iraqi society, because the two countries have no
common border, because the distance from Israel to Baghdad is 1000
kilometres, because Israel has no satellite and because of the higher
priority assigned to dealing with Syria and the intifada.
Despite these limitations Israeli intelligence closely monitored the
Iraqi military build up which followed the end of the Iran-Iraq War in
August 1988, the development of chemical weapons, nuclear weapons and
long-range ballistic missiles, the construction of missile launch sites
around H2 in Western Iraq and the emergence of an Iraqi-Jordanian
military alliance which enabled Iraqi aircraft to conduct surveillance
flights along the border with Israel. In early 1990 Saddam
Hussein accelerated his nuclear programme with the aim of balancing
Israel's arsenal of nuclear weapons which was estimated to consist of
200 nuclear warheads and 47 atomic bombs at that time.[2] In
April he made his notorious threat to use binary chemical weapons to
devour half of Israel 'if the Zionist entity, which has atomic bombs,
dared attack Iraq.' Various incidents, like the Bazoft affair and
the 'supergun' affair, convinced Saddam that there was an Israeli
conspiracy afoot to sabotage his nuclear programme and possibly to
launch a surgical strike similar to the one that had destroyed the
Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. His threat was intended to deter
Israel.[3]
On the Israeli side Saddam's threat was also interpreted as an attempt
to neutralize any initiative to block his acquisition of
non-conventional weapons. But the combination of verbal threats
and the construction of missile launchers led the intelligence experts
to take the threat from Baghdad much more seriously and to report this
concern to their civilian masters. In the summer of 1990 the
message from the intelligence community was that Iraq was on the road
to becoming a military super-power, that its position on the
Arab-Israeli conflict was becoming increasingly inflexible, and that it
was developing a long-range strategic capability and non-conventional
weapons that could be turned against Israel. General David Ivri,
the Director General of the Defense Ministry, warned repeatedly that
the Iraqi missiles posed a lethal threat and that Israel had no answer
for it, but the Ministers did not take these warnings very seriously
and one Minister dismissed them as the stories of Little Red Riding
Hood.[4]
One minister who did take the reports seriously was the minister
responsible for Israel's security, Moshe Arens. On 20 July,
accompanied by the Director of Military Intelligence and the Director
of the Mossad, Arens made a special trip to America to alert the Bush
Administration to the dangers inherent in the Western policy of
supporting Saddam Hussein. Arens handed his opposite member, Dick
Cheney, a file which contained all the material in Israel's possession
about the Iraqi efforts to acquire non-conventional weapons. This
intervention appeared to have had the intended effect of communicating
at a high level Israel's views about Saddam's nuclear ambitions and
about the need for concerted measures to thwart them. It was a
most timely intervention.[5]
The foundations for the policy of keeping a low Israeli profile in the
Gulf conflict were laid as soon as the news of the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait reached Israel. As a precaution the Israeli Air Force
(IAF) was put on alert, but officials stated that the movement of Iraqi
troops into Kuwait did not in itself threaten Israel and would not
provoke a military response. 'Kuwait is a long way away,' one
official observed. The invasion seemed to vindicate not only the
specific warning about Saddam Hussein's ambitions given to the
Americans less than two week previously but also some of the theses of
the Likud about the Arab world in general. Likud leaders used the
invasion to drive home their point that Iraq was a greater threat to
Middle East stability than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They
compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and the invasion of Kuwait to
Germany's acts of aggression in the 1930s. This analogy was
usually accompanied by calls on the Western world, and especially the
United States, to intervene in order to stop the Iraqi dictator in his
tracks. The underlying fear was that unless the Great Powers
intervened, a showdown between Israel and Iraq would become inevitable
sooner or later, probably sooner rather than later, and the
unstated hope was that Israel's greatest ally would seize the
opportunity to defeat Israel's most powerful enemy.
One of the peculiarities of the Gulf crisis was that Israel found
herself on the same side as the great majority of the Arab states,
including her bitter enemy Syria, in the new line-up. But there
was a fundamental difference between the Arab approach to the crisis
and Israel's. The Arabs for the most part wanted the reversal of
the Iraqi aggression, the restoration of the political status quo and
the containment of Iraq whereas Israel wanted the destruction of the
Iraqi war machine and war-making potential. Syria in particular
was worried that the destruction of Iraqi power would tilt the overall
Arab-Israeli military equation in Israel's favour and it was precisely
for this reason that Israel wanted to see a thorough-going devastation
of Iraq. Some Israeli experts, like retired General Avigdor
Ben-Gal, blithely advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons against
the Iraqi forces. Former Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin opined
that nothing short of non-conventional arms would stop Iraq in the wake
of its invasion of Kuwait. 'In fact,' he told The Jerusalem Post,
'neither of the two superpowers is capable of overcoming the Iraq army
today, unless it deploys non-conventional weapons.'[6]
The government's position was rather more cautious, at least in
public. It was summed up by Defence Minister Moshe Arens when he
told the press that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait did not directly
affect Israel, did not constitute a strategic change from Israel's
point of view and therefore did not call for any action. At the
same time, however, Arens warned that any Iraqi effort to advance
forces into Jordan would be regarded as a provocative step and may lead
to a military response. Behind this policy of non-intervention
there was a general assessment that the Iraqi invasion would benefit
Israel in the short term by focusing international attention on Iraq as
the primary source of tension in the area and by letting the Arab world
stew in its own juice. There was also the expectation that the
crisis would result in an easing of US pressure on Israel to begin
negotiations with the Palestinians and revive Israel's role as a
strategic partner of the United States in the Middle East.[7]
Ten days into the crisis, on 12 August, Saddam Hussein, in what
amounted to a rare political master-stroke, suggested that Iraq might
withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdrew from all occupied Arab
territory and Syria withdrew from Lebanon. His proposal
introduced a new term into the Middle East diplomatic lexicon -
linkage. Overnight Saddam became the hero of the Arab masses and
the saviour of the Palestinians. The Gulf conflict and the
Arab-Israeli conflict which Israel had laboured to keep apart now
became linked in the public mind. A government spokesman
dismissed Saddam's proposal as a cheap propaganda ploy.[8] But
the proposal landed the Bush Administration on the horns of a
dilemma. On the one hand, they did not want to reward Saddam
Hussein for his aggression; on the other hand, they could hardly deny
that the long-festering Arab-Israeli conflict also required a
settlement. President Bush's way round this dilemma was to deny
that there was any parallel between the two occupations but to promise
that once Iraq left Kuwait, a settlement of the Arab-Israeli problem
would be high on the international agenda. In other words, he
rejected the simultaneous linkage of the two conflicts in favour of a
deferred linkage. This placed Israel once more on the defensive.
On 12 August, a comprehensive review of the situation was carried out
at a meeting convened by the Deputy Chief of Staff. General Barak
summed up the discussion with the observation that, on the one hand,
Saddam was afraid of an Israeli response but, on the other hand, he had
a powerful motive to involve Israel in the conflict in order to break
up the coalition that the United States was building up against
him. It was thought that Saddam may pre-empt by attacking Israel
if he felt that the United States was about to attack him.
Some of the participants in the discussion suggested that red lines be
drawn to warn Iraq. Both the Chief of Staff and his deputy,
however, took the view that Israel ought to speak in more general terms
and avoid a commitment to a particular course of action in
advance. The impact of the crisis on US-Israeli relations was
also discussed at the meeting. A number of officers pointed out
that in the event of an Iraqi defeat without the help of Israel,
Israel's value as a strategic asset for the United States would be
called into question. Despite these doubts, it was resolved to
ask the United States for a hot line for the transmission of real time
intelligence about Iraqi deployments in general and preparations for
launching missiles in particular.[9]
As the fear of an immediate Iraqi attack receded, IDF embarked on
preparations for a major war. On 19 August, the Deputy Chief of
Staff issued the order to IDF to get ready for possible action on the
Eastern front. The General Staff prepared operational plans for
alternative courses of action against Iraq. The politicians
stepped up the verbal warnings, promising dire retribution in the event
of an Iraqi attack but without spelling out what precise form the
retribution would take. While public warnings to Saddam Hussein
became an almost daily occurrence, part of a calculated policy of
deterrence, both soldiers and politicians were agreed that there would
be no automatic response to an Iraqi attack and that co-ordination with
the United States was of paramount importance.[10]
Any sign that American resolve might be weakening was greeted with
barely concealed disappointment in Jerusalem. The Likud
government was intent on bringing about the destruction of Iraq's
military potential and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 'If Mr
Hussein stays in power and retains the weapons, there will be grounds
for concern here, in this region and, I think, throughout the world',
said Arens in an interview. 'I hope this will not be the way the
crisis ends.'[11] A diplomatic compromise over Kuwait which left
the Iraqi war machine intact and led to the withdrawal of American
forces from the region would have left Israel to face Saddam
alone. For Israel this was the nightmare scenario. This is
why the prospect that the Gulf crisis would be resolved by United
Nations mediation or by an Arab solution so alarmed the Israeli
government.
Israeli ministers could not be too outspoken in opposing diplomacy and
pressing for military action to topple Saddam Hussein and defeat his
army. They did not wish to be seen as war-mongers, particularly
when the lives of the Western hostages were at stake, nor did they want
to supply grist to Saddam's mill just when he was portraying the
American military build-up in Saudi Arabia as part of a Zionist
plot. But they maintained an active lobby behind the scenes in
favour of decisive American military action. 'There are only two
groups that are beating the drums of war in the Middle East,' wrote
American columnist Patrick Buchanan, 'the Israeli defence ministry and
their amen corner in the US.' Israel's friends in Washington,
with Henry Kissinger at their head, articulated the hawkish
position. In an article in the Los Angles Times of 19 August
Kissinger argued that if sanctions are too uncertain and diplomacy
unavailing, 'the US will need to consider a surgical and progressive
destruction of Iraq's military assets - especially as an outcome that
leaves Saddam Hussein in place and his military machine unimpaired
might turn out to be an interlude between aggressions.' This
position was barely distinguishable from that of the Israeli
government.[12] Tactical as well as strategic suggestions
reached the Americans through private channels. Israeli sources
advised that 'the best way to hurt Saddam is to target his family, his
personal guard and his mistress,' revealed Michael Dugan, US Air Force
Chief General who was fired for shooting from the hip.[13]
There was more than a modicum of chutzpah in the advice proffered by
Israelis to a foreign country to go to war, with all the attendant
costs and risks, in order to remove a threat to their security.
And it was a far cry from Israel's traditional motto of 'give us the
tools and we will do the job.' For America these cheers from the
sidelines were distinctly unhelpful because the last thing they wanted
was to be seen to act at Israel's behest. Although Israeli
leaders hotly denied that they were pushing America to go to war,
lobbying was an important aspect of Israeli policy during the crisis.
In Israel, America's reluctance to share intelligence and to treat
Israel as a strategic partner was a cause for particular concern.
On 17 September Moshe Arens flew to Washington for talks with Dick
Cheney and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Arens
requested a substantial increase in American economic and military aid
to preserve Israel's qualitative superiority. He used America's
promise of a massive arms package to Saudi Arabia to buttress his
case. Cheney countered with the Pentagon's estimate that the
threat to Israel had decreased as a result of the strong American
presence in the Gulf and consequently declined most of Arens's requests
for aid and strategic co-ordination. For the first time, Arens
also heard an explicit American request that Israel should not pre-empt
or respond to an Iraqi attack so as not to splinter the coalition
assembled by America against Iraq.
At the meeting with General Scowcroft the following day, Arens dwelt on
the danger that Saddam Hussein would launch missiles against Israel and
Israel's need for anti-ballistic missiles, singling out the Arrow as
the only reliable weapons-system for dealing with this problem.
Scowcroft conceded that, as a desperate gamble, Saddam Hussein might
try to harm Israel but added that Israel should not allow herself to be
provoked. Surely, Israel had the right to respond if it came
under attack, said Arens. Not necessarily, replied Scowcroft,
America would prefer to deal with the missile bases herself. To
soften the blow, Arens was promised some supplies of ammunition and
aircraft but even this modest promise was not kept in full.[14]
On the assumption that the United States would not resort to military
action against Iraq before the middle of October, the Israeli
government, following protracted discussions and consultations with the
security services, reached the decision to start distributing gas masks
to the civilian population on 1 October. For a nation haunted by
memories of the Nazi gas chambers, this was a highly sensitive
issue. The difficulty of resolving it was compounded by the fact
that IDF had no reliable information as to whether Iraq was capable of
fitting chemical warheads to its Scud missiles. Saddam Hussein's
threat to incinerate half of Israel seared itself in the mind of the
public but his Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, later said that Baghdad
would use chemical weapons against Israel only if Jerusalem launched a
nuclear strike.
Most senior IDF officers were opposed to the distribution of the masks
because of the doubt surrounding Iraq's capability and because they
worried that the distribution of gas masks would cause panic among the
civilian population. In cabinet, David Levy pressed for immediate
distribution against the opinion of Moshe Arens and the defence
establishment. Arens initially argued against distribution,
suggesting it would cause panic and might be misperceived by Iraq as an
indication that Israel was planning a pre-emptive strike. Yitzhak
Shamir and the majority of the cabinet supported this view but
eventually resolved, on the basis of worse case analysis, to
proceed with the distribution.[15]
If the issuing of gas masks could be perceived in Baghdad as a prelude
to a pre-emptive strike, the other risk was that it would be taken to
imply a purely defensive posture and even a sign of weakness and that
Israeli deterrence would be eroded as a consequence. To ensure
that this did not happen, Prime Minster Shamir made a series of public
statements of mounting severity, making it clear that any attack on
Israel would meet with an Israeli response. His words were
carefully chosen and the adjective 'terrible' featured prominently in
characterizing the promised response. Shamir's warnings were
widely interpreted by commentators in Israel and abroad to mean that an
Iraqi attack on Israel with chemical weapons could provoke an Israeli
nuclear response. Shamir did nothing to contradict this
interpretation of his statements. He seemed content to let the
Western media drive home the message that tangling with Israel may lead
to the obliteration of Baghdad.[16] Zeev Schiff, the respected
military commentator of the Israeli daily Haaretz, explained Shamir's
statements as an attempt to reinforce Israeli deterrence. He
recalled the Arab claim that chemical weapons were intended to balance
Israel's nuclear weapons. They have now been warned, he said,
that the outcome might be different: 'chemical weapons were liable to
spur a terrible reaction rather than to neutralize it.'[17]
On the diplomatic front Shamir continued to resist all attempts to link
the Gulf conflict with the Palestinian issue. He rejected out of
hand a Soviet proposal in early September for the convening of an
international conference to deal with all the disputes in the Middle
East. The United States also rejected the Soviet proposal.
Following a meeting with David Levy in Washington, Secretary of State
James Baker stated that the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute and the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute were two separate matters which had to be
treated separately.[18]
The common US-Israeli front against linkage was severely shaken on 8
October by a bloody incident on Temple Mount in the heart of 'reunited'
Jerusalem. Israeli security forces used live ammunition to deal
with a Muslim protest that turned into a riot, killing 21 of the
demonstrators and wounding 200. Israel was back in the
headlines. The massacre on Temple Mount unleashed a universal
wave of condemnation. Arab governments who had joined in the
American-led coalition against Saddam Hussein came under attack for
complicity in American double standards in rushing to the defence of
Kuwait while doing nothing to end the 23-year old Israeli occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza. The very linkage that Saddam Hussein had
failed to achieve was now highlighted by the brutal behaviour of the
Israeli security forces. America was driven to vote in favour of
two UN resolutions condemning Israel. President Bush also
summoned several American Jewish leaders and warned them that Israel
was undermining the coalition against Saddam Hussein. He even
hinted that if the Jewish lobby turned against him, he would state
publicly that Israel's behaviour endangered the life of American
soldiers in the Gulf.[19]
The massacre on Temple Mount was a minor watershed in US-Israeli
relations. Previously the Shamir government had hoped that the
crisis in the Gulf would enable Israel to maintain the status quo in
the occupied territories and abort the Bush administration's efforts to
promote an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. But the benefits of the
Iraqi aggression for Israel turned out to be extremely
short-lived. What the universal condemnation demonstrated was
that there was a new equation in the making: an American approach to
the Middle East based on an alliance with the Arabs and an Israeli
approach to the Palestinians which largely ignored American, Arab and
international opinion. This became the source of permanent
tension in US-Israeli relations.
This tension was temporarily relieved on 29 November when the Security
Council passed resolution 678, 'the mother of all resolutions,'
authorizing the use of 'all necessary means' against Iraq unless it
withdrew from Kuwait by 15 January 1991. The ultimatum seemed to
suggest that America and her allies meant business. Israel's
elation was punctured the next day, however, when President Bush
offered to go 'the extra mile for peace' by inviting Tariq Aziz to
Washington for talks. While careful to avoid the impression that
they were goading America to go to war, Israel and her influential
friends in Washington questioned the wisdom of a policy of
appeasement. Professor Yuval Neeman, the leader of the Tehia
party and a leading cabinet hawk, recalled that George Bush had
compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and said that there was
therefore no escape from comparing Bush with Neville Chamberlain.[20]
President Bush's invitation to talks and the fears that America would
go for a diplomatic settlement to the Gulf crisis prompted the Israeli
government to reassess the policy of keeping a low profile and to hint
that in the event of such a settlement it might take pre-emptive action
of its own against Iraq. David Levy told a delegation from the
European Parliament that Israel would assume the highest profile should
her security come under threat. Levy also summoned the US
Ambassador, William Brown, and told him that Israel expected the United
States to stand by the commitments it took upon itself after Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait. In Israel's view, Levy said, the two
principal US commitments had been to bring about the withdrawal of Iraq
from Kuwait and to remove the Iraqi military threat. Levy added
that Israel had agreed to adopt its 'low profile' policy during the
crisis largely because of this perception. This was the first
time that the Israeli public heard about the alleged commitments from
their powerful friend. Yet, taken together, Levy's statements to
the European parliamentarians and the US ambassador amounted to an
official warning that in the absence of firm action by the
international community against Iraq, Israel reserved the right to take
military steps on her own.[21]
High-level US-Israeli consultations were stepped up with the approach
of the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. On 11 December,
Shamir had a two-hour meeting with Bush at the White House which went
some way towards repairing the rift between them. Bush assured
Shamir that in the event of an unprovoked Iraqi attack, the US would
come to Israel's aid. Bush stressed that his administration was
doing its utmost to avoid linkage between the Gulf crisis and the
Palestinian issue and that it was essential that Israel should do the
same by refraining from unilateral action against Iraq. According
to one report in the Washington Post, Shamir promised not to mount a
pre-emptive strike and to consult Bush before responding to any Iraqi
attack. This report was denied, however, by officials in the
Prime Minister's office. The test-firing of a Jericho
anti-ballistic missile without notifying the US seemed to illustrate
Israel's intent on preserving its own independence in the event of an
Iraqi attack. But by the end of the month, co-ordination between
the Pentagon and the Israeli military had been stepped up. In
return for pledging full consultation with the US before launching
military action against Iraq, Israel was given access to prime US
intelligence not normally supplied to other countries. To
facilitate co-operation, a hot line, codenamed Hammer Rick, was
established between the Pentagon Crisis Situation Room and the Israeli
defence ministry in Tel Aviv. This provided a significant
inducement for Israel to maintain the low profile and to refrain from
creating unnecessary tensions.[22]
The Israelis hoped that the sharing of intelligence would be followed
by joint operational planning or at least by the co-ordination of their
respective operational plans for meeting the threat from Iraq.
But here they met with a firm American rebuff. Israeli
frustration was deepened by the news that James Baker was going to meet
Tariq Aziz for talks in Geneva on 9 January. The experts in
Military Intelligence were convinced that Saddam Hussein would not
yield but they also estimated that unless he was knocked off his perch,
he would be able to add nuclear capability to his arsenal within a few
years. Despite Bush's categoric rejection of any compromise in
the upcoming talks, Israeli officials were privately wary of what was
known as the 'no-deal deal.' They feared that Israel may be
forced to shoulder the political price if a diplomatic breakthrough was
achieved at the meeting, with Iraq agreeing to withdraw from
Kuwait. They also feared that some form of linkage between the
Kuwaiti and the Palestinian issues may emerge out of the Geneva
talks. Baker, however, rejected such linkage point-blank at his
six-hour meeting with Aziz. When Aziz rejected the American
ultimatum, Israel's fears were finally laid to rest.
IDF was put on the highest state of military readiness, with its
reconnaissance and combat aircraft in the air around the clock and the
civilian population prepared with sealed rooms and gas masks. The
failure of the talks was also followed by an escalation of the war of
words, with the Iraqis saying that if they are attacked by America,
they will attack Tel Aviv; the Americans saying that such an attack
would constitute a flagrant provocation; and the Israelis warning that
anyone who attacked them may not live to regret it.[23]
Against this background of mounting tension, two schools of thought
formed inside the cabinet in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Shamir
thought that Israel should continue to exercise self-restraint.
He was supported by David Levy, Moshe Arens, Dan Meridor and the
representatives of the religious parties. The other school
demanded a military response to neutralize the Iraqi threat. This
school was led by Ariel Sharon and included Professor Yuval Neeman,
nicknamed Dr Strangelove, and Rafael Eitan, the leader of the Tsomet
and a former IDF Chief of Staff.[24]
As the countdown to war began, the Bush administration stepped up its
efforts to bring Israel under control. On 11 January 1991,
Under-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger who was noted for his
pro-Israeli sympathies, arrived in Israel at the head of a high-level
delegation. Their purpose was said to be 'to co-ordinate policy
and strategy with Israel in the event that hostilities break out,' but
their real mission was to act as babysitters, to ensure that Israel
continued to lie low. At the meeting with the Prime Minister,
Eagleburger conveyed the President's request that Israel should refrain
from retaliating against Iraq, even if attacked. Shamir made it
clear that under no circumstances would Israel undertake not to
retaliate if attacked. However, he promised that Israel would try
to stay out of the Gulf conflict, 'if it is only possible.'
Shamir had already promised not to launch a pre-emptive strike against
the Iraqi missile launching sites, in effect agreeing to absorb the
first blow should the Iraqis carry out their threats. This was a
radical enough departure from Israel's traditional preference for
surprise attacks. But he and his colleagues were unanimous in
their view that Israel, as a sovereign state, could not relinquish its
basic right to self-defence. Under these circumstances,
Eagleburger had to decline Shamir's request for operational
co-ordination between the Israeli military and the US forces in the
Gulf.[25]
On 14 January, Eagleburger, Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
and their aides arrived for talks with the IDF General Staff.
They promised the Israeli officers swift and efficient action against
the missile launch sites in western Iraq. They said that the
treatment will commence at the outbreak of hostilities and asked that
Israel should not intervene. In their estimate, all the launchers
could be destroyed in two days and they doubted that Israel could do
any better. They met with scepticism and a polite refusal. Eagleburger
then offered two batteries of Patriot missiles with their American
crews in return for an Israeli promise not to respond to an Iraqi
missile attack. Once again he met with a polite refusal.
Both the Chief of Staff and the Minister of defence wanted to preserve
the principle that no foreign power could be entrusted with Israel's
security.[26] This principle, however, was soon to be compromised
by the arrival in Israel of Patriot missile batteries with American
crews to man them following the outbreak of hostilities in the Gulf.
Another abrupt change of policy occasioned by the Gulf crisis involved
Jordan. The Labour Party had always regarded the survival of King
Hussein's regime in Amman as vital to Israel's security. The
Likud, on the other hand, took the line that 'Jordan is Palestine' and,
consequently, that if the Palestinians were to overthrow the monarchy
and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state, this would not endanger
Israel's security and may indeed be a welcome change. Ariel
Sharon, the Housing Minister, was the most consistent and aggressive
advocate of this line of argument inside the cabinet. This
attitude had played an important part in pushing King Hussein into an
alliance with Iraq, an alliance which provided him with his only
deterrence against a possible move by Likud to realize its thesis that
Jordan is Palestine. During the Gulf crisis Jordan assumed ever
greater importance as a buffer and potential battleground between Iraq
and Israel.
Likud leaders suddenly discovered the value of having a stable country
under a moderate ruler on their eastern border. The change of
tune was unmistakable. Instead of issuing threats, the government
began to send, through third parties, soothing messages to Amman to
assure the King that Israel had no plans to attack him and to urge him
not to allow the entry of Iraqi troops into Jordan.[27] As 1990
turned into 1991, there were worrying signs that Jordan was
concentrating forces east of the River Jordan and that the King was
losing control of the situation. Shamir now sought a more direct
channel of communication with Amman. On 4 January, the
director-general of his office, Yossi Ben-Aharon, met senior Jordanian
figures who were close to the King. Ben-Aharon assured the
Jordanians that Israel had no intention of seizing the opportunity
offered by the crisis in the Gulf to try and bring about a change of
regime in Amman. For their part, the Jordanians made it clear
that under no circumstances would they allow Israeli forces to enter
their territory or Israeli aircraft to use their air space.[28] The
possibility of a clash with Jordan excited some reckless talk in
Jerusalem. Some politicians, on the extreme right, did not share
in the sudden conversion to the royalist cause. Ariel Sharon was
not impressed with the argument that Israel had to do her utmost to
stop Jordan getting embroiled in the Gulf conflict. On the
contrary, one of his motives for advocating swift and forceful military
action against Iraq was his desire to destabilize the regime in Amman.
The cabinet continued to receive intelligence briefings on the
situation in Jordan but following the expiry of the ultimatum for Iraqi
withdrawal, it redirected its attention to developments further
east.[29]
At midnight on 16 January Dick Cheney called Moshe Arens on the Hammer
Rick line to inform him that the allied air offensive was about to
begin. On this and subsequent occasions, the Americans were very
economical with the information they provided to their Israeli
colleagues. Cheney had been charged by the White House with the
task of keeping the Israelis plugged in, but not so plugged in as to
make them de facto members of the coalition.[30]
On the night of 18 January, the first barrage of eight Iraqi Scud
missiles landed in Tel Aviv and Haifa. After months of
uncertainty and bluster, Saddam Hussein carried out his threat to
attack the Jewish state, dramatically raising the stakes in the Gulf
War. It was the first air attack on an Israeli city since
1948. The damage caused was limited because the Scud missiles,
according to one military expert, were 'stone age technology.' 'Flying
dustbins' was how one eye witness described the warheads that fell down
from the sky. Another reason for the limited effect was that the
Scuds were armed with only light warheads to enable them to cover the
distance to reach Israel. But the psychological impact of the
attack, both in Israel and in the Arab world, was profound.
Arens held an emergency meeting with the Chief of Staff and his
deputy. Arens wondered whether they should not put aside the
principle of self-reliance and accept after all the American offer of
two batteries of Patriot missiles. The Patriots were a success
story in Saudi Arabia, the other target of the Iraqi Scuds; the public
wanted them badly; and awkward questions were beginning to be asked by
people in the know about the earlier refusal of the American
offer. IDF experts did not rate the Patriots very highly but,
taking public pressure into account, Dan Shomron recommended
acceptance. Having had a phone call from Baker urging continuing
restraint, Arens now called Cheney who instantly agreed to send the
Patriots and promised that the Americans were going after western Iraq
full bore and that there was nothing the Israelis could do which was
not already being done.[31]
Government spokesmen wasted no time in vowing revenge for the Iraqi
aggression. On 19 January, another 5 Scuds hit Tel Aviv,
provoking a new round of tough oratory. The real test came at the
cabinet meeting on the 23rd, the day after a single Scud landed in
Ramat Gan, killing three and wounding 96 people. Calls for
immediate retaliation began to be heard inside and outside the cabinet
but the military kept their cool. Shortly before the cabinet
meeting, the Chief of Staff and his deputy, troubled by this trend,
asked to speak to the Prime Minister in the presence of the Defence
Minister. Shamir seemed convinced by the arguments against
hitting back, Arens less so. At the cabinet meeting, the officers
presented the operational plans and then asked for permission to
express their opinion about the broader considerations that had to be
taken into account in choosing the most appropriate response.
Shomron preferred what he termed 'important' - the destruction of the
Iraqi military infrastructure - over the 'urgent' - hitting the missile
launchers. Iraq's infrastructure was the main target, he said,
hence the importance of co-operation with the United States which was
doing most of the work. If Israel's rear continued to sustain
heavy blows, the urgent objective might outweigh the important one,
leading to Israeli intervention. If chemical weapons were to be
used against Israel, IDF would be capable of dealing with the missile
problem and of inflicting punishment on Iraq. The IAF chief
believed that 'the air force can do the job' and that was also
Shomron's view, but they acknowledged that the IAF could not operate
freely in Iraq without an American agreement.
Shomron and his deputy gave a cool analysis of Saddam Hussein's
moves. The obvious motive for the missile attacks was to embroil
Israel, break up the coalition, reduce pressure on his forces and
possibly turn them westward, towards a target which would be considered
legitimate in the eyes of many Arabs. Under these circumstances,
Shomron and Barak thought it would be a mistake for Israel to take
military action. Arens could not help feeling that it would be
better for Israel to make its contribution to the war effort but he did
not press for action. The advice of the military was thus
decisive in persuading the politicians to persevere with the policy of
non-involvement.[32]
The White House publicly commended Israel for its remarkable restraint
in the face of aggression and Lawrence Eagleburger was sent back to
shore up Israel's commitment to the policy of non-action. In his
talks with Israeli leaders, Eagleburger had to concede that the Scud
launchers posed a greater problem than anticipated. Nevertheless,
he returned home with the impression that, though troubled, the
Israelis would react only if hit with chemical warheads. This was
not an accurate assessment; an attack causing heavy casualties, even
from a conventional warhead, was liable to tip the delicate balance in
favour of retaliation.
The Israelis continued to press the Americans to divert substantial
resources to the campaign against the troublesome launchers, to what
General Norman Scharzkopf described as 'finding a needle in a
haystack.' Towards the end of January, General Barak and David
Ivri, the director-general of the defence ministry, made a secret visit
to Washington and held talks with Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman
of the Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell and other senior
officials. Cheney was optimistic that they could suppress the
missile sites though not as swiftly as Israel would wish. In any
case, he made it clear that the administration expected Israel to keep
out of the conflict and he refused to give a green light to joint
operations. Barak and Ivri made it equally clear that Israel was
not committed to respond only to chemical warheads and that one well
aimed conventional warhead may force her to retaliate. Following
the visit, there was a noticeable increase in allied activity against
the missile launchers and a corresponding decrease in the frequency and
effectiveness of the attacks on Israel.[33]
Uncertainty about Iraq's potential for putting chemical warheads on its
Scuds was something Israel was destined to live with until the end of
the Gulf War. To deter such a move, Israel employed a strategy of
threatening ambiguity, of making thinly veiled references to 'the bomb
in the basement' while carefully eschewing the adoption of an explicit
nuclear posture. If Seymour Hersh is to be believed, an American
satellite detected that, following the first Scud barrage, Israeli
missile launchers armed with nuclear warheads were moved into the open
and deployed facing Iraq, ready to launch on command. According
to Hersh, American intelligence picked up other signs indicating that
Israel had gone on a full nuclear alert that would remain in effect for
weeks.[34]
What the Americans undoubtedly picked up in the media was an increase
in the number of Israeli voices which intimated that a chemical attack
would justify the use of nuclear weapons. The Americans shrewdly
exploited these voices in their own efforts to dissuade Saddam Hussein
from using chemical weapons. Dick Cheney stated on 2 February
that if Iraq used chemical weapons against Israel, Israel may retaliate
with non-conventional weapons. The statement was significant,
firstly, because the warning was issued not in Washington's name but
indirectly in Israel's name, secondly, because it confirmed that Israel
was capable of realizing a non-conventional option, and, thirdly,
because the warning to refrain from escalation was addressed only to
Iraq and not to Israel.[35] The statement was bound to deepen
awareness in Baghdad that Israel had nuclear weapons ready for use and
it may well have played a part in Saddam Hussein's decision not to
raise the conflict above the conventional threshold.
As occasional missiles continued to be fired on Israel's soft
underbelly from mobile launchers in western Iraq and the newly arrived
Patriot batteries with their American crews had only partial success in
intercepting them, pressure mounted for sending IDF into action.
On 11 February, Moshe Arens, accompanied by Ehud Barak and David Ivri,
made a secret visit to Washington to urge the Americans to step up
their assaults on the targets in Iraq which most concerned Israel and
to see if they would give a green light for an Israeli intervention in
the fighting. His most important meeting was with President
Bush. Bush claimed that the number of missile launches had
significantly declined and doubted that Israel could do better than the
Americans and their allies. He also referred to public opinion
polls in Israel which indicated very wide support for the official
policy of restraint. Arens was reminded that Israel could only
reach Iraq by passing through the air space of one of the Arab
countries and that such action was liable to damage the
coalition. Bush and his colleagues were prepared to meet some of
Arens's requests for arms and financial aid but they showed no sympathy
for Israel's desire to act and maintained their veto on operational
co-ordination.[36]
At successive cabinet meetings, the policy of restraint was
reaffirmed. Officially, Israel was 'postponing' military response
and keeping its options open, reserving the right to reply at a time
and in a manner of its own choosing. But, in practice, Israel was
beginning to resemble the man who is provoked but wants to be
restrained from having to fight. According to a version released
by Washington when the war was over, after every Scud attack, Arens
would ask Cheney for electronic identity codes for distinguishing
between friend and foe and later for an air corridor through Saudi
Arabia to enable Israeli warplanes to retaliate without overflying
Jordan, but to no avail. Shamir would weigh it all up, sit tight
and nothing would happen.[37]
By temperament and political outlook, Shamir was predisposed to
inaction and immobilism, to resisting outside pressure and to a
militant defence of the status quo. During the Gulf War,
therefore, he was in his element. He presided with great aplomb
and gravitas over the inaction of his country's
legendary armed forces. These very same qualities made him a very
poor leader on the home front. As the leader of a nation at war,
he won no plaudits and he deserved none. What distinguished this
war from all Israel's previous wars was the inability of its armed
forces to protect the civilian rear. It is this fact, among
others, that turned the six weeks in early 1991 into such a harrowing
psychological ordeal for the civilian population. There was a
maddening dichotomy between proven military prowess on the one hand and
a sense of utter impotence on the other. Shamir's countrymen had
become accustomed to heroic feats from their armed forces, like the
capture of Adolf Eiechmann, the Entebbe rescue raid, and the bombing of
the Iraqi nuclear reactor. They were intelligent enough to
understand that this crisis was different and 80 per cent of them
supported the official policy of restraint.[38] But they needed a
leader to guide them, to inspire them and to unite them. All they
got from Shamir was a gruff and stony silence. There was no
Churchillian oratory to keep up their morale. 'Maybe we do not
deserve someone like Churchill,' wrote one exasperated journalist, 'but
do us a favour, prime minister, say something.'[39] The only
response that this plea evoked was a prolonged and troubled silence.
Although the public did not know what the diminutive man in the highest
office in the land was thinking, by mid-February, as the allies were
preparing to follow the air offensive with a land war, the possibility
of a change in policy hung in the air. Arens was still convinced
that Israel must retaliate and hoped that the land war would offer a
'window of opportunity' for Israel to weigh in. His reasoning was
that, at this final stage of the war, active resistance to flights over
Jordanian air space was unlikely, the political damage to the
coalition would be minimal and if the Americans were simply informed of
an imminent Israeli intervention, they would have to get out of the
way. IDF had prepared an operational plan and was ready to
execute it on command. The Chief of Staff was now persuaded that
the gains of military intervention would outweigh the costs and was, by
his own account, itching to go. At one point he seriously
discussed with Arens specific scenarios for intervention, but these
scenarios did not materialize. In the last two weeks of the war
the Iraqis fired only six Scuds in an apparent attempt to hit the
nuclear reactor in Dimona, but they all landed harmlessly in Negev
sands. On February 28, President Bush ordered a ceasefire and
Israel lost the opportunity to retaliate.[40]
If the Gulf War was full of contradictions and paradoxes from Israel's
point of view, its outcome was not less so. The first and most
obvious paradox is that Israel did not participate in the military side
of this war, except as a target. She was both the strongest
advocate of an all-out offensive against Iraq and the most passive
party when it came to carrying out this offensive. Her security
doctrine was built on carrying the war to the enemy's territory as
swiftly and devastatingly as possible, but during the Gulf War all that
her army tried to do, with marked lack of success, was to protect its
own backyard against attack. Another paradox is that although
Israel and Iraq were sworn enemies, Israel was excluded from the
coalition of thirty nations assembled by the United States against this
enemy, for fear of defection by the Arab members. A third and
related paradox is that Israel could make its greatest contribution to
the allied campaign to defeat this enemy by staying out and keeping a
low profile.
At the beginning of the Gulf crisis, Israel chalked up some impressive
gains but the final outcome fell short of her original
expectation. Admittedly, the nightmare scenario did not
materialize; for whatever reasons, Saddam Hussein did not withdraw
peacefully from Kuwait and had to be ejected by force. But from
Israel's point of view, Operation Desert Storm ended too soon.
Israel's war aims were three-fold: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the
cutting of Iraq's war machine down to size and the neutralization of
its capacity to develop the weapons of mass-destruction. The
first aim was not achieved by the Gulf War, and the last two were
achieved only in part.
Israel's own capacity to deter potential Arab aggressors was probably
weakened, on balance, by her deliberate choice to stay on the sidelines
in this conflict. It is true that her thinly veiled threats to
resort to nuclear weapons seem to have been effective in deterring
Saddam Hussein from using the primitive chemical weapons at his
disposal. It is also true that the damage done to Iraq's nuclear
programme helped to ensure the preservation of Israel's regional
monopoly over nuclear weapons for some time to come. But the fact
remains that Israel had pledged that if attacked she would
retaliate. She was attacked. But she did not
retaliate. As a consequence, there was a decrease in her capacity
for conventional deterrence. Whatever the motive behind the
policy of non-retaliation, the result was a diminution in Israel's
stature as a military power in her own eyes and in the eyes of her
opponents.
The most important consequence of the Gulf War, however, concerned
Israel's special relationship with America. One way of looking at
the Gulf War is to say that Israel was the greatest beneficiary
because, without having to lift a finger herself, she witnessed the
defeat of her most formidable foe at the hands of her most faithful
friend. But such a view involves a serious
over-simplification. For Israel had traditionally been regarded,
not least by herself, as a strategic partner and a strategic asset to
the United States in the Middle East. The Gulf conflict was a
real eye-opener in this respect. Here was a conflict which
threatened America's most vital interests in the region and the best
service that Israel could render to her senior partner was to refrain
from doing anything. Far from being a strategic asset, Israel was
widely perceived as an embarrassment and a liability.
Throughout the Gulf crisis and the war that followed it, there was
tension in the triangular relationship between America, Israel and the
Arabs. Gradually but unmistakably, under the impact of the
crisis, America continued to move away from reliance on Israel to
reliance on her old and new Arab allies to attain her objectives in the
region. In this important respect, Israel was to emerge not as a
winner but as an ultimate loser from the Gulf conflict. Nothing
demonstrated this more clearly than the pressure applied by the Bush
administration on Israel to engage in peace negotiations with the Arabs
as soon as the guns in the Gulf fell silent.[41]
Notes
[1]
Maariv, 3 August 1990.
[2] Dilip Hiro,
Desert Shield to Desert Storm (London: Paladin, 1992) p.58.
[3] Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi,
Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (London: Brassey's, 1991) pp. 207-11. On Saddam's instrumental attitude and contacts with Israel see pp. 269-70.
[4] 'Israel and the Gulf War',
Maariv,
29 March 1991. This is a special, fifty page report on which
I have drawn heavily in this paper. I am grateful to Dr
Efraim Karsh for sharing with me this and other research materials.
[5] Ibid.
[6]
Haaretz, 28 August 1990 and
Jerusalem Post, 3 August 1990.
[7]
International Herald Tribune and
Maariv, 3 August 1990.
[8]
Maariv, 13 August 1990.
[9]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[10] Ibid.
[11]
International Herald Tribune, 29 August 1990.
[12] Hiro,
Desert Shield to Desert Storm, pp. 147-48 and 156.
[13] Bob Woodward,
The Commanders (New York: Simon Schuster, 1991) p. 291.
[14]
Maariv, 19 August 1990 and 29 March 1991.
[15]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991 and
Jerusalem Post, 23 August 1990.
[16] Dan Margalit, 'The Name of the Game - There Is No Alternative',
Haaretz, 3 October 1990.
[17] Zeev Schiff, 'Take Him Seriously',
Haaretz, 2 November 1990.
[18]
Haaretz, 6 September 1990.
[19]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[20]
Maariv, 2 December 1990.
[21]
Haaretz, 5 December 1990.
[22]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991;
Washington Post, 26 December 1990;
International Herald Tribune, 27 December 1990;
Jerusalem Post, 28 December 1990; and Woodward,
The Commanders, p. 367.
[23]
Jerusalem Post, 6 January 1991 and
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[24]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[25] Woodward,
The Commanders, p. 363.
[26]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[27] Adam Garfinkle,
Israel and Jordan in the Shadow of War (London: Macmillan 1992) p. 173 and Joseph Alpher, 'Security Arrangements for a Palestinian Settlement',
Survival 34 (1992-93) p. 57.
[28] Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[29] Uri Avnery, 'In Israel, Reckless Talk About Jordan',
International Herald Tribune, 7 September 1990; and Zeev Schiff,
Haaretz, 3 March, 1991.
[30] Woodward,
The Commanders, p.370.
[31]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991 and New York Times, 5 March 1991.
[32]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Seymour M. Hersh,
The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb (London: Faber and Faber, 1991) p. 318.
[35]
Haaretz, 3 February 1991 and Zeev Schiff, 'A Non-Conventional Warning in Israel's Name',
Haaretz, 4 February 1991.
[36]
Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991 and
Haaretz, 13 February 1991.
[37] Hiro,
Desert Shield to Desert Storm, p. 332.
[38] Meron Benvenisti,
Fatal Embrace (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Keter, 1992), p.100.
[39] Gideon Samet, 'Even if we have no Churchill',
Haaretz, 25 January 1991.
[40] Maariv, special supplement, 29 March 1991; interview with Moshe
Arens, Yediot Aharonot, 17 April 1991; and Lieutenant-General (res.)
Dan Shomron, 'A Personal Report on the Gulf War,'
Yediot Aharonot, 8 September 1991.
[41] Avi Shlaim, 'When Bush Comes to Shove: America and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process',
The Oxford International Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 2-6.
Back