Alleged Iraqi Scud attacks on Israel and US‑Israel coordination described in personal recollection

pelted with stones by a half-dozen Palestinian youths. I thought to myself: this is nuts. One of Saddam’s Scuds might well be about to hit Israel, and I’ve got myself stuck in the middle of a West Bank town. To the obvious shock of the Palestinians, I floored the accelerator and raced toward Tel Aviv. It still took half-an-hour. Misha and Dan, who lived closer to the kirva, were already in the bunker. Ten Scuds hit near Tel Aviv and Haifa that night. It was not until shortly before dawn that our tracker units got back to us with formal confirmation that there had been no chemical warheads. The rockets caused a half-dozen injuries, though thankfully none was serious. Still, the very fact Saddam had proven he could hit Israel with ballistic missiles provoked widespread alarm. Well into the next morning, the streets were almost empty. Misha phoned Cheney and strongly implied we were going to have to attack the Scud sites. I know that was Misha’s own view, and it only hardened after another four missiles hit the Tel Aviv area the next morning. Again, no one was killed, but several dozen people were injured from debris, shards of glass and blast concussion. I visited several of the areas that had been hit and was shocked by the scale of the damage. One four-story apartment building had been virtually destroyed, and there was blast damage to other buildings hundreds of yards away. The Americans were clearly determined, in both word and deed, to persuade us not to take military action. They rushed an anti-missile system called Patriot to Israel. Cheney was also giving us frequent updates on American air strikes against suspected Scud launch sites. And the Israeli public did seem to grasp the serious implications for the US-led coalition of our taking unilateral military action. Opinion polls suggested most Israelis were giving Shamir credit for the way he was handling the crisis. Still, it wasn’t easy for Shamir to hold the line. This was the first time since 1948 that enemy munitions had landed on Israeli homes, provoking not just fear, but a feeling of helplessness. That inevitably led to calls for the army and the government to do something. | saw his dilemma first-hand at an emergency cabinet meeting after the first two Scud attacks. For Arik and Raful, the political effects on the US coalition were irrelevant. The issue, for them, was simple: Israeli cities had been attacked, and we should respond with any and all force necessary. Our air force commander, Avihu Ben-Nun, favored going ahead with the joint and-and-ground attack we’d prepared, and Misha agreed with him. So did Dan Shomron. The key voices of caution were Foreign Minister David Levy; Ariye Deri, the leader of the Sephardi Orthodox party Shas; and two 235 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028083