GAZA CITY Ñ The Palestinian Authority has decided to relinquish
preparations for the prospect of an Iraqi missile attack on either the West
Bank or Gaza Strip.
PA officials said authorities do not plan to distribute gas masks or
serums to Palestinians to counter fallout from any Iraqi nonconventional
missile attack. They said the PA has not organized civil defense efforts or
bunkers to protect against a conventional missile attack.
The PA has been offered the option of purchasing gas masks and other
equipment to prepare for an Iraqi missile attack. But officials said PA
Chairman Yasser Arafat has determined that any Iraqi missile aimed toward
Israel would not fall on either the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
"We have to prioritize for the donors what is most urgent, urgent, and
so on," Fathi Abu Moghli, a PA Health Ministry official, told the IMRA
information agency. "We didn't reach this level of need Ñ to ask for
masks."
The PA's neighbors Ñ Egypt and Jordan Ñ have prepared emergency plans
to maintain order and security amid any U.S.-led war against Iraq. Jordan
has obtained three PAC-2 missile defense systems to shoot down any Iraqi
missiles headed for the Hashemite kingdom.
[On Thursday, Israeli troops found a Kassam-class short-range rocket in
a Palestinian village south of Bethlehem. Military sources said the rocket
had been aimed toward the nearby Israeli town of Efrat.]
Officials said the PA decision to ignore the prospect of an Iraqi
missile attack was meant to prevent any cooperation with Israel, which has
reserved gas masks for Palestinians under its control in the West Bank. They
said Palestinians, thousands of whom have been demonstrating in support of
Iraq, have not expressed concern over the prospect of an Iraqi missile going
astray.
"We are not prepared for this," Moghli said. "And I don't think that it
is among the priorities of the donors to provide us with such facilities
because they feel that we have other more urgent needs than this one."
