Today, as was the case seven years ago, Palestinian demonstrators are delightedly urging President Saddam Hussein to stand firm against US-led pressure and to launch his missiles at Israel, David Horovitz writes from Jerusa- lem. Today, as seven years ago, Israeli defence officials are telling their citizens there is no cause for alarm and Israel has no part in the UN's dispute with Iraq.
But much has changed since Saddam fired 39 Scud missiles at central Israel in a vain attempt to turn the Gulf War into an Arab-Israeli conflict. Although hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza and the West Bank yesterday, burning US flags and pledging to "sacrifice our blood and our soul" for Saddam, Mr Yasser Arafat was hardly about to encourage them. During the Gulf War, he threw in his lot with Saddam - a misguided strategy that cost thousands of Palestinians their jobs in Kuwait, put a halt to Saudi funding for the Palestinian struggle and brought the PLO to the brink of collapse. Then living in frustrated exile in Tunis, Mr Arafat now presides over an elected Palestinian administration in Gaza whose future depends largely on how much pressure Washington is prepared to exert on Israel for further territorial compromise.
Israel, led at the time by the ultra-cautious Likud prime minister, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, heeded US advice and sat out the Gulf War. Mr Shamir resisted considerable pressure from among his own ministers to send Israeli fighter planes into Iraq and halt the Scud attacks.
Disappointed to see Saddam survive the war, Israel has spent the years since then trying to develop a hugely-expensive anti-missile protection system in partnership with the US - without conspicuous success to date and, reportedly, hatching clandestine plots to assassinate the Iraqi dictator.
In recent days, the Israeli press has been full of reports highlighting Iraq's purported biological and chemical weapons capabilities, and the headlines have prompted a rush by Israelis to upgrade the gas masks they used seven years ago. The Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, has been urging his people not to panic; the air force commander yesterday insisted that the dispute was "not connected with us".
David Horovitz is managing edi- tor of the Jerusalem Report.