With war raging in the Middle East, we want to bring you as many trusted voices on the news as we can. One such voice is the Israeli journalist Amit Segal. Here’s Amit’s daily newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel, which we’re pleased to publish in The Free Press.
During the last major coalition war involving Arab countries, the First Gulf War, Washington spent months building the coalition. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, but the war itself only began in January 1991. For roughly five months, the United States invested enormous effort and capital in assembling a coalition of more than 30 countries. One of the guiding principles was that Arab states would participate and Israel would remain on the sidelines.
Israel’s then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir made what was arguably the most difficult decision: to hold back. Even though Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israel, Jerusalem refrained from responding militarily in order to not fracture the Arab coalition. For years afterward, that decision was simply known as “restraint.”
