A senior Israeli official said yesterday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received advance warning from the US about its first strike against Iraq, as Israeli civilians began carrying gas masks to protect them from a possible Iraqi attack.
Major General Amos Gilad, the official government spokesman concerning the Iraq campaign, confirmed broadcast reports that Sharon received word from the US administration before the air attack.
"It has already been made public that the prime minister got warning," he told Army Radio, but Israel had no active role.
Gilad said that Israel is not part of the war against Iraq, "and therefore Israel should not be disappointed that it was not part of the planning for this particular operation."
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters yesterday, "We don't intend to have a high profile in this war."
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun early yesterday, about 700 Palestinians, most of them schoolchildren, waved Iraqi flags and posters of Saddam Hussein and burned two US flags after the attack in Iraq.
Among the slogans they shouted were "Death to America, death to Bush," and "We will sacrifice our soul and our blood for Saddam."
The military on Wednesday instructed civilians to remove their gas masks from boxes and install their filters. The announcement said Israelis should carry their gas masks with them everywhere they went, and children took their masks to school yesterday.
Meanwhile, several thousand Israelis in the Tel Aviv area, target of Iraqi Scud missiles in 1991, were leaving for safer parts of the country, like Jerusalem, unlikely to be hit because of its holy sites, or Eilat, far out of range at Israel's southern tip.
However, a poll showed that 84 percent of the Tel Aviv region's 2 million people did not plan to leave. The poll, in the Yediot Ahronot daily, questioned 505 people and quoted a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
Most of the Arab world is opposed to a war against Iraq, and Iraq has not threatened Israel, insisting that it has no non-conventional weapons and will not carry the war beyond Iraqi borders. US officials reject the Iraqi assurances, and some Israelis were nervous.
About 2,400 families from the Tel Aviv area registered in the southern town of Kiryat Gat on Wednesday. Eight leading hotels in the Jerusalem area reported a surge of more than 1,500 calls from Tel Aviv residents looking for rooms.
British Airways began canceling its flights to Israel on Tuesday night. Germany's Lufthansa canceled its Wednesday evening flight from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv and said it would reevaluate the situation yesterday.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)