Israel Mulls Smallpox Vaccinations

Israel will decide in the coming days on whether it is necessary to inoculate the entire population against the smallpox virus as part of its final preparations for a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, officials said Monday.

If you read Monday's Israeli newspapers, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, you would think a war with Iraq is imminent. The headline in one paper said "The Israeli army has chosen targets to attack in Iraq." Another headline said "Preparing for Red Hail" — a reference to a possible Iraqi missile attack with chemical weapons. Israel's biggest paper, Yediot Ahronot, carried a full-page diagram instructing the public what to do in different scenarios, including a chemical attack.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers are to arrive in Israel this week for joint exercises to integrate two different anti-missile systems that are part of final preparations for a possible Iraqi attack. Israeli soldiers also have reportedly been training with chemical agents, learning how to detect them to warn the public in case of an attack.

Meanwhile, blaming Israel's continuing occupation, Palestinians have postponed elections scheduled for next month and say the ballot will not take place until 100 days after Israeli troops have left the West Bank.

On the Israeli side, the outcome of parliamentary elections set for Jan. 28 was increasingly unclear as polls show support declining for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ruling Likud Party, once favored to sweep the election. The hard-line party has been dogged by allegations of bribery and vote-buying at the Likud's internal primary earlier this month.

For the first time in months, many souvenir shops were open Monday in Manger Square in Bethlehem. The Israeli army lifted the curfew ahead of Christmas, so Palestinian shopkeeper Nadia Hazboun wiped away the dust and opened her doors.

"Only today we can go out from our home, only today," she told Berger. "What kind of Christmas this, what kind of Christmas?"

But Hazboun said she should have remained closed. Two years of Mideast violence have kept pilgrims away, and no pilgrims means no business.

The delay of the Palestinian election is a setback for reforms in the Palestinian Authority, demanded by the United States and Israel as a step toward resuming peace talks. Both nations have called for new Palestinian leadership.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, was in the West Bank town of Ramallah to meet Palestinian officials on Monday. Lieberman has said he believes the key to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to replace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The Bush administration has no direct dealings with Arafat, hoping that he would be sidelined in elections.

Israeli troops killed two Hamas activists, including a leading militiaman, Monday as the men rode a tractor near the West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian security officials said.

The Israeli military said it was checking the report.

Palestinian officials said the bodies of the two men were riddled by bullets and accused Israel of killing them in a targeted attack.

Israel is preparing for the possibility that if Iraq is attacked, it will strike at Israel as it did in the 1991 Gulf War when it fired 39 Scud missiles at Israeli population centers. In 1991, all the missiles had conventional warheads, but Israel is preparing for the possibility that this time Saddam Hussein will use chemical or biological weapons.

The Health Ministry has already inoculated between 15,000 and 20,000 medical and rescue workers against the virus and has enough immunizations to vaccinate the 6.6 million population, Boaz Lev, the ministry's director-general, told Army Radio. If necessary, he said the ministry can inoculate the entire population within days.

"The Cabinet will have to decide in the next few days ... it all depends on how possible the scenario is," said Raanan Gissin, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "We are now covering all possible contingencies and this is another element of it."

Amos Yaron, the director-general of the Defense Ministry, said there is a very small chance that Saddam will use non-conventional weapons.

"We are preparing for the conventional situation like the one that happened in the first Gulf War and we are preparing and defending ourselves also for other possibilities," he said.

Israel has the necessary antibodies to treat any serious complications that could arise when inoculating the entire population against the virus, Lev said, but emphasized that only in very rare cases do people incur the most serious, and sometimes fatal, side effects from inoculation.

"I think that in the end we will have no choice but to inoculate because of this sword that threatens us," Lev said.

Israeli newspapers Monday were plastered with headlines on preparations for a possible Iraqi attack. "The Israeli army has chosen targets to attack in Iraq," a front-page headline in the Maariv newspaper declared, using "Preparing for Red Hail" logos on several pages dedicated to the issue.

Yediot Ahronot, another mass circulated Israeli newspaper, dedicated the first half of the newspaper to stories on Israel's preparations, including a nearly full-page graphic instructing the public what to do in different scenarios, among them a chemical warfare attack.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would be forewarned by the United States of an impending attack. He said Israel is better prepared then it was in 1991 to deal with an Iraqi threat.

"We are on the outside of this war, at least at this stage, but it must be remembered that if the United States decides to attack there are also dangers to the state of Israel," Mofaz told Israel Radio.

Smallpox, once one of the most feared epidemic diseases in the world, killed hundreds of millions of people in past centuries. It was declared eradicated globally in 1980.