‘City That Never Stops’ Slows Down After Persian Gulf Deadline

TEL AVIV —  Tel Aviv likes to call itself the City That Never Stops. But the Iraqi missile threat slowed it down considerably today.

A rare calm enveloped the metropolis that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has singled out as his prime target in a Persian Gulf war. Many Israelis preferred to stay indoors, close to their gas masks and the rooms they have sealed as shelters in case of a chemical weapons attack.

“It’s like a Sabbath here,” said the salesman at the Banaman T-shirt store in Dizengoff Center, ordinarily a bustling shopping emporium except on the Jewish day of rest.

Banaman has been doing a brisk trade in T-shirts with rude slogans about Saddam Hussein. But now the mall was almost deserted. Outside, traffic was abnormally light.

Being rude to Hussein is very much in fashion in Tel Aviv these days. Several buses sported large posters of the mustachioed Iraqi leader, emblazoned with the date of Jan. 15, 1991, and a hand making an obscene gesture.

Driver Avraham Bachar, who plies a busy cross-town route, said he and his fellow drivers have no idea who was responsible. “We came to work yesterday and found the posters stuck on the buses. They’re nice, aren’t they?” he said.

The posters typify the kind of humor that offsets the unease many Israelis feel at the prospect of chemical attack.

“The missiles will take eight minutes to reach Tel Aviv--and two hours to find a parking space,” Mayor Shlomo Lahat joked.

Actually, there was no shortage of parking spots today. Streets that are normally packed had empty spaces. The old-age pensioners who direct cars at Dizengoff Center’s vast underground parking lot sat about idly, waving the occasional customer through to take his pick of spaces.