Category: War, from Wikidata’s classes “armed conflict”, “airstrike”, “bombardment”
1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel
Part of: Gulf War, Arab–Israeli conflict
Wikidata classes on our event-class list: armed conflict, airstrike, bombardment (all its classes: Wikidata item)
On 17 January 1991, Iraq initiated a missile campaign against Israel. Over the next month, approximately 42 Scud missiles were fired into Israeli territory, primarily at the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. The missile attacks began on the same day as the Gulf War aerial bombardment campaign, which was targeting military infrastructure within Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. As many Muslim-majority countries were actively contributing to the American-led military coalition, the Iraqi government had expected them to rescind their support if Israel responded to the missile campaign by attacking Iraq.
Israel was convinced by Jordan and the United States to not retaliate. Jordanian king Hussein bin Talal persuaded Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to consider Jordan's stability and not violate Jordanian airspace during a bilateral meeting two weeks earlier, and the Bush administration had increased defense aid to Israel for the purpose of actively countering Iraq's barrages and preventing an Israeli counterattack, thereby ensuring that the coalition's Muslim countries did not withdraw.
On 23 February 1991, the coalition began a ground offensive into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait and Iraq proper. According to UK Cabinet Office records, the then-Minister of Defense of Israel, Moshe Arens said in a meeting at the White House that the Iraqi attacks had caused "extensive damage" in Israel.
Text retrieved 2026-10-10 from Wikipedia.
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APA 7
1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel. (2026, October 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1991_Iraqi_missile_attacks_against_Israel&oldid=1379196818
MLA 9
“1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Oct. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1991_Iraqi_missile_attacks_against_Israel&oldid=1379196818.
Chicago (note)
Wikipedia, “1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel,” last modified October 8, 2026, 14:04 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1991_Iraqi_missile_attacks_against_Israel&oldid=1379196818.
Chicago (shortened note)
Wikipedia, “1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel.”
Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.
This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/1991-iraqi-missile-attacks-against-israel
If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/
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Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article 1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel. Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0). “Part of” is Wikidata’s statement, in its labels (CC0).