(Updated Sunday 11:15 AM) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has informed the White House that if Iraq attacks Israel, the Jewish State will respond militarily. According to the New York Times, Sharon told senior US officials during private meetings that Israel will not sit idly by as she did in the 1991 Gulf War when 39 Iraqi scud missiles landed inside the country. The Times report says the Pentagon fears that Israel’s involvement in the war on Saddam Hussein would make it harder for the US to maintain the cooperation of the Arab states who support removing the Iraqi dictator. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last week that it would be in Israel's "overwhelming best interests" not to intervene if the United States went to war with Iraq.