Daily Times

With an arsenal of more than 300 weapons and strong delivery capabilities, Israel has already replaced the UK as the fifth largest nuclear power in the world. Israel’s secret nuclear programme now rivals China and France in terms of its size. Since the early 1960s, governments in Tel Aviv have ever maintained an official policy of deliberate nuclear opacity. In 1963, Shimon Peres assured that Israel would not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the region. Most historians are of the view that the policy of neither acknowledging nor denying the existence of nuclear weapons was adopted after a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and US President Richard Nixon in 1969, in which Israel agreed not to unveil its nuclear strength as a quid pro quo for easing of US pressure on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Due to its secretive policy, most of the information about Israel’s nuclear programme has been gathered from the evidence provided by whistle-blowers and defected Israeli nuclear scientists.

Many years ago, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Hans Blix made it public that, “Israel has about 200 weapons, and beating around the bush does not change very much — they are part of the nuclear landscape.” Israel’s nuclear project was originally conceived in the shadows of the Holocaust and as a means to provide the “ultimate security assurance against annihilation”. The exceptional injustices committed against the Jews taught the lesson that Israel could not rely on allies for its defence. Shimon Peres very vocally expressed this thinking when he said that if Israel succeeded in acquiring nuclear capability, no Jews would be slaughtered like lambs anymore. This perception was also bolstered when Israel was forced by the US to withdraw its troops from Egyptian territory during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, and Ernst David Bergmann were the principal architects of the nuclear policy and they maintained utmost control over the defence establishment for almost two decades. From the very outset, the process of expanding the nuclear arsenal was very rapid and by the time of the Yom Kippur War, Israel possessed more than a dozen nuclear bombs. Golda Meir further intensified the nuclear efforts.

According to the distinguished US journalist Seymour Hersh, an Israeli scientist secretly gave photographic evidence of Israel possessing more than 100 thermonuclear weapons to the US in 1981. Today, the Israeli nuclear arsenal is believed to include both artillery delivered enhanced radiation neutron bombs and intercontinental range thermonuclear weapons. Israel’s strategic nuclear deterrent is based on a three-branched nuclear capability: strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-based missiles. The purpose of having this ‘triad’ of delivery systems is to reduce the possibility of an enemy’s attack on all of a country’s nuclear forces and ensure a credible threat of a ‘second strike’. Israel’s nuclear research and production activities are scattered across the country, with a nuclear reactor at Dimona used to produce plutonium, nuclear storage bases at Eilabun near the Sea of Galilee and the national weapons testing laboratory at Soreq. Despite repeated efforts, Israel has never allowed the IAEA to inspect these nuclear facilities.

After 2002, much media attention has focused on the hysteria surrounding the Iranian nuclear enterprise while Israel’s rapidly growing nuclear capabilities have been largely ignored. There is no strong evidence to suggest that Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal helped increase its security or bring stability to the region. Rather, it has been a destabilising force. In fact, Israeli governments have repeatedly made threats of a nuclear attack on Arab countries in order to further Israel’s negative ambitions in the Middle East. Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, is often quoted as saying, “Arabs may have the oil but we have the matches.” Israel’s ambitions have even gone far beyond the Middle East. In 1983, and again in 2003, Israel even offered to join hands with India to attack Pakistani nuclear facilities.

In addition, the US policy of acquiescence in Israel’s nuclear programme has provided an impetus to Iraq, Syria, Iran and other Arab nations to explore the possibility of nuclear weapons — universally acknowledged as a threat to human survival on this planet. Israel’s nuclear status gave Saddam Hussein a strong incentive to pursue a nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s and early 1990s. Israel has always refused to ratify the NPT, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Israel’s refusal to join these treaties has not only undermined the global nonproliferation regime, its worst consequences have appeared in the form of mass proliferation of biological and chemical weapons in Egypt, Syria and Iraq with the purpose to offset Israel’s military dominance in the region. Israel’s possession of chemical and biological weapons has seriously undermined the moral authority of the US stance, which requires Iran to comply with the NPT and international law.

With India and Pakistan, the other nuclear-armed non-signatories to the NPT, the Israeli nuclear programme imperils future nuclear nonproliferation efforts. The nuclear programmes of these countries reinforce the prospect that any future wars could escalate into a regional or global nuclear cataclysm. If the international community is really sincere in its efforts for the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, they must press Israel to sign the NPT and take steps towards denuclearisation. None of Israel’s adversary countries has nuclear capability so Israel has not even a deterrence justification to maintain its fastest growing nuclear arsenal. Egypt, Iran and many other Arab countries have already supported the establishment of a NWFZ and such a move would also help to deny Tehran the moral high ground it claims because of western support for Israel’s nuclear programme.

A nuclear-free Middle East could set the stage for a ‘comprehensive peace agreement’ in the region. George Perkovich, a famous American analyst, is of the view: “Our aim should be to create a security environment, and you cannot do that if you do not recognise publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons.” Over the past three decades, the UN General Assembly has passed many resolutions supporting the idea of a NWFZ in the Middle East. Keeping in view the highly volatile geopolitical situation emerging in the Middle East, the international community cannot wait for another three decades to take substantial steps towards achieving this aim.

The writer is a research scholar and a former visiting fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California. He can be reached at rizwanasghar7@hotmail.com