TEL AVIV, 9 January 2004 — One of Israel’s worst security “nightmares”, as one national daily described it yesterday, is about to become reality. As international pressure for more openness about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the Middle East is growing, Israeli arms technician Mordechai Vanunu is scheduled to complete his 18-year prison term in April.
The Israeli security establishment is frantically examining ways to prevent the country’s “most isolated prisoner”, convicted of treason for betraying Israel’s nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, from spreading more of his knowledge after his release. One option under consideration is not allowing Vanunu to travel abroad after his release, another to prohibit interviews with the Israeli media, the Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily reported.
The international and regional climate regarding WMDs in the Middle East is changing, forcing Israel to reassess its policy of calculated silence, known as “strategic ambiguity”, about its nuclear capabilities. Israel has never confirmed nor denied reports that it possesses nuclear arms, but the Central Intelligence Agency estimates it has about 200 to 400 nuclear warheads. Although its official line since the 1960s has always been that it would “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East”, Israel has used its reported capabilities as a deterrence against enemy states.
However, since the war in Iraq, the situation in the region has changed fundamentally. The removal of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the failure of the United States to find hard evidence of WMDs in the Gulf state have removed Baghdad from the top of Israel’s list of regimes posing a threat to the Jewish state. Iran has allowed international inspectors to examine its nuclear facilities, while the most recent change came last month, when Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya declared it would abandon its WMD program. Syria for its part has presented a proposal to the United Nations for removing all WMD from the Middle East, although President Bashar Assad said in an interview this week that any deal to destroy Syria’s chemical and biological capability would come about only if Israel agreed to abandon its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Israel is now preparing for the day the international community begins directing its attention toward its weapons program, the Israeli Ha’aretz daily reported. The Israeli foreign and defense ministries have begun to “detect the change in climate”, it said. They are now discussing the question whether to voluntarily accept inspections or wait for external pressure. The Israeli security Cabinet met for the first time in years last week to discuss the issue.
Only one in four Israelis believe their country should give up its undeclared nuclear arsenal as part of an overall move to rid the Middle East of WMDs, according to a poll published by Israel Radio last week. Among the supporters of a nuclear-free Middle East is the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed el-Baradei. In his first interview with Israeli media, the Egyptian-born official told Ha’aretz recently that “the time is now” to discuss the issue. “I don’t see why Israel is not ready to at least start the discussion” he said, adding “My fear is that without such a dialogue, there will continue to be incentives for the countries of the region to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal.”
Professor Yair Evron, an expert in nuclear weapons at Tel Aviv university, said that given the changes in the region, it was possible Israel would finally ratify the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which it signed more than a decade ago. “I believe Israel should ratify it,” he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. But he said it was unthinkable that Israel would give up its reported nuclear program as long as it felt that its existence was under threat.
As long as there is a threat that one of the countries in the Middle East will use nuclear weapons, Israel will keep its nuclear arsenal as the “ultimate weapon of self-defense”, he said. He added, however that as part of a regional peace settlement, Israel was likely to be willing to make “far-reaching concessions” in the nuclear field, such as ending production of uranium and plutonium. That could mean that Israel would commit not to produce new nuclear weapons and also not renew those which it reportedly already has once they have become outdated.
