ZioWatch
'Christian Zionism and Jewish Extremism'
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Pullout Focuses Israel on Its Future
Dreams Overtaken By Demographics
JERUSALEM, Aug. 12 -- As a young member of Israel's parliament in 1978, Ehud Olmert had the opportunity to vote in favor of the historic Camp David peace accords, which returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and brought Israel peace with its most powerful enemy. Olmert voted against it.
"I voted against Menachem Begin," Olmert, now Israel's finance minister, said this week. "I told him it was a historic mistake, how dangerous it would be, and so on and so on. Now I am sorry he is not alive for me to be able to publicly recognize his wisdom and my mistake. He was right and I was wrong. Thank God we pulled out of the Sinai."
In two days, the Israeli military will begin the first evacuation of Jewish settlements since the Sinai pullout, abandoning 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and the network of military installations that protected them for nearly four decades. This time, Israel will not receive anything in return for the land it is leaving. Olmert has been one of the plan's most vocal supporters.
The unilateral decision to leave Gaza, pushed for more than a year by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at great political expense, has left Israeli society at odds over the future character and shape of the Jewish state.
After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war, Israeli Jews moved to settle the newly occupied territories. From about 5,000 in the late 1960s, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza has grown to about 258,000 today, not including those who live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods that Israel annexed following the war.
But over the past year or so, the dream of settling the territories has collided with Israel's demographic challenge -- how to survive as a democratic Jewish homeland -- convincing most Israelis that the state must give up land to protect its Jewish majority. At the same time, the violent Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 was claiming thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives.
Sharon, an architect of the settler movement, has long supported the notion of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. But he has scaled back those territorial ambitions. Even though disengagement amounts to the first time outside the framework of peace negotiations that Israel will withdraw from what many Jews consider part of the Land of Israel described in the Bible, Sharon has cast it as a step toward creating a state that has more defensible boundaries with fewer Arabs inside them.
A recent poll conducted by Tel Aviv University showed that 57 percent of Israelis support the plan, a majority that has remained relatively constant throughout the tumultuous debate.
The same poll showed that 36 percent of the population opposes Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza and four small West Bank settlements. Many of the opponents are from a younger generation, energized by a summer of protest, who have become the foot soldiers of a more politically assertive religious minority.
Whether the evacuation unfolds smoothly will probably determine Israel's immediate course on matters of peace with the Palestinians, the role of settlers in Israeli society and the outcome of general elections that must be held by November 2006.
"If this is done properly, there are a lot of options open to us," said Eyval Giladi, Sharon's director of strategic planning. "If we fail, there will be a lot fewer."
A Demographic Race
For nearly 40 years, Gaza has proved to be a difficult place to defend and an even harder one to leave. The government initially encouraged Israelis to move into its dunes for strategic reasons -- to create a bulwark against an Egyptian invasion and divide the Palestinian population. The settlers, a mix of religious and economically motivated Israelis, developed farms and greenhouses, staffed by cheap Palestinian labor.
In 1994, under the terms of the Oslo accords, Israel handed the Palestinians political control over roughly 80 percent of Gaza's territory. But the Israeli army and the Jewish settlements remained. Today, about 8,500 Jewish settlers live among 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, an imbalance that has proved costly in lives and money to sustain.
Under international pressure to make progress toward peace, Sharon proposed the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in part to avoid negotiating with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. After Arafat died in November, the election of Mahmoud Abbas to succeed him as president of the Palestinian Authority brought a cease-fire agreement with Israel.
But coordination remains tenuous, giving radical Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, an opening to claim that the Israeli withdrawal is a result of their rocket attacks and suicide bombings. Hamas is sponsoring a contest for the best mural depicting the Israeli evacuation as a victory for the group.
According to population projections, the number of Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will surpass the number of Jewish residents, who now total roughly 5.2 million, by the end of the decade.
Israeli political leaders worry that, unless a two-state solution to the conflict can be reached by that point, the 3.5 million Arabs living under Israeli military law in the West Bank and Gaza will give up the goal of having their own nation. Instead, they could demand the right to vote inside Israel, where 1.3 million Arab citizens already live, forcing Israelis to choose between the state's Jewish character and democracy.
"Among the Israelis, there has been a shift in thinking," said Ali Jarbawi, a Palestinian professor at Beir Zeit University near Ramallah. "Now, instead of land for peace, it is land for time."
The key players in the demographic race could be seen here last week at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, where more than 70,000 people gathered to protest disengagement by chanting prayers of lamentation and forgiveness. Young couples flooded into the plaza, pushing scores of baby strollers. One religious settler held a baby in one arm and a prayer book in the other, his M-4 rifle slung over his shoulder.
"The prime minister has changed and the situation has changed," said Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister, who has been Sharon's friend since the two were active in Israel's pre-state security organizations. "Zionism was built on geography, but it lives on demography."
As leader of the Labor Party, Peres joined Sharon's Likud-led government largely to protect the disengagement plan. But the unusual political alliance, built on generational rather than partisan lines, may shatter once the election season begins after the evacuation.
"What to do next on the West Bank has been a silent discussion until now," Peres said. "Once we are out of Gaza, it will become an open debate, maybe even the central debate in the next election."
Building a Coalition
Amiel Ungar lives in the hilltop settlement of Tekoa in the southern West Bank, in a stucco home where he moved 26 years ago from New York. He has raised five sons there on the barren edge of the Judean Desert, the rocky heart of what religious Zionists believe is the Promised Land.
Ungar, a lecturer at Ariel College in the West Bank, said religious settlers like himself have played an important role in mainstream Israeli life for years. They do obligatory military service, unlike members of the ultra-Orthodox community, and are prominent in the army's professional officers corps.
"We simply won't be lectured to by people who preach democracy, but this European-style democracy that believes it knows better than the people," said Ungar, 57.
Israel's religious Zionist movement holds a range of opinions on the terms of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Ungar said the movement's mainstream consensus is that the Palestinians should accept the Israeli presence in the territories or else move to Jordan or Egypt. Disengagement, he said, rewards Palestinian militancy.
Many Israelis believe the settlement movement is an obstacle to peace, an impression reinforced during recent months of resistance to the evacuation plan. Many secular Israelis, especially those on its coastal plain, argue that the government created the problem by pampering the settlers for years.
"They have long been the spoiled child in the family," said Kobi Niv, a screenwriter and teacher at Tel Aviv University. "Now, suddenly, the father -- and he's truly their father -- has said, 'Enough.' "
In the coming months, Ungar said, the religious Zionist movement will begin building a new electoral coalition. It will reach out to disaffected Likud members, residents of Israel's poorest cities, Russian immigrants and secular war veterans who still believe in a Greater Israel.
"The entire generation, the boys and girls of summer 2005, are going to demand a change," Ungar said. "The government has made a decision. A future government may be able to rectify that decision."
The New Generation
Many of those boys and girls have gathered in Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gaza. They have turned the community square into a kind of joyless festival, a party counting down the end of the community.
The Palestinian "solution for peace is that we all should die," said Avivit Partush, 24, who arrived from her home near Tel Aviv to join the disengagement opponents. "There are many states where they can live. We are surrounded by countries that are their countries."
Partush and a few friends, all of them religious, are running a nonprofit snack bar from a derelict van. They have received donations to support the holdouts and sell their sandwiches for less than 50 cents each. Hagai Swisa, 25, left the Israeli army after five years because he would not participate in the disengagement operation. Now, a week later, he is helping feed the demonstrators after sneaking through the military cordon around Gaza to get inside.
"We're willing to take one step more than our parents," Swisa said.
Just down the road, along a strip of beach behind a tall metal fence, are the hard-core holdouts of Shiryat Hayam. Hundreds of settlers have gathered there in recent weeks. The army predicts that it might be one of the few places where the evacuation turns violent. It is easy to see why.
A group of children, some not even teenagers, stand at the gate into the camp. They wave some cars through, tell others to turn around, even though the Israeli soldier has given permission to pass.
"You can run them over for all I care," a harried Israeli soldier said one recent afternoon.
"The soldier means nothing to us," one angry teenager inside the camp said. "He has no authority here."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
JERUSALEM, Aug. 12 -- As a young member of Israel's parliament in 1978, Ehud Olmert had the opportunity to vote in favor of the historic Camp David peace accords, which returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and brought Israel peace with its most powerful enemy. Olmert voted against it.
"I voted against Menachem Begin," Olmert, now Israel's finance minister, said this week. "I told him it was a historic mistake, how dangerous it would be, and so on and so on. Now I am sorry he is not alive for me to be able to publicly recognize his wisdom and my mistake. He was right and I was wrong. Thank God we pulled out of the Sinai."
In two days, the Israeli military will begin the first evacuation of Jewish settlements since the Sinai pullout, abandoning 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and the network of military installations that protected them for nearly four decades. This time, Israel will not receive anything in return for the land it is leaving. Olmert has been one of the plan's most vocal supporters.
The unilateral decision to leave Gaza, pushed for more than a year by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at great political expense, has left Israeli society at odds over the future character and shape of the Jewish state.
After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war, Israeli Jews moved to settle the newly occupied territories. From about 5,000 in the late 1960s, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza has grown to about 258,000 today, not including those who live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods that Israel annexed following the war.
But over the past year or so, the dream of settling the territories has collided with Israel's demographic challenge -- how to survive as a democratic Jewish homeland -- convincing most Israelis that the state must give up land to protect its Jewish majority. At the same time, the violent Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 was claiming thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives.
Sharon, an architect of the settler movement, has long supported the notion of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. But he has scaled back those territorial ambitions. Even though disengagement amounts to the first time outside the framework of peace negotiations that Israel will withdraw from what many Jews consider part of the Land of Israel described in the Bible, Sharon has cast it as a step toward creating a state that has more defensible boundaries with fewer Arabs inside them.
A recent poll conducted by Tel Aviv University showed that 57 percent of Israelis support the plan, a majority that has remained relatively constant throughout the tumultuous debate.
The same poll showed that 36 percent of the population opposes Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza and four small West Bank settlements. Many of the opponents are from a younger generation, energized by a summer of protest, who have become the foot soldiers of a more politically assertive religious minority.
Whether the evacuation unfolds smoothly will probably determine Israel's immediate course on matters of peace with the Palestinians, the role of settlers in Israeli society and the outcome of general elections that must be held by November 2006.
"If this is done properly, there are a lot of options open to us," said Eyval Giladi, Sharon's director of strategic planning. "If we fail, there will be a lot fewer."
A Demographic Race
For nearly 40 years, Gaza has proved to be a difficult place to defend and an even harder one to leave. The government initially encouraged Israelis to move into its dunes for strategic reasons -- to create a bulwark against an Egyptian invasion and divide the Palestinian population. The settlers, a mix of religious and economically motivated Israelis, developed farms and greenhouses, staffed by cheap Palestinian labor.
In 1994, under the terms of the Oslo accords, Israel handed the Palestinians political control over roughly 80 percent of Gaza's territory. But the Israeli army and the Jewish settlements remained. Today, about 8,500 Jewish settlers live among 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, an imbalance that has proved costly in lives and money to sustain.
Under international pressure to make progress toward peace, Sharon proposed the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in part to avoid negotiating with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. After Arafat died in November, the election of Mahmoud Abbas to succeed him as president of the Palestinian Authority brought a cease-fire agreement with Israel.
But coordination remains tenuous, giving radical Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, an opening to claim that the Israeli withdrawal is a result of their rocket attacks and suicide bombings. Hamas is sponsoring a contest for the best mural depicting the Israeli evacuation as a victory for the group.
According to population projections, the number of Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will surpass the number of Jewish residents, who now total roughly 5.2 million, by the end of the decade.
Israeli political leaders worry that, unless a two-state solution to the conflict can be reached by that point, the 3.5 million Arabs living under Israeli military law in the West Bank and Gaza will give up the goal of having their own nation. Instead, they could demand the right to vote inside Israel, where 1.3 million Arab citizens already live, forcing Israelis to choose between the state's Jewish character and democracy.
"Among the Israelis, there has been a shift in thinking," said Ali Jarbawi, a Palestinian professor at Beir Zeit University near Ramallah. "Now, instead of land for peace, it is land for time."
The key players in the demographic race could be seen here last week at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, where more than 70,000 people gathered to protest disengagement by chanting prayers of lamentation and forgiveness. Young couples flooded into the plaza, pushing scores of baby strollers. One religious settler held a baby in one arm and a prayer book in the other, his M-4 rifle slung over his shoulder.
"The prime minister has changed and the situation has changed," said Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister, who has been Sharon's friend since the two were active in Israel's pre-state security organizations. "Zionism was built on geography, but it lives on demography."
As leader of the Labor Party, Peres joined Sharon's Likud-led government largely to protect the disengagement plan. But the unusual political alliance, built on generational rather than partisan lines, may shatter once the election season begins after the evacuation.
"What to do next on the West Bank has been a silent discussion until now," Peres said. "Once we are out of Gaza, it will become an open debate, maybe even the central debate in the next election."
Building a Coalition
Amiel Ungar lives in the hilltop settlement of Tekoa in the southern West Bank, in a stucco home where he moved 26 years ago from New York. He has raised five sons there on the barren edge of the Judean Desert, the rocky heart of what religious Zionists believe is the Promised Land.
Ungar, a lecturer at Ariel College in the West Bank, said religious settlers like himself have played an important role in mainstream Israeli life for years. They do obligatory military service, unlike members of the ultra-Orthodox community, and are prominent in the army's professional officers corps.
"We simply won't be lectured to by people who preach democracy, but this European-style democracy that believes it knows better than the people," said Ungar, 57.
Israel's religious Zionist movement holds a range of opinions on the terms of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Ungar said the movement's mainstream consensus is that the Palestinians should accept the Israeli presence in the territories or else move to Jordan or Egypt. Disengagement, he said, rewards Palestinian militancy.
Many Israelis believe the settlement movement is an obstacle to peace, an impression reinforced during recent months of resistance to the evacuation plan. Many secular Israelis, especially those on its coastal plain, argue that the government created the problem by pampering the settlers for years.
"They have long been the spoiled child in the family," said Kobi Niv, a screenwriter and teacher at Tel Aviv University. "Now, suddenly, the father -- and he's truly their father -- has said, 'Enough.' "
In the coming months, Ungar said, the religious Zionist movement will begin building a new electoral coalition. It will reach out to disaffected Likud members, residents of Israel's poorest cities, Russian immigrants and secular war veterans who still believe in a Greater Israel.
"The entire generation, the boys and girls of summer 2005, are going to demand a change," Ungar said. "The government has made a decision. A future government may be able to rectify that decision."
The New Generation
Many of those boys and girls have gathered in Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gaza. They have turned the community square into a kind of joyless festival, a party counting down the end of the community.
The Palestinian "solution for peace is that we all should die," said Avivit Partush, 24, who arrived from her home near Tel Aviv to join the disengagement opponents. "There are many states where they can live. We are surrounded by countries that are their countries."
Partush and a few friends, all of them religious, are running a nonprofit snack bar from a derelict van. They have received donations to support the holdouts and sell their sandwiches for less than 50 cents each. Hagai Swisa, 25, left the Israeli army after five years because he would not participate in the disengagement operation. Now, a week later, he is helping feed the demonstrators after sneaking through the military cordon around Gaza to get inside.
"We're willing to take one step more than our parents," Swisa said.
Just down the road, along a strip of beach behind a tall metal fence, are the hard-core holdouts of Shiryat Hayam. Hundreds of settlers have gathered there in recent weeks. The army predicts that it might be one of the few places where the evacuation turns violent. It is easy to see why.
A group of children, some not even teenagers, stand at the gate into the camp. They wave some cars through, tell others to turn around, even though the Israeli soldier has given permission to pass.
"You can run them over for all I care," a harried Israeli soldier said one recent afternoon.
"The soldier means nothing to us," one angry teenager inside the camp said. "He has no authority here."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
UK helped Israel get nuclear bomb
Britain secretly sold Israel a key ingredient for its nuclear programme in 1958, according to official documents obtained by BBC News.
Papers in the British National Archives show a deal was done to export 20 tonnes of heavy water for about £1.5m.
This was vital for plutonium production at the top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel's Negev desert.
No "peaceful use only" condition was placed on its use. Officials said imposing one would be "over zealous".
"It is very surprising to me we were not told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British"
Former US defence secretary Robert McNamara
Ministers in Harold Macmillan's government were unaware of the deal. It was also kept secret from the US.
In one of the documents Foreign Office official Donald Cape concluded: "On the whole I would prefer not to mention this to the Americans."
Washington had refused to supply heavy water to Israel without a guarantee it would only be used for peaceful means.
US President John F Kennedy's defence secretary from 1961, Robert McNamara, told BBC News he was "astonished" by the cover-up.
"It is very surprising to me we were not told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British.
"The fact Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as any surprise.
"But that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was indeed a surprise to me."
The heavy water - surplus from a consignment bought from Norway in 1956 - was shipped from a British port to Israel.
They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of money
Former Conservative defence and foreign office minister Lord Gilmour
Officials presented it as a deal between Norway and Israel.
Former Conservative defence and foreign office minister Lord Gilmour told BBC News the revelations were "quite extraordinary".
The civil servants involved must have known Israel would use the heavy water to develop a nuclear bomb, he added.
"They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of money."
By the time Israel asked the UK for more heavy water in 1961, the existence of the Dimona reactor and a probable nuclear weapons programme had been exposed by the Daily Express newspaper, leading the Foreign Office to block the sale, the papers show.
The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it again
Sir Hugh Stephenson
Sir Hugh Stephenson wrote: "I am quite sure we should not agree to this sale.
"The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it again."
While Israel has not publicly conducted a nuclear test and does not admit or deny having nuclear weapons, it has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
This means the International Atomic Energy Agency does not have the power to inspect Israeli nuclear facilities.
The Israelis say that will not change as long as they feel threatened by countries in the Middle East.
Story from BBC NEWS
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Papers in the British National Archives show a deal was done to export 20 tonnes of heavy water for about £1.5m.
This was vital for plutonium production at the top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel's Negev desert.
No "peaceful use only" condition was placed on its use. Officials said imposing one would be "over zealous".
"It is very surprising to me we were not told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British"
Former US defence secretary Robert McNamara
Ministers in Harold Macmillan's government were unaware of the deal. It was also kept secret from the US.
In one of the documents Foreign Office official Donald Cape concluded: "On the whole I would prefer not to mention this to the Americans."
Washington had refused to supply heavy water to Israel without a guarantee it would only be used for peaceful means.
US President John F Kennedy's defence secretary from 1961, Robert McNamara, told BBC News he was "astonished" by the cover-up.
"It is very surprising to me we were not told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British.
"The fact Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as any surprise.
"But that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was indeed a surprise to me."
The heavy water - surplus from a consignment bought from Norway in 1956 - was shipped from a British port to Israel.
They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of money
Former Conservative defence and foreign office minister Lord Gilmour
Officials presented it as a deal between Norway and Israel.
Former Conservative defence and foreign office minister Lord Gilmour told BBC News the revelations were "quite extraordinary".
The civil servants involved must have known Israel would use the heavy water to develop a nuclear bomb, he added.
"They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of money."
By the time Israel asked the UK for more heavy water in 1961, the existence of the Dimona reactor and a probable nuclear weapons programme had been exposed by the Daily Express newspaper, leading the Foreign Office to block the sale, the papers show.
The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it again
Sir Hugh Stephenson
Sir Hugh Stephenson wrote: "I am quite sure we should not agree to this sale.
"The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it again."
While Israel has not publicly conducted a nuclear test and does not admit or deny having nuclear weapons, it has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
This means the International Atomic Energy Agency does not have the power to inspect Israeli nuclear facilities.
The Israelis say that will not change as long as they feel threatened by countries in the Middle East.
Story from BBC NEWS
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Would Israel ever give up the bomb?
By Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent
What would it take for Israel to give up the weapons of mass destruction it has never, in fact, acknowledged, except in knowing half-smiles?
This week, setting off a debate that proved tempestuous even by the Knesset's grand-opera standards, a senior ultra-Orthodox deputy was heard to say "The state of Israel should dismantle its nuclear weaponry like Libya is doing, and Israel will have to depend on Ha-shem [literally "the Name," signifying the Almighty]."
The comment set off fireworks for a number of reasons, among them the circumstance that thousands of the lawmakers' devout constituents are exempt from Israel's compulsory military service, many of them vocal in their belief that it is their spiritual study and practice - and not Israel's military might - that has kept the Jewish state from annihilation.
But the greater roar came from another quarter - the fact that the issue had been mentioned at all.
Just as the United Tora Judaism legislator, Meir Porush, refrained from using the explicit Hebrew name for God, Israeli officials have for more than three decades scrupulously avoided using the words "Israel's nuclear weaponry," instead persuing a policy of what has been called constructive ambiguity.
The policy stemmed in part from a distinctly uncomfortable early 1960s conversation in the White House between the architect of Israel's nuclear program, an ex-kibbutznik named Shimon Peres, and President John Kennedy, increasingly suspicious of what Peres was up to in building a reactor in the dust bowl Negev hamlet of Dimona.
Israelis have since learned to rely on the shield of nuclear rumor, whether its role is to reassure its citizenry, deter its enemies, or distance arms inspectors.
Porush, attacked both for the thrust of his comments and the use of the N word, later said he had been misheard and misquoted. The comment nonetheless made headlines in an Israel for which the nuclear issue - even when cloaked in the malleable language of deniability - strikes the most sensitive of national and historical chords.
It came during a week when pressure on Israel to give up the bomb sprang from the last direction and in the last form that Israeli officials could have anticipated.
Last Friday, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi shocked the world by announcing that his nation would give up its nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Almost immediately, any relief that Israeli officials might have felt at the mercurial Libyan ruler's decision was replaced by the realization that a fast-changing Middle East, one in which Iraq has been taken out of play and Iran's mass-destruction programs compromised, would inevitably cast a glare on the Jewish state.
"If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel," wrote Peter Preston in a column this week in the Guardian.
In perhaps its longest-running example of a don't-ask, don't-tell policy, U.S. administrations from Richard Nixon on, have accepted Israel's official non-declaration stance regarding a nuclear arsenal.
Israel stuck to its policy despite - or, by some accounts, taking advantage of - worldwide coverage of revelations by former Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who in the 1980s suggested that the Negev reactor had produced as many as 200 atomic bombs of various kinds.
"That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting more bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain," Preston continued. "And over in the other WMD basket, nobody much dissents when a report by the office of technology assessment for the US Congress concludes that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Bombs, missiles, delivery systems, gases, germs? Tel Aviv has the lot."
Arab and Muslim critics of Israel have long and often condemned the U.S. policy as flagrantly duplicitous.
More recently, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei added pressure of his own. ElBaradei told Haaretz this month that Israel's sense of safety in a nuclear deterrent was a false one, in that other Middle East countries felt threatened by it. "We operate under the assumption that Israel has nuclear arms," ElBaradei said. "Israel has never denied this."
He urged Israel to begin talks with its neighbors on halting the spread of non-conventional weapons. "My fear is that, without such a dialogue, there will be continued incentive for the region's countries to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal."
With Saddam's Iraq a memory, Libya talking about forgoing the bomb, and Iran tipping its nuclear hand, is there anything on the current geo-political horizon that could persuade Israel to as much as consider negotiations on the future of its widely suspected nuclear arsenal?
At this point, the concept is all but inconceivable, observes Haaretz commentator Yossi Melman. "The fixation of the Israeli officials involved is so complete, that in what may be called their 'worst case scenario,' in which all Arab states agree to peace accords and security arrangements with Israel, even if the Arabs 'play into Israel's hands,' I still do not see Israel giving up its arsenal or its long-range missiles."
The fixation applies at all levels, both in the political and military spheres, Melman says. "It is a mental block among Israeli political and military decision-makers, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the bureaucracy of Israel's version of [former U.S. president Dwight]Eisenhower's military-industrial complex."
"The officials are constantly looking for threats to justify their very existence. 'If there is a threat,' they tell themselves, 'therefore I exist," Melman says.
There is, however, one element that could force Israel to let loose of its reported non-conventional arsenal - its chief ally.
"If Washington made that decision, that would be it. Israel would decide to give it up. Israel would never resist a U.S. policy decision. We'll make the noises of rejection, quarrel, and anger, but basically we would accept it.
"At the same time, however, I don't see Washington doing so. I don't see the Americans putting that kind of pressure on Israel."
Source: Haaretz
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
What would it take for Israel to give up the weapons of mass destruction it has never, in fact, acknowledged, except in knowing half-smiles?
This week, setting off a debate that proved tempestuous even by the Knesset's grand-opera standards, a senior ultra-Orthodox deputy was heard to say "The state of Israel should dismantle its nuclear weaponry like Libya is doing, and Israel will have to depend on Ha-shem [literally "the Name," signifying the Almighty]."
The comment set off fireworks for a number of reasons, among them the circumstance that thousands of the lawmakers' devout constituents are exempt from Israel's compulsory military service, many of them vocal in their belief that it is their spiritual study and practice - and not Israel's military might - that has kept the Jewish state from annihilation.
But the greater roar came from another quarter - the fact that the issue had been mentioned at all.
Just as the United Tora Judaism legislator, Meir Porush, refrained from using the explicit Hebrew name for God, Israeli officials have for more than three decades scrupulously avoided using the words "Israel's nuclear weaponry," instead persuing a policy of what has been called constructive ambiguity.
The policy stemmed in part from a distinctly uncomfortable early 1960s conversation in the White House between the architect of Israel's nuclear program, an ex-kibbutznik named Shimon Peres, and President John Kennedy, increasingly suspicious of what Peres was up to in building a reactor in the dust bowl Negev hamlet of Dimona.
Israelis have since learned to rely on the shield of nuclear rumor, whether its role is to reassure its citizenry, deter its enemies, or distance arms inspectors.
Porush, attacked both for the thrust of his comments and the use of the N word, later said he had been misheard and misquoted. The comment nonetheless made headlines in an Israel for which the nuclear issue - even when cloaked in the malleable language of deniability - strikes the most sensitive of national and historical chords.
It came during a week when pressure on Israel to give up the bomb sprang from the last direction and in the last form that Israeli officials could have anticipated.
Last Friday, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi shocked the world by announcing that his nation would give up its nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Almost immediately, any relief that Israeli officials might have felt at the mercurial Libyan ruler's decision was replaced by the realization that a fast-changing Middle East, one in which Iraq has been taken out of play and Iran's mass-destruction programs compromised, would inevitably cast a glare on the Jewish state.
"If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel," wrote Peter Preston in a column this week in the Guardian.
In perhaps its longest-running example of a don't-ask, don't-tell policy, U.S. administrations from Richard Nixon on, have accepted Israel's official non-declaration stance regarding a nuclear arsenal.
Israel stuck to its policy despite - or, by some accounts, taking advantage of - worldwide coverage of revelations by former Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who in the 1980s suggested that the Negev reactor had produced as many as 200 atomic bombs of various kinds.
"That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting more bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain," Preston continued. "And over in the other WMD basket, nobody much dissents when a report by the office of technology assessment for the US Congress concludes that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'. Bombs, missiles, delivery systems, gases, germs? Tel Aviv has the lot."
Arab and Muslim critics of Israel have long and often condemned the U.S. policy as flagrantly duplicitous.
More recently, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei added pressure of his own. ElBaradei told Haaretz this month that Israel's sense of safety in a nuclear deterrent was a false one, in that other Middle East countries felt threatened by it. "We operate under the assumption that Israel has nuclear arms," ElBaradei said. "Israel has never denied this."
He urged Israel to begin talks with its neighbors on halting the spread of non-conventional weapons. "My fear is that, without such a dialogue, there will be continued incentive for the region's countries to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal."
With Saddam's Iraq a memory, Libya talking about forgoing the bomb, and Iran tipping its nuclear hand, is there anything on the current geo-political horizon that could persuade Israel to as much as consider negotiations on the future of its widely suspected nuclear arsenal?
At this point, the concept is all but inconceivable, observes Haaretz commentator Yossi Melman. "The fixation of the Israeli officials involved is so complete, that in what may be called their 'worst case scenario,' in which all Arab states agree to peace accords and security arrangements with Israel, even if the Arabs 'play into Israel's hands,' I still do not see Israel giving up its arsenal or its long-range missiles."
The fixation applies at all levels, both in the political and military spheres, Melman says. "It is a mental block among Israeli political and military decision-makers, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the bureaucracy of Israel's version of [former U.S. president Dwight]Eisenhower's military-industrial complex."
"The officials are constantly looking for threats to justify their very existence. 'If there is a threat,' they tell themselves, 'therefore I exist," Melman says.
There is, however, one element that could force Israel to let loose of its reported non-conventional arsenal - its chief ally.
"If Washington made that decision, that would be it. Israel would decide to give it up. Israel would never resist a U.S. policy decision. We'll make the noises of rejection, quarrel, and anger, but basically we would accept it.
"At the same time, however, I don't see Washington doing so. I don't see the Americans putting that kind of pressure on Israel."
Source: Haaretz
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