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Should Israel give up its nukes?

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 10 December 2005
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Nuclear Wars and conflicts International

By George Bisharat

IN A SUDDEN ATTACK of common sense, a Pentagon-commissioned study released in mid-November suggests an approach to nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East that might actually be accepted by the people of the region. What is this breakthrough idea? That U.S. policies begin not with a country that currently lacks nuclear weapons - Iran - but rather with the one that by virtually all accounts already has them - Israel.

To avert Iran’s apparent drive for nuclear weapons, concludes Henry Sokolski, a co-editor of "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran," Israel should freeze and begin to dismantle its nuclear capability.

This and other recommendations emerged from two years of deliberations by experts on the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation.

Limiting the spread of nuclear weapons is a pivotal U.S. foreign policy objective. As the sole nation ever to have employed them, we bear a special responsibility to prevent their use in the future. With regard to the Middle East, we rightly worry not only about the potential use of the weapons themselves but about the political leverage bestowed on those who would possess them.

However, there is an Achilles heel in our nonproliferation policy: the double standard that U.S. administrations since the 1960s have applied with respect to Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s suspected arsenal includes chemical, biological and about 100 to 200 nuclear warheads, and the capacity to deliver them.

Initially, the United States opposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. President Kennedy dispatched inspectors to the Dimona generating plant in Israel’s south, and he cautioned Israel against developing atomic weapons. Anticipating the 1962 visit of American inspectors, Israel reportedly constructed a fake wall at Dimona to conceal its weapons production.

Since then, no U.S. administration has effectively pressured Israel to either halt its program or to submit to inspections under the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nor has Israel been required to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The apparent rationale: Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an ally are simply not an urgent concern.

Yet this rationale neglects a fundamental law of arms proliferation. Nations seek WMD when their rivals already possess them. Israel’s nuclear capability has clearly fueled WMD ambitions within the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, for example, in an April 1990 speech to his military, threatened to retaliate against any Israeli nuclear attack with chemical weapons - the "poor man’s atomic bomb."

WASHINGTON’S inconsistency on the nuclear issue in the Middle East has been terribly corrosive of American legitimacy throughout the world, and a reversal of our policy would be widely noted regionally.

Nor is our international legitimacy all that is at stake. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, a panicky Israel, facing early battlefield losses, threatened a nuclear strike. This evoked a massive arms shipment from the United States, eventually permitting Israel to turn the tide of the war - demonstrating the kinds of pressures that nuclear powers can apply, even on allies. Although many view Israel’s victory with favor, it surely enabled subsequent decades of Israeli intransigence over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has contributed to the impasse afflicting the region.

The study’s authors include retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom and Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy - in short, no enemies of Israel. Their suggestion is comparatively mild: Israel should take small, reversible steps toward nuclear disarmament to encourage Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Nonetheless, Israeli leaders reportedly have already demurred.

One can anticipate the bipartisan stampede of U.S. lawmakers to denounce the recommendation should it win official U.S. backing. That would be a shame. Sooner or later, common sense must prevail in our Middle East policy. Otherwise, we will continue to run our global stature into the ground.

GEORGE BISHARAT is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...

Forum posts

  • When Iraq was dropping scuds on Israel back in the 1991 Gulf War , the U.S. talked Israel out of retaliation on a lethal scale. One can only assume the price of that temperance was an assurance that the U.S. would "take out" Saddam at a later date . We are probably seeing the results of that deal right now. With that kind of bargaining power, why would Israel ever decrease it’s nukes?

  • The author of this article calling for the Jewish people to give up their nukes is a Palestinian-American. Why am I not surprised?

    • First of all, It is the Israeli people who have nukes, not "...the Jewish people..." Have you forgotten that 20% of Israel’s citizens are not Jews? After all, Israel is supposed to be a pluralistic democracy. Calling Israel a "Jewish" state is an affront to the over one million people who are Muslims and Christians. If you are not a hypocrite, you should object equally to calling the United States a "Christian" nation and Israel a "Jewish" state.

      Secondly, it is a very good idea for israel to get rid of its nukes. It is also a very good idea for every other nuclear-armed state to get rid of theirs, too.

    • Ok, how come muslims are not asking for France to give up their nukes? We all know what is going on here. "Never again" still means something to some of us.

    • Are you joking? I’ve never met a single Jewish person, or anyone else for that matter, who doesn’t think of Israel as a Jewish state. The whole point of Israel is that it’s supposed to be a homeland for Jewish people. That’s the primary cause of the problem in the area because the laws of Israel distinguish Jews from non-Jews and treat the people accordingly. Furthermore, Israel refuses to grant the right of return to Palestinians who were expelled from their homes in Israel because it would result in Jews losing voting power, and thus control over Israel. Israel is not a real democracy because it fixes the vote by forcing the competition out of the country. Imagine the Republican party telling the Democratic party that they have to go to Canada or get put to death, and then for the next 40 years and thereafter refusing to let those Democrats ever return to the US. Then when the Republicans keep winning elections, they claim to have been democratically elected. Israel is very much a Jewish state. The non-Jews are just there for show.

    • If Israel is not a Jewish State, then why did the 1948 Declaration of Israel’s Independence say, "We HEREBY PROCLAIM the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL." I think that’s pretty solid evidence that you’re wrong.

    • You don’t get the irony turd blossom wannabe. Israel, which doesn’t have a constitution - by the way, holds itself up as a "democracy." There are over one million non-Jewish citizens in Israel, and, yet, it also calls itself a "Jewish" state. Isn’t there an inconsistency operating here? Can you say HYPOCRACY?

    • And the fact that you are most likely a Jew who simply tries to smear the motivation of the author rather than address his points is well founded, too.

      If you are Jewish you should recuse yourself from this discussion.

  • Israel shouldn’t have any problem giving up their Nuclear weapons. The Jews contol the U.S. government and as the former Primie Minister of Malaysia said in October 2003:

    “The Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

    He is not the only one who knows that either:

    “Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 8th, 2001

    Some people have to learn it the hard way:

    “My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel” – Cindy Sheehan, mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, killed in Baghdad on April 4, 2004

    • Who runs the state doesn’t matter. What does is one of it’s neighbors is trying to get nukes and says their leader say he wants to destroy another country. If their was some nation out there trying to get nukes and saying they wanted to destroy France you know France and the rest of the world would try and stop them. But since the people in question are jewish they are suppose to lay down their arms and walk themselves on over to the gas chambers. And anyone that brings up the Jewish people secretly controlling the world needs to go see a shrink.