The Montreal Gazette said yesterday that Israel has built “five nuclear bombs” and was completing a sixth. The front page story, by Peter Lust, the paper’s specialist on German affairs, attributed the information to Der Spiegel. According to Mr. Lust, the existence of the bombs was discovered by a group of journalists representing Der Spiegel.
The Gazette described the bombs as 20 kiloton atomic bombs similar to those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II. It said the bombs were produced at a nuclear testing station in the Negev Desert 11 miles from Dimona, site of a plant where Israel is experimenting with nuclear power, reportedly for peaceful purposes. The story said when the bombs were completed they were rushed to an unknown destination “whose exact location is Israel’s best kept military secret.”
The Gazette said that Egyptian intelligence learned of the bombs last February and that President Gamal Abdel Nasser appealed urgently to the Soviet Union to station nuclear weapons in Egypt. “Moscow refused, but strengthened the Soviet Mediterranean fleet to include ships equipped with nuclear warheads,” the Gazette reported, adding that simultaneously the Russians sent notes to Washington, London and Paris setting up the present Four Power talks on the Mideast.
Speculation on whether Israel has atomic bombs was touched off last January by a National Broadcasting Co. news report that Israel had developed or would shortly have a nuclear bomb and was working on a delivery system. Official sources in Israel denied the report while U.S. State Department officials in Washington called it “erroneous.”
They expressed confidence at the time that Israel would live up to its pledge not to be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. But scientific authorities and knowledgeable journalists in the U.S. and Britain insisted that Israel had the know-how and technology to produce a nuclear bomb. They noted that nuclear reactors had been developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovoth, at Dimona and at Nahal Soreq.
The Gazette report said the reactor at Dimona was capable of producing both atomic and hydrogen bombs and was built with the help of France in the years when France was a close ally of Israel. Mr. Lust claimed that the atomic bombs were completed last February, only 18 days after the NBC report. He said Israel could deliver the bombs either with its A-4 Sky hawk jets or with the F-4 Phantom jets which the United States will start delivering next September. The writer said the Dimona site was so closely guarded that an Israeli plane that strayed over it during the 1967 Six-Day War was shot down by Israeli rockets and its pilot killed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
