After decades in which Israel’s alleged possession of a nuclear capacity was widely reported and universally believed — despite Israel’s unwillingness to confirm or deny the reports — that capacity is now, for the first time, under challenge.
The question is: Why? Why has the nuclear issue, much to Israel’s dismay, come under the spotlight in recent weeks?
The degree of which the issue is preoccupying local and international diplomacy was evident in a German newspaper report this week about alleged talks between Israel and Iran over the fate of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad.
The report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine — though largely denied by Israel and Iran — claimed that among the issues under negotiation was Iran’s demand that Israel sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty when it comes up for renewal in April.
However valid or invalid the report, the apparent inclusion of Iran’s call for Israel to sign the NPT during alleged secret talks on the captured airman’s fate dramatically underscores the centrality that the nuclear issue is suddenly commanding in Middle East affairs.
The reported attempt by Iran, of all countries, to win concessions from Israel on this matter is especially ironic for the rabid hostility of Teheran’s revolutionary and fundamentalist government toward the Jewish state is often cited by Israeli officials as one compelling reason why Israel cannot even think of giving up its freedom of action in the nuclear field at this time.
In political terms, however, it is not Iran’s efforts to constrain and embarrass Israel in this field that worry Jerusalem.
Rather, Israeli policymakers are growing increasingly concerned, even alarmed, at the vehemence with which Egypt — Israel’s first partner in peace — is pursuing the same goal.
Egypt’s declared and unwavering position, less than three months before the NPT comes up for renewal, is that it will not renew its own signature to this important international document unless Israel does so as well.
Israel has always declined to sign, making do with the deliberately vague statement, repeated by generations of its leaders, that it will “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.”
The dispute has already led to harsh words in private between Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his Egyptian counterpart, Foreign Minister Amre Moussa.
It has also led to hard public exchanges between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
When Rabin observed earlier this month that ill winds were blowing from the direction of the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, Mubarak blasted back during an impromptu news conference that his Foreign Ministry was not alone: It spoke authentically for the entire Egyptian government.
Peres was scheduled to fly to Cairo Thursday in yet another attempt to ease the dangerous Israeli-Egyptian tensions over the nuclear issue. The fact that he was invited to meet with Mubarak at all is being viewed as one ray of light in ominously darkening skies.
As for the nuclear issue itself, Israeli sources say that while there can be a certain flexibility in the rhetorical sphere — in the form of solemn pronouncements that the ultimate goal is a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction — there will be no veering from Israel’s longstanding position.
That position includes Israel’s determination not to sign the NPT and not to admit international or other foreign inspection of all its nuclear facilities. Israel has allowed limited access to some of its sites.
This position is as close to a national consensus as any political stance is Israel could conceivably be.
It unites not only Labor and Likund, but also key figures in Meretz, the dovish party on Labor’s left flank in the governing coalition.
Indeed, doves such as Peres and Meretz Environment Minister Yossi Sarid are as hawkish over Israel’s insistence on retaining its vague and veiled nuclear freedom of action as are any died-in-the-wool hawks.
The doves say that it is Israel’s nuclear potential that in large part provides the sense of strength and security that underpins any Israeli readiness for major territorial compromise in its negotiations with its Arab neighbors.
No one, expert or layman, can say with certainly whether Israel’s widely believed nuclear capacity has in fact already served as a deterrent.
Was it the fear of a non-conventional reprisal that persuaded the Syrians, for instance, to plan only a limited advance in their 1973 Yom Kippur invasion of the Golan Heights?
Well-documented records divulge that the alleged fact of Israel’s possessions of nuclear weapons was repeatedly raised by President Anwar Sadat in his meetings with Israeli leaders when he made his historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977.
Seeking to understand Egypt’s vigorous — some Israelis say obsessive — return to the issue now, analysts here cite Cairo’s determination to shore up Egypt’s position as the leader of the Arab world.
With Syria reluctant to make a deal with Israel, Egypt’s leadership in the Arab world is threatened. Thus Egypt has reportedly urged other Arab and North African nations to slow down their move toward ties with Israel.
Whatever the motive, Egypt’s stance has triggered waves of impatience and anger from the United States, where the Clinton administration is by no means sure of the solid international majority it needs to renew the NPT.
The treaty, with 64 signatories, has been in effect since 1970.
Egypt’s position, it is feared in Washington, could adversely affect many key Third World countries and thus could thwart years of patient American diplomacy around the world designed to guarantee the treaty’s renewal.
Israeli observers for their part look with increasing unease at Egypt’s apparent refusal to be cowed by bald threats from the United States, where American officials have been saying that Egypt could well be endangering its relations with Washington, which provides Cairo with $2.1 billion in annual aid.
The Egyptian stance has brought sharp criticism within Israel.
Egypt “must be brought to face her responsibility for causing possibly grievous damage to the entire international system of non-proliferation as well as to Middle East stability at a critical moment in the region’s peace process,” Dr. Avi Becker, Israel director of the World Jewish Congress and a noted academic strategist, wrote in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz this week.
While these firm words represent broad mainstream opinion, the heightening tension with Egypt is also serving to bring forward a minority opinion, which is uncomfortable with Israel’s nuclear potential.
Another academic, Yoram Nimrod, writing in Ha’aretz, recalled that the late Yigal Allon, Israel’s foreign minister during the 1970s, believed that the possession of a nuclear potential by a non-superpower generally causes more damage than benefit.
In Israel’s case, Allon felt, it could limit the Israel Defense Force’s freedom when it came to conventional military actions.
Of necessity, this debate has always proceeded far beneath the surface of Israeli society, protected from the prying media and conducted only among the relative few with sufficient knowledge to make a meaningful contribution.
Now, at any rate, in the face of Egypt’s diplomatic pressure, even voices that usually advocate a deep reappraisal by Israel of its strategic stance are muted.
Cairo’s brinkmanship is eliciting a dogged and determined entrenchment in Jerusalem — the very opposite effect from that presumably intended by Egypt.
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