[News] If Libya can do it, why not Israel?

[claude]

If Libya can do it, why not Israel?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1111567,00.html

We can no longer turn a blind eye to the fifth largest nuclear power

Peter Preston
Monday December 22, 2003
<http://www.guardian.co.uk>The Guardian

There's a logic to these things. Muammar Gadafy, growing older, and his 
isolated Libya, growing poorer, were getting nothing worthwhile from the 
atomic bomb they hadn't built yet or chemicals they had scant residual use 
for. Logic - and common sense - meant changing tack. Good for logic. But 
logic doesn't stop there.

What next? 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.

Nobody, including the Knesset, quite knows what happens inside the Dimona 
complex, but if you put together a compote of usually reliable sources (the 
Federation of American Scientists, Jane's Intelligence Review, the 
Stockholm Institute), a tolerably clear picture emerges. Ariel Sharon 
probably has more than 200 nuclear warheads this morning - more if the 17 
years since Mordechai Vanunu's kidnapping have been devoted to building 
stockpiles.

That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting more 
bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain. 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. We only 
forget to remember because it's not a suitable subject for polite 
diplomatic conversation.

Logic, in the old days, didn't trouble too much about that. It saw a state 
of Israel surrounded by many potential foes who denied its right to exist. 
It saw such enemies initiate research of their own. It saw too many wars, 
bitterly fought. It watched the Soviet Union, with warheads to spare, 
cruising continually in these troubled waters. It was prepared to turn a 
blind eye and to button its lip.

Come back today for a reality check, though. Saddam's Iraq is a wrecked rat 
trap. The weapons of mass destruction Gadafy sought are no more, no threat. 
Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt? Nothing to say, nothing to show. You 
can, if you wish, be concerned about Syria's chemical weapons facilities - 
and you can reasonably worry about a nuclear Iran, even though Tehran took 
a decisive step back towards international acceptability last week. But 
Moscow is out of the action, and the whole dynamic of Middle East danger 
has changed. Logic comes knocking at Sharon's door.

He faces problems, of course: problems of intractable politics and 
Palestinian suicide bombers. But he can't nuke Gaza or gas Bethlehem. His 
WMD are useless in any battle for hearts and minds - as practically useless 
as Gadafy has just deemed them to be. So why keep Dimona and the biological 
research centre at Nes Ziona out of any equation? Why pretend that they 
don't exist?

The formal logic of defence is threat, counter-threat. Sit in Tehran and 
look east - at China, India and Pakistan, with their bombs; look west, and 
there sits Israel. It is natural, in logic, that Iran consider its own 
deterrent. It will require a deal of understanding engagement - and 
guarantees - to close off that path. But such guarantees are possible in 
the age of the world's only superpower. There is every reason to talk 
frankly about Israel's bomb, just as the Syrians could be closely involved 
in dismantling chemical stockpiles if only we could find the right language 
to start.

What, after all, is the current western fear? Of terrorism, rogue states, 
of more 9/11s. That's why Geoff Hoon's latest defence review moves out of 
heavy tanks and battleships. It adjusts to what it calls the new realities 
of flexibility and intelligence. Even Gadafy seems to have noticed. Why not 
mention them to Sharon?

An Israel bristling with nuclear hardware it cannot talk about and chemical 
horrors it could negotiate away does not make itself, or the world, any 
safer. On the contrary, it makes a hypocritical farce of too much 
Washington bargaining, buries too many initiatives deep down Hypocrisy 
Gulch and gives rogue groupings in ex-rogue states every reason to carry on 
developing, stealing or buying the devices that keep Mr Blair awake at night.

Does Tel Aviv see that connection? Does it want to bring a whole region in 
from the cold? Such things are becoming possible. But first we need the 
honesty to follow where logic leads; and begin to talk about them.

p.preston at guardian.co.uk

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