Israeli Nuclear Opacity and the Conflict in Gaza

According to data from SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), which publishes an annual report on nuclear arsenals around the world, Israel has around 90 nuclear warheads and around 1 ton of stored plutonium (enough to produce at least 185 nuclear weapons). Despite this, the State of Israel maintains its policy of nuclear opacity (or ambiguity), that is. the country neither confirms nor denies that it possesses such weapons.

Contrary to this long-standing policy, the Minister of Heritage and Jerusalem Affairs, Amichai Eliyahu, in an interview for an Israeli radio station, stated that the use of nuclear weapons would be an option in the current conflict in Gaza. In an attempt to circumvent Eliyahu’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended him from his duties and claimed that the minister’s remarks were “not based on reality”.

Despite the swift rebuke of the senseless statement by Eliyahu, who is not a member of the security cabinet, the mere consideration of the use of nuclear weapons by a member of the Israeli government is undoubtedly worrying. More than that, it reveals an attempt to Nazify the entire population of Gaza in order to justify the Israeli government’s pursuit of a policy of collective punishment. Eliyahu expressed this openly by saying: “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza”. Similarly, he opposed allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying: “we would not give humanitarian aid to the Nazis”.

The logic behind a rhetoric that places the responsibility for the crimes committed by Hamas on the entire population of the Gaza Strip is equivalent to the logic of French anti-Semitism that led to the Dreyfus Affair. It presupposes a condemnation without considering any evidence to the contrary.

Even though Israel’s use of a nuclear weapon in the current conflict in the Gaza Strip has been ruled out by the prime minister, the mere mention of such weapons has caused outrage among members of the government itself, such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who called the statements irresponsible. In addition, Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Ra’am party, said:

“Dehumanization and collective punishment are the path to genocide and war crimes. There will be a day after the war – it is not the end of history and it is not Armageddon.” “I am sure, and I believe from the bottom of my heart, that there will still be peace and reconciliation between the two peoples,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Eliyahu’s statements were also rejected abroad. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning what it saw as the penetration of “extremism and brutality among members of the Israeli government”. He criticized a lack of more forceful action against Eliyahu, saying: “Moreover, not dismissing the minister and merely freezing his membership in the government constitutes the greatest disrespect for all human standards and values,” reports Newsweek.

The success of the nuclear opacity policy

Eliyahu’s statement also prompted Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki to send a letter to the head of the IAEA to file a complaint against Israel, reports The Cradle. Al-Maliki pointed to Eliyahu’s words as confirmation that Israel possesses nuclear weapons and demanded the IAEA’s attention to the case. The country, however, remains steadfast in its policy of opacity.

Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970, with the aim of promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology, promoting disarmament, and preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Israel is therefore not subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and can maintain its policy of opacity without being in breach of an international treaty, as was the case with North Korea, which secretly developed its nuclear program while it was still a party to the NPT.

Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity also makes it difficult to be precise about estimates of its arsenal, the number of weapons stored, where they are stored, and even whether the facilities meet the standards set by the IAEA. However, it allows for the maintenance of an Israeli nuclear arsenal without necessarily arousing (even more) the nuclear pretensions of other countries in the region.

In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear facilities in order to prevent the development of these countries’ nuclear programs through pre-emptive strikes. There is no consensus that the pre-emptive attack on the Osiraq reactor was the definitive factor in preventing Iraq’s nuclear development – Dan Reiter (2005) points out that the attack further encouraged Saddam Hussein rather than discouraging him. But fact remains that Israel, even if it doesn’t admit it, is still the only nuclear power in the Middle East.

Currently, Israel’s biggest regional enemy is Iran, a country that is also seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. A categorical statement by Israel regarding the possession of its nuclear weapons would bring legitimacy to Iran’s nuclear pretensions and, eventually, those of Saudi Arabia, with whom Israel wishes to normalize diplomatic relations. This aspiration has been undermined by the recent Hamas attacks on October 7.

The agenda of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons has been the foreign policy priority of the main powers in recent decades (counties which, not coincidentally, possess the same weapons), but the case of Israel seems extraordinary. This is because, not only for the State of Israel, but also for its Western allies such as France and the United States, the possession of nuclear weapons is a matter of survival.

Although they were not used in battle in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the country faced an existential threat, the possession of these weapons was relevant to the conflict. Israel’s initial defeats on the battlefield seemed so severe that on October 9, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered planes and missiles with nuclear attack capability to go on alert.

This signaling from the Israeli government led to a huge transfer of arms from the United States to the conflict, as it was intended. The war ended with Israel’s victory and expansion after a demonstration to its American allies that nuclear weapons were not out of the question. The Yom Kippur War ultimately exposed Israel’s need to establish peace with at least some of its neighbors and led to the normalization of relations with Egypt in 1979.

The case for non-proliferation in the Middle East

Kenneth Waltz is one of the few voices against non-proliferation in the Middle East. For the author, the logic of the balance of power between regional powers remains relevant, so that a counterbalance would favor the stability of relations between states in the region. Waltz argues that just as proliferation in South Asia has led to a certain stability between India and Pakistan, the same would happen in the Middle East if Iran’s nuclearization were to take place. The modest arsenals of India and Pakistan are enough, according to the scholar, to foster mutual deterrence between the actors in the same logic as the power struggle between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War.

In the Middle East, however, the idea of proliferation is often viewed with even more suspicion. In part, this is due to the fear that, in the event of proliferation, these weapons could fall into the “wrong hands”, such as non-state actors (terrorists). On the other hand, to use a Palestinian author’s term, these concerns are also motivated by what Said would call Orientalism. It is often suggested that such destructive weapons could not be entrusted to the custody of actors who might act irrationally – based on a Western conception of rationality.

For Israel, it is clear that this is a matter of vital importance. Both the possession of nuclear weapons and efforts to prevent other countries in the region from acquiring them are a matter of survival for the state established by the UN in 1948.

For this reason, despite statements by a member of the government to the contrary, Israel maintains its policy of nuclear opacity. This has proved successful over the years, while the country remains, in an undeclared way, the only nuclear power in the Middle East. At least to our knowledge.