Focus U.S.A. / A quest to coax Israel out of the nuclear closet

Israel should abandon its policy of “nuclear opacity,” neither confirming nor denying possessing of nuclear weapons, urge Avner Cohen, a leading non-proliferation expert, and Marvin Miller, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an article in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs released Wednesday.

"Nuclear ambiguity was good enough in its time, but today it is increasingly anachronistic," Cohen, a senior fellow at the Washington Office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, told Haaretz.

	An aerial view of Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona.
	Photo by: (Archive)

Israel is widely believed to posses some 200 nuclear warheads – but has never publicly acknowledged their existence.

"Now it just seems silly and undemocratic," Cohen says, adding that the policy is fast becoming an "own goal" for the Israeli government.

"It gives Israel the appearance of a 'thief in the night' – the government is unable to talk about one of the most powerful tools at its disposal."

Israel won Western backing for its nondisclosure policy in the 1960s, when world powers saw it as a tiny, defenseless state emerging from the shadow of the Holocaust.

But now there is less sympathy and the deafening nuclear silence is playing apart in the erosion of Israel's legitimacy, says the U.S.-based academic.

"An ambiguous situation, a situation where you lack legitimacy, is not a place you want to find yourself."

In an article for the prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, Drs. Cohen and Miller, write:

"Given that Israel’s legitimacy as a de facto nuclear weapons state rests on its broader political legitimacy, the connection between political and nuclear issues cannot be ignored.

"International support for Israel and its opaque bomb is being eroded by its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and the policies that support it, such as settlement construction, house demolitions, and restrictions on the movement of Palestinians."

Avner fears Israel's insistence on ambiguity will leave Israel increasingly vulnerable to the charge that it is a nuclear-armed pariah state. He believes world powers have come to see the status quo as dangerous: Israeli deterrence can no longer be seen as a guarantee against a nuclear attack – either from a terrorist group like al-Qaida or an enemy nation, such as Iran.

Israel's stance is also increasingly at odds with the policies of President Barack Obama's U.S. administration, which has push for global transparency on atomic weapons.

"While I think that America is genuinely committed to allowing Israel to maintain its nuclear arsenal, I think the U.S. no longer sees ambiguity as something sacred." 

But while the best course might be to drop the policy, Israelis may not be ready.

Cohen says: "The Israel public accepts the nuclear taboo and believes – I think erroneously – that any departure from it will cause deep harm to Israel's security."

But he also hopes his new book on the subject, due out in the next few months, will help break down that taboo – and perhaps coax Israel out of the nuclear closet once and for all.