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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
The concept of deterrence assumed a new dimension with the
introduction of nuclear weapons into the equation. In December
1974, President Ephraim Katzir announced that "it has always been
our intention to develop a nuclear potential. We now have that
potential." Ambiguously, Israeli officials maintained that Israel
would not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons into the
Middle East. Experts assumed that Israel had a rudimentary nuclear
capability. In September 1986, the testimony and photographs
provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who had worked at
Israel's Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert, led experts
to conclude that Israel had a nuclear capability far greater than
previously thought
(see Nuclear Weapons Potential
, this ch.).
Although viewed as its ultimate guarantor of security, the
nuclear option did not lead Israel to complacency about national
security. On the contrary, it impelled Israel to seek unquestioned
superiority in conventional capability over the Arab armies to
forestall use of nuclear weapons as a last resort. The IDF sought
to leverage its conventional power to the maximum extent. IDF
doctrine and tactics stressed quality of weapons versus quantity;
integration of the combined firepower of the three branches of the
armed forces; effective battlefield command, communications, and
real-time intelligence; use of precision-guided munitions and
stand-off firepower; and high mobility.
The debate over secure borders rested at the heart of the
controversy over Israeli's national security. Some strategists
contended that only a negotiated settlement with the Arabs would
bring peace and ensure Israel's ultimate security. Such a
settlement would entail territorial concessions in the occupied
territories. Proponents of exchanging land for peace tended to be
skeptical that any border was militarily defensible in the age of
modern warfare. In their eyes, the occupied territories were a
liability in that they gave Israel a false sense of security and
gave the Arabs reason to go to war.
Others believed Israel's conflict with the Arab states was
fundamentally irreconcilable and that Israeli and Arab territorial
imperatives were mutually exclusive. They held that ceding control
of the occupied territories would bring at best a temporary peace
and feared that the Arabs would use the territories as a
springboard to attack Israel proper. Israeli military positions
along the Golan Heights and the Jordan Rift Valley were said to be
ideal geographically defensible borders. Others viewed the occupied
territories as an integral part of Israel and Israeli withdrawal as
too high a price to pay for peace. Extending beyond national
security, the controversy was enmeshed with political, social, and
religious issues--particularly the concept of exchanging "land for
peace" that formed the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242
and 338.
Data as of December 1988
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