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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
Israel had been involved in nuclear research since the
country's inception. With French assistance that began about 1957,
Israel constructed a natural uranium research reactor that went
into operation at Dimona, in the Negev Desert in 1964. Dimona's
operations were conducted in secret, and it was not brought under
international inspection. According to a 1982 UN study, Israel
could have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium at Dimona for a
number of explosive devices. Under an agreement with the United
States in 1955, a research reactor also was established at Nahal
Soreq, west of Beersheba. This reactor was placed under United
States and subsequently International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspection. The Nahal Soreq facility was not suspected of
involvement in a weapons program.
American and other Western specialists considered it possible
that Israel had developed a nuclear weapons capability
incorporating enriched uranium as an alternative to plutonium. The
United States suspected that up to 100 kilograms of enriched
uranium missing from a facility at Apollo, Pennsylvania, had been
taken in a conspiracy between the plant's managers and the Israeli
government. In 1968, 200 tons of ore that disappeared from a ship
in the Mediterranean probably were also diverted to Israel. Foreign
experts found indications that Israel was pursuing research in a
laser enrichment process although no firm evidence had been adduced
that Israel had achieved a capability to enrich uranium. In a 1974
analysis, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
expressed the belief that Israel had already produced nuclear
weapons. Among the factors leading to this conclusion were the two
incidents of disappearance of enriched uranium and Israel's costly
investment in the Jericho missile system.
Officially, Israel neither acknowledged nor denied that nuclear
weapons were being produced. The government held to the unvarying
formulation that "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear
weapons into the Middle East." As of 1988, Israel had not acceded
to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968).
It was, however, a party to the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water (1963).
There was no evidence that Israel had ever carried out a nuclear
test, although some observers speculated that a suspected nuclear
explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint South
African-Israeli test.
In 1986 descriptions and photographs were published in the
London Sunday Times of a purported underground bomb factory.
The photographs were taken by a dismissed Israeli nuclear
technician, Mordechai Vanunu. His information led experts to
conclude that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices,
a far greater nuclear capability than had been previously
estimated.
A nuclear attack directed against targets almost anywhere in
the Middle East would be well within Israel's capacities.
Fighter-bombers of the Israeli air force could be adapted to carry
nuclear bombs with little difficulty. The Jericho missile,
developed in the late 1960s, was believed to have achieved a range
of 450 kilometers. An advanced version, the Jericho II, with a
range of nearly 1,500 kilometers, was reported to have been testflown in 1987.
Data as of December 1988
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