Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Israel Open To Rethinking Nuclear Policy

TEL AVIV — In the turmoil of a busy political week, the visit here by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, largely escaped public notice. Most Israelis consider their country’s nuclear policies to be way over their heads; in a country where almost everything is subject to debate, “the last taboo” (as scholar Avner Cohen of George Washington University calls it) is something most citizens happily leave to policymakers.

Media coverage of ElBaradei’s visit seemed to focus, with almost childish glee, on what he did not see: the nuclear reactor in Dimona, where — according to foreign sources, of course — Israel enriches uranium for nuclear weapons. An Egyptian diplomat and legal scholar, ElBaradei didn’t demand what he knew he wouldn’t get. His main message was that it’s time to give up old nostrums and begin to focus on real problems in a changing world. “We are in a race against time until one of the extremist groups obtains a nuclear weapon,” he warned in a speech at Hebrew University.

The visit’s biggest headline did not come from ElBaradei himself but rather from his host, Prime Minister Sharon. In a brief meeting on ElBaradei’s last day here, Sharon told him that Israel eventually might consider rethinking its so-called nuclear ambiguity policy, under which it never admits whether it possesses nuclear arms. “In the second phase of the Road Map,” Sharon told ElBaradei, “Israel will be willing to take part in a nuclear-free zone as part of the peace process.”

For most Israelis, “the second phase of the Road Map” is sometime after kingdom come. But Sharon’s very willingness to discuss the idea, even theoretically, was taken as a sign of the friendly tone of ElBaradei’s visit, and of the strength of his message.

“Peace is not only about giving up land or establishing a Palestinian state,” the diplomat told his Jerusalem audience of Israeli academics and journalists. “We need to discuss this” — nuclear nonproliferation — “and the sooner the better. We shall either succeed or fail together. This is a matter of survival.”

ElBaradei presented a worldview in which old threats and old policies are inoperative, and new solutions are needed urgently. “Ordinary deterrence doesn’t work against terrorist groups, which are doing their worst to obtain nuclear weapons,” he said. He also described the growing danger of “privatization” of nuclear know-how and components. “We know of at least 20 companies dealing with this in the world,” he said, and controlling these companies is far harder than overseeing the activities of nations. In such a world, ElBaradei concluded, old safeguards, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), no longer work.

Israel is one of three countries, along with India and Pakistan, that have not signed the NPT. “We can’t treat these countries as though they don’t exist,” ElBaradei said. “We need to find a way to bring them in” to a control system, even if it is “de facto.”

ElBaradei also addressed Israeli concerns over Iran’s nuclear efforts. “I don’t believe sanctions help,” he said, “especially not economic sanctions, which hurt the people and not the regime. I still believe a diplomatic solution may be found. I am also not sure that working through the UN Security Council is the best way.”

Sources in the Israel Atomic Energy Commission told the Forward that while they share ElBaradei’s concerns, Israel is a long way from scrapping its nondisclosure policy. Indeed, military censors have held up Avner Cohen’s latest book for more than a year, with no official explanation.

ElBaradei’s visit coincided with a new round of legal wrangling between state prosecutors and convicted spy Mordechai Vanunu, who was freed from prison in April after serving 18 years for disclosing Israel’s nuclear program to a London newspaper. In a Supreme Court suit, Vanunu is seeking to lift bans on overseas travel and on meeting with foreigners. In a court filing, prosecutors cited evidence that Vanunu still intended to harm state security, including prison letters in which he said; “We must open up Dimona.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.