Page 1 of
2 COMMENT Israel's nukes
missing from the table By Kaveh
L Afrasiabi
With the one-day peace summit
in Annapolis in the United States failing to
produce any tangible results, save a general
agreement to more marathon talks until the end of
2008, sure to try the patience of long-suffering
Palestinians, the summit's other agenda to rally
the "peacemakers" against the "troublemakers"
deserves critical scrutiny. This is partly because
of Israel's self-serving fallacy that Middle East
nuclear proliferation can be effectively
stalled in the absence of any
meaningful initiative on its part.
And why
not, seeing how the compliant US media's list of
"most contentious Mideast issues", to borrow the
title of one report on the conference, does not
even mention Israel's nuclear arsenal as an item
of interest.
The summit at the US Naval
Academy of representatives from over 50 nations
and international groups under the leadership of
US President George W Bush announced the formation
of a steering committee towards the establishment
of a Palestinian state and biweekly meetings
between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It
was agreed to make "every effort to conclude an
agreement before the end of 2008".
In
terms Israel's nuclear weapons, Western
governments and the media may have a benign
perception of them as purely defensive to secure
Israel against external "existential threats". But
the Muslim population of the Middle East and their
rulers may be excused if they conform to a vastly
different perception, that Israel's nukes are
evil, constantly threatening them and even
blackmailing them.
"We have to worry about
Israel first," Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister
Saud al-Faisal said at the peace conference,
adding that this was a "separate priority from the
question of whether Iran is developing weapons of
mass destruction or interfering in Iraq". Such
Arab sentiments contain at least an implicit worry
about Israel's nukes that sword-like pierce
through the Arabs' self-confidence, as it reminds
them of their subordinate status in the regional
system.
The "perception gap" over Israel's
nuclear weapons has been widening as a result of
Israel "coming out of closet" with its nukes,
essentially since the 1991 Gulf War, when Israel
threatened a nuclear attack on the Iraqis if they
put chemical or biological warheads on their scud
missiles fired at Israel.
More recently,
the ever-present "Iran threat" has seemingly
pushed Israel to compromise its self-imposed
opacity - or ambiguity - in favor of occasional
forays into nuclear visibility, both to deter
adversaries and to continue with its traditional
reliance on its nuclear power as complementary to
its regional "power projection".
Not to
worry, Israeli officials and their formidable
media admirers in the West insist, because
Israel's nukes are for the "regional good" and,
somehow, serve "regional peace". The idea of
Israel's weapons of mass destruction as a regional
"collective good" sounds appealing, except when
seen through the prism of its neighbors and "near
neighbors". They, though physically apart from
Israel, nonetheless harbor national-security
worries caused by Israel's ever-growing reliance
on its nuclear arsenal for an "out-of-area" power
projection, legitimated by the convenient
nomenclature of the "Greater Middle East".
As the first country to have introduced
nuclear weapons in the Middle East, Israel bears
the lion's share of responsibility for triggering
the volatile region into the bosom of
proliferation tendencies, albeit with the false,
delusional notion that Israel can forever be the
monopolizer of that tendency. And this by sheer
force if need be, as was the case with Israel's
1981 destruction of Iraq's power plant in Ossirak
and, subsequently, Israel's successful prodding of
the US to invade Iraq in order to nip in the bud
Iraq's suspected nuclear genie.
Following
the same perverted logic, Israel is now sowing the
seeds of a similar US gambit against Iran, that
is, another US proxy war to guarantee Israel's
nuclear monopoly.
On the surface, things
look different. Israel is officially committed to
a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, as
soon as there is a lasting "peace" and its nuclear
weapons are not "offensive" but rather purely
"defensive". In reality, however, with its
bunker-buster, laser-guided "smart" nukes, its
long-range missiles and its nuclear-based
"geostrategic depth", Israel is deeply wedded on a
doctrinal level to the idea of "nuclear hegemony"
as part and parcel of the ruling Zionist ideology.
Yet, that Israel operates on an ossified
nuclear worldview can be seen in the fact that it
still relies on the pre-independence State of
Emergency regulations of 1945 to safeguard its
nuclear activities, as if the world had stood
still in the post World War II era. The sheer
absence of the minutest nuclear transparency in
Israel, breached by the "Vanunu affair" [1] in the
mid-1980s, reflects a society stuck in the past,
clinging to a pre-globalization state of mind that
perpetuates a "fortress Israel", as if it is an
island immune from globalization's net of
interdependencies.
This is, indeed, the
tragic paradox of Israel, whose nuclear program
remains oceans away from the slightest notion of
democratic accountability and control, and whose
leaders continue to stick their heads in the sand,
refusing to admit their role in triggering Middle
East nuclear proliferation. They all the time
believe that their nuclear buildup has brought
Israel strategic security when, in fact, the exact
opposite is true - it has substantially increased
Israel's strategic vulnerabilities.
From Annapolis to Israel's post-opacity
"It is time to end the boycott and
alienation toward the state of Israel," Olmert
urged the Arab representatives at the Annapolis
summit. Short on specifics and heavy in
symbol-wielding, Olmert's performance reminds one
of the countless cases of Israeli dissimulation,
whereby clever delay tactics are used as
substitutes for genuine efforts toward a just
resolution of Palestinian issues.
Never
mind the atrocious living conditions in Gaza due
to Israel's restrictions decried by the United
Nations relief agencies, or the fact that Israel's
policy of illegal settlements in the West Bank has
continued unabated despite the "peace talks".
Israel is, after all, the peacemaker, according to
a Washington Post writeup that adopts without
questioning the White House's spin that today the
balance of power is not in favor of
''peacemakers'' but rather the "troublemakers".
These are headed by the "rogue" Iran that
"exploits unresolved tensions".
Implicitly, then, instead of a viable
peace solution, what Israel has offered the Arab
world in Annapolis is an "umbrella"
protection
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
