Israel and the Bomb

The French-Israeli deal that made the Dimona project possible was the outcome of a unique historical moment when France and Israel found themselves in an unorthodox alliance. The situation in the Middle East and North Africa, domestic forces in both countries, and the Suez crisis undergirded the extraordinary alliance. The Soviet threats at the height of the Suez campaign ignited the nuclear ambitions of both nations.

The road to Dimona was a bumpy one. Dimona was a gigantic construction and engineering project for the Israel of 1958. It required materials, technical expertise, and financing unavailable in Israel. These needs and uncertainties were the sources of Israel’s nuclear opacity.

The Suez crisis had important consequences for the French nuclear program. It demonstrated France’s vulnerability to American and Soviet pressure. Only by developing its own nuclear weapons would the humiliation France had suffered in the Suez be avoided in the future.¹ Guy Mollet’s initial hesitation about nuclear weapons “was transformed overnight into a determined and positive interest in national nuclear armament.”² In late November 1956, only ten months after Mollet had declared his support of EURATOM and his opposition to French atomic weapons,³ his government agreed to establish an interministerial atomic program for national defense. The Commissariat l’Energie Atomique (CEA) was authorized to carry out research on atomic explosions, produce design prototypes of nuclear devices, and prepare for nuclear testing. It was responsible for providing the plutonium required for the new program and to perform the research that would produce highly enriched uranium. The decision meant, in effect, that France was establishing a military nuclear program.

Shimon Peres could now be more straightforward about his intentions in revising the Israeli request for French nuclear assistance. The small EL-102 reactor—similar to the experimental EL-318-MW research reactor at Saclay⁴—that the CEA planned for Israel in the fall of 1956, before the Suez operation, was upgraded in early 1957 to a large plutonium-producing reactor of generally the same order as the G-1 reactor at Marcoule (40-MW thermal power) which became critical in 1956.⁵ The new reactor was capable of producing ten to fifteen kilograms of plutonium a year.⁶ Israel also asked France for the technology needed to extract plutonium from the spent reactor fuel, requesting that Saint Gobain, the company building the Marcoule G-1 plutonium extraction plant, build an underground chemical plant attached to the reactor.⁷ The underground facility would be composed of four parts: (1) a preparation workshop for spent fuel; (2) hot laboratories for analysis of irradiated spent fuel; (3) a storage facility for waste materials from the reactor; and (4) a reprocessing plant for extracting plutonium.⁸ The last part was the key to a dedicated program with military applications. It would take another year of negotiations before an agreement was reached.

In May 1957 the window of opportunity appeared to open wider when Peres’s closest ally, Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, replaced Mollet as prime minister. Bourges-Maunoury, however, conditioned his agreement on Mollet’s consent, and the latter kept changing his mind about it. Mollet was agreeable to the idea in a meeting with Peres, but later, in a meeting with Golda Meir on 10 July, he told her that he “opposed this matter.”⁹ Francis Perrin, the scientific head (high commissioner) of the CEA, also kept changing his mind.¹⁰

In late September, with Bourges-Maunoury’s government on the verge of collapse, Foreign Minister Christian Pineau expressed his concern about the deal, saying that there was no precedent for the kind of nuclear assistance Israel was requesting, and that it could damage France’s interests if it became known.¹¹ To accommodate Pineau’s objections, Peres pledged that the reactor would be utilized merely for “scientific research.”¹² Pineau, with Peres at his side, signed on to the political part of the agreement, which Peres personally carried to Bourges-Maunoury’s office. At Peres’s request, Bourges-Maunoury obtained from his cabinet a formal decision to confirm the agreement. This formal act was critical, because that night the Bourges-Maunoury government was voted out of office by the French National Assembly.¹³

On 3 October 1957 the Dimona agreement was signed as two sets of formal documents. The documents are still classified, and they are likely to remain so for a while. Enough is known about the agreement, however (through Péan’s book), and about the developments it engendered, to know that it was an important landmark in Israel’s path toward its posture of nuclear opacity. “The Dimona operation was so secret that nobody knew the entire truth,” said Pierre Guillaumat, the chairman of the CEA. “What happened is all the more difficult to discern because it happened at several levels: that of the State (presidency of the cabinet, ministers, CEA) and that of the industrialists.”¹⁴

The agreement was divided into two sets of documents, one political and the other technical.¹⁵ The political agreement was vague and dealt with the legal obligations of the parties. Peres pledged to Pineau that Israel’s objective was peaceful, and that Israel would consult with France on any international action concerning Dimona.¹⁶ The technical agreement, signed by the heads of the CEA and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), apparently left several essential issues unstated.¹⁷ According to Péan, key understandings about the Dimona project were not put in writing but remained oral understandings between individuals.¹⁸ On a few occasions the written documents did not reflect reality. The power of the EL-102, for example, was stated in the documents to be 24 megawatts, but Péan’s sources claim that the reactor was twice to three times more powerful than what the documents indicated.¹⁹

For security reasons, the EL-102 operation of the Société Alsacienne, the chief industrial architect of the Dimona project which dealt with both the “client” (the unspecified name the CEA and the industrialists used to refer to the IAEC) and the subcontractors, was conducted through a front financial entity created for this purpose.²⁰ The most sensitive and secret aspect of the agreement was the reprocessing plant, to which there was no reference in the official documents. The contract for this aspect of the project was signed directly with the manufacturer, Saint Gobain, whose dealings with the Israeli client were concealed through another entity, known as Société Industrielle d’Etudes et de Constructions Chimiques (SIECC), leaving no mention of Israeli involvement in the paper trail.²¹

Because of the scope of the project and the unconventional manner in which it was created and managed, Israeli officials had an interest in concealing the magnitude of the projects even from insiders. The French-Israeli bargain was struck when France was still undecided about its own military nuclear program; when some of Israel’s best friends in France were hesitant about the consequences of the requested assistance; when French political actors needed a measure of deniability if the pact became known; when governments of the Fourth Republic came and went and administrators were concerned about what might happen next; and when supporters of the French-Israeli alliance on both sides had a sense that this alliance was unnatural and would be short-lived because of France’s historical interests in the Arab world. Keeping the agreement opaque was the answer to these concerns.

The Dimona project was vulnerable from the start. The deal was complex, containing controversial and sensitive aspects, extending over years, making it vulnerable to domestic political changes in France. Particularly the Israelis were afraid that a new government in France could reverse the understandings. Secrecy and concealment were designed to minimize the vulnerability of the project, which they did. In time, they became habitual.

French officials who were involved in making the Dimona deal understood it for what it was. The French Foreign Ministry, however, aware of the unprecedented nature of the deal, still insisted that Israel sign an agreement that the cooperation was only for scientific research. Israel was compelled to sign it. This was not the first time Israel found itself with no choice but to make a commitment it could not keep. Norway, Israel’s second nuclear supplier, was next in line.

The Dimona reactor required significant quantities of natural uranium and heavy water. By 1956–57 Israel already knew that it was unable to turn its scientific inventions into commercial production. France, which had purchased the chemical processes from Israel in 1954, could not supply Israel with heavy water of its own. Israel had to find heavy water elsewhere.

Since 1955 Bergmann pressed the Israeli government to obtain twenty tons of heavy water from the United States, cheaply and he hoped without safeguards.²² In the spring of 1956 Bergmann told AEC officials that Israel decided to construct a 10-MW research reactor, moderated by heavy water and fueled by natural uranium, and inquired whether it would be possible to purchase ten tons of heavy water from the AEC. He was told that this could be arranged, in principle (meaning, under peaceful use safeguards), and was urged to submit a formal request once Israel was ready.²³ Bergmann made such a request in a formal letter to Chairman Strauss in July. In September the AEC notified Israel that it was willing to sell the requested amount, but it would have to take place under the aegis of a new bilateral nuclear power agreement which provided a more rigorous safeguards procedures than the current bilateral research agreement.²⁴ In response to a subsequent Israeli query as to why there was a need for stronger safeguards than those of the existing agreement, Israel was told that “certain types of research reactors, such as that planned by Israel, had excessive plutonium production capabilities which necessitated the controls of the power reactor type.”²⁵ The reactor to which the AEC referred was the 10-MW reactor that Bergmann had spoken about in his earlier discussions with the AEC in 1956. After this answer Israel lost interest in the American heavy water and no longer raised the issue with the AEC; nor did the AEC ask Israel questions about what happened to the plan to construct that 10-MW reactor and Israel’s urgent need for ten tons of heavy water.

Enter Norway. By 1956–57 the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro was the only European commercial producer of heavy water. In early 1956, in parallel to the American route, Israel also approached Norway about buying twenty tons of Norwegian heavy water. The first contact was informal and quiet. It took place in Zurich in March 1956, during the second conference of the world labor movement. Haakon Lie, the influential secretary general of the Norwegian ruling Labor Party (Arbeiderpartiet) and a close ally of Israel, along with Finn Moe, a former ambassador to the UN and chairman of the parliamentary committee in charge of foreign relations, were approached on the matter by Reuven Barkat, the head of the international department of the Histadrut (Israel’s Labor Federation). The Norwegians were asked to explore whether and how soon Norwegian heavy water could be available for Israel. The initial reply was that, owing to its current orders, it would be impossible for Norsk Hydro to deliver the required amount before the end of 1960.

Israel did not give up. As the sale of American heavy water got complicated with the safeguards issue, Israel became more interested in Norwegian heavy water. In August 1956 Bergmann wrote Gunnar Randers, the director of the Norwegian Institute for Atomic Energy, about Israel’s interest to purchase ten tons of heavy water from Norsk Hydro. Randers responded that the firm was still unwilling to make any commitment beyond its present line of orders, but his personal view was that there was “a good chance” for a deal later on, when new contracts would be written.²⁶

The negotiations with the Norwegians intensified in 1957–58, when it became clear that Israel had no chance to obtain American heavy water without safeguards. We do not know exactly how Israel explained its need for the large amount of heavy water, but it is inconceivable that Randers and his associates did not understand Dimona’s purpose. In a letter dated 9 August 1957, Randers wrote Fredrik Moller, the director of NORATOM, a newly established company created to promote the Norwegian nuclear industry, that Israel needed the heavy water for a 40-MW production reactor fueled by natural uranium and moderated by heavy water. The reactor was to be used for “technical training and production of plutonium for Israel’s future nuclear energy needs.”²⁷ This sentence reveals it all.²⁸

Still, Randers had difficulties closing the deal. For one thing, Norsk Hydro had commercial interests in the Arab world and was reluctant to sell heavy water to Israel, so the sale had to be made through NORATOM. To make the deal more attractive to the Norwegians, it was presented as part of a broader agreement of nuclear cooperation between NORATOM and the IAEC. For another thing, to overcome issues of availability and politics the sale was in fact a three-party transaction: Israel purchased heavy water from NORATOM that had been sold two years earlier to Britain. It suited the British, as their immediate demand for heavy water declined, and it suited the Norwegian who wanted to sell it to Israel. Britain, which had received its twenty-five tons of heavy water without safeguards, agreed to leave the issue of safeguards to the Norwegian government.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry, however, insisted on Norwegian control of the water. Bergmann protested and wrote Randers that “as long as the controls of which one speaks so much today in the field of atomic energy are only applied by the big countries to the smaller ones, they are unwarranted, unjust and represent an infringement of the sovereignty of the smaller countries.”²⁹ Randers agreed that if the United States did not oppose the sale, Norway should sell Israel the heavy water with no strings attached.³⁰

After long discussions during the second part of 1958, Israel gave in on the matter of control.³¹ On 12 December 1958 Randers wrote Bergmann that “our foreign office appears to become more and more jittery about discussing” the “ascertainment paragraph,” which detailed the procedures Norway would undertake to ascertain the peaceful purpose of the deal.³²

On 25 February 1959 Chaim Yahil, the Israeli minister in Oslo, and Harlvard Lange, the Norwegian minister of foreign affairs, exchanged documents that set the terms of the Norwegian control of the heavy water. Israel guaranteed that any heavy water sold to it by Norway “will be employed solely for the promotion and development of the peaceful use of atomic energy and not for any military purpose,” and that “the Norwegian Government shall be given the opportunity to ascertain to its satisfaction that the use of the heavy waters [is] in accordance with these guarantees.”³³

A few months later the Norwegian Foreign Ministry informed the AEC about the agreement between Norway and Israel, assuring the United States that the agreement provided for safeguards and inspection rights.³⁴ In August 1959, in a conversation with an officer of the American Embassy in Oslo, Randers was asked about Israel’s nuclear activities. Randers was vague, even misleading, noting that “the Israelis were very slow in making decisions concerning the design of their reactor and that consultations would probably continue over a three or four year period.”³⁵ In 1959 nothing was farther from the truth.

A primary issue in those discussions in 1957 was the political credibility of France’s pledge. Many questioned Peres’s optimistic view that France could be trusted to provide Israel with the long-term technological assistance for acquiring the production reactor and reprocessing plant needed to complete the project. Without such assistance Israel could not start the project on its own. Given the lack of explicitness and the secrecy, which characterized the French-Israeli dealings, how could Israel be sure that French assistance would be sustained over the long run? The professional view, presented to decision makers primarily by de Shalit and Dostrovsky, was that Israel would be unable to finish the job on its own.³⁶

Prominent scientists also argued that the cost of building the big Dimona reactor, in addition to the small Soreq reactor, was prohibitive for Israel. Others worried about the difficulties of keeping the project secret for an extended period. It would not be easy to provide a scientific rationale for having a second, larger reactor under construction while the first research reactor, under American safeguards, was still incomplete. Aware of these considerations, Israel Dostrovsky continued to advocate a different approach to the problem, a cheaper and safer alternative that did not require such an extreme degree of dependence on a foreign power.³⁷

There were personal clashes as well. The small scientific community involved in the deliberations was not confident in the competence of EMET leaders to carry out a project of such magnitude. De Shalit argued that both Ernst Bergmann and Munya Mardor were unqualified for the mission. Instead, Peres was urged to find an Israeli General Groves, that is, a competent military man with a technical and engineering background and eye for detail who could run the Dimona project. It was even argued that EMET as an organization should be kept out of the Dimona project.³⁸

Ben Gurion was aware of these reservations. He kept in touch with de Shalit—in part through his daughter, Renana Leshem, a biologist—and had followed his scientific career since the late 1940s. In 1956–59 de Shalit was among the small coterie with which Ben Gurion consulted on how best to set up Israel’s nuclear program, including nuclear energy. De Shalit explained to Ben Gurion why he thought a national nuclear project of the kind Bergmann had been advocating would be too big for Israel, and could result in financial and political loss and a setback in basic scientific research.³⁹

The IDF was hardly involved in the early consultations.⁴⁰ Chief of Staff Dayan, whose views Ben Gurion regarded highly, had been informed of Peres’s activities in France regarding the nuclear program, and of the objections within the scientific community. Sometime in the spring of 1957 he called a meeting in his office, soliciting the opinions of leading scientists such as de Shalit and Dostrovsky (but not Bergmann’s, who was not invited). Dayan had doubts regarding the technological-scientific feasibility of the undertaking, as well as the reliability of the French. Ne’eman, who attended the meeting as a senior intelligence officer, recalls that both de Shalit and Dostrovsky stressed the difficulties and uncertainties involved in the Dimona route, though neither argued that the project was infeasible. Ne’eman’s own view was that despite the major uncertainties involving the French, the risk was worth taking.

Dayan remained a skeptic, but apparently he did not raise formal objections on behalf of the IDF.⁴¹ Ben Gurion was personally interested in Dayan’s views, but he decided not to solicit the views of the military as an organization. He wanted to avoid a budgetary competition between the IDF modernization plans in conventional weapons systems and the nuclear project. In doing so Ben Gurion established that decisions about the nuclear issue was a civilian matter. The responsibility for the project ultimately belonged with the civilian leadership. This pattern persisted for years.

Another objection in 1957 came from Foreign Minister Golda Meir. She urged Ben Gurion not to trust Peres’s optimism about French nuclear assistance. As Peres was negotiating the nuclear deal in Paris, Meir and, though to a lesser extent, Mossad chief Isser Harel, argued that reliance on a tacit French commitment was too politically risky. After Meir’s meeting with Mollet in July, in which he expressed his opposition to the deal, she almost convinced Ben Gurion that Peres’s idea was unrealistic.⁴² She was concerned that Peres’s “unorthodox diplomacy” could backfire, and she worried that secret agreements reached in this fashion would not withstand domestic political changes in France.

Much of her opposition to Dimona, however, derived from her opposition to Peres himself. According to Peres, his “rocky relationship” with Golda had started in the early 1950s and deteriorated after she replaced Moshe Sharett as foreign minister in the summer of 1956.⁴³ The full wrath of the combative Meir, and that of her less combative predecessor Sharett, was aimed at Peres and the way he built relations with the French defense and nuclear establishments since the mid-1950s, as well as his taking advantage of the structural political weaknesses of the Fourth Republic. The representatives of the Ministry of Defense in Paris reported directly to Peres, bypassing the Foreign Ministry.⁴⁴ Meir complained tirelessly to Ben Gurion about Peres’s conducting of an independent foreign policy by the Defense Ministry, but to no avail.⁴⁵

Despite many objections, Ben Gurion adopted Peres’s and Bergmann’s vision of pursuing two nuclear paths simultaneously—one public, the other secret. In a public ceremony on 20 March 1957 Israel had finally signed a contract with the United States to build a small swimming-pool research reactor in Nachal Soreq as part of the Atoms for Peace program. In the meantime, Peres continued to push for the other French reactor. On 27 September, hours before Peres’s departure for Paris to put the deal together with Bourges-Maunoury’s government, Ben Gurion sent him a note wishing him well in the important mission.⁴⁶ A week later, after the agreement was signed, Ben Gurion’s military aide cabled Peres: “You could not have given the Old Man a better present for this Yom Kippur.”⁴⁷

Despite scientists’ criticism, Ben Gurion chose to keep Bergmann at the IAEC.⁴⁸ Ben Gurion was aware of the risks that de Shalit, Dostrovsky, and others had been warning about, but he was convinced that Israel must take those risks. The military success of the Sinai operation did not assuage his fears for Israel’s security.⁴⁹ While the Israeli public enjoyed a sense of confidence following the success of the Suez campaign, Ben Gurion’s political and military outlook grew gloomier.⁵⁰ He was especially concerned with the establishment of a grand Arab coalition against Israel. These fears were not without justification. The Suez campaign had reinforced Nasser’s position within the Arab world, and calls for Arab unification stirred up the Arab masses. In 1958 Egypt and Syria merged into a political-military federation known as the United Arab Republic (UAR).

Ben Gurion was especially concerned about a surprise attack by an Arab coalition, starting with aerial bombardment of Israeli cities. He feared that Israel might fail to deter an Arab coalition from launching such a war, and that Israel would be unable to mobilize its reserves in time. Even a security guarantee from a Western power might be irrelevant because of the time it would take to rush aid to Israel.⁵¹ In his meeting with de Gaulle in June 1960, Ben Gurion responded to de Gaulle’s commitment to Israel’s security by elaborating on his concerns about Israel’s vulnerability to an Arab surprise attack. He argued, as he had with Eisenhower in March, that if Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel, Israel would suffer catastrophically—even if outside help were extended to Israel. The point was clear, if unstated: Israel must not depend on the help of an outside power in a time of emergency.⁵² “If Nasser should break Israel’s air force,” American ambassador Walworth Barbour quoted Ben Gurion, “the war would be over in two days.” Any American or French military assistance would come too late.⁵³ Ben Gurion voiced similar concerns in almost every communication he had with foreign leaders.⁵⁴

Ben Gurion’s foreign and defense policy were driven by this pessimistic outlook. They followed two tracks—diplomacy and deterrence. One diplomatic initiative, known as the “periphery strategy,” sought alliances with non-Arab minorities on the periphery of the Middle East in order to contain pan-Arab Nasserism.⁵⁵ Ben Gurion also sought a security guarantee for Israel from a Western state. This search intensified after the Suez campaign, but in the late 1950s Ben Gurion concluded that the United States, France, or NATO would not agree to give such a guarantee. Ben Gurion, however, continued this quest until he left office in 1963.⁵⁶

In the late 1950s, as he gave up trying to obtain a guarantee from an external power, deterrence became Ben Gurion’s major goal. He sought to strengthen Israel’s conventional forces, especially its air force, by acquiring sophisticated weapon systems to balance those that the Soviets were supplying to Nasser. The second pillar of Israel’s deterrence capability was an independent nuclear program, which would serve as “an option for a rainy day” (this phrase was one more code term used by politicians and journalists to refer to the program). Ben Gurion pursued both paths, while keeping the two as separate as possible.

The two approaches to bolstering Israel’s deterrence posture were not easy to pursue simultaneously. In 1958 the IDF was still a small army equipped with antiquated weapons. On 1 April 1958 the IDF regular order of battle was thirty-seven thousand troops, including a navy of sixteen hundred men and women and an air force of thirty-one hundred men and women. The combat force structure of the IDF was made of one regular infantry brigade, twelve reserve brigades, one regular paratroops brigade, one regular armored brigade, and two reserve armored brigades; the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had 118 jets. Facing the thirteen Israeli infantry brigades were forty-five to forty-eight Arab infantry brigades.⁵⁷

In the late 1950s the IDF embarked on an expansion and modernization program. In the 1957–60 period IAF purchased from France thirty supersonic Super Mystéres and twenty-eight Vautour light bombers, and signed contracts for sixty Mirages (soon to become seventy-two). The Armored Corps initiated a program to purchase dozens of British Centurion medium tanks (later increasing the number to hundreds), and the navy purchased its first submarines. Ben Gurion also approved a plan to build a new modern air base in Hatzerim in the Negev, as well as other training bases.

These were costly programs, but they were in keeping with Ben Gurion’s commitment to the idea that the IDF must be able to defeat any combination of Arab armies in a conventional war. According to figures listed in Ben Gurion’s diaries, the 1958–59 defense procurement budget was about $35 million, and its main purchases were new airplanes for the air force.⁵⁸ According to other official figures, in 1957 the entire defense budget of Israel was IL286 million, of which IL83 million (33.7 percent) went for procurement; in 1960 the defense budget was IL342 million, of which IL97 million (28.4 percent) went for procurement.⁵⁹ These figures do not include the real cost of the nuclear project.

It is difficult to assess the exact cost of developing the infrastructure needed for the nuclear project in 1958–65. This is primarily because the funding of the project was conducted in those days in a “nonorthodox” fashion, and a significant portion of it—especially the funds that were raised by special donations overseas—did not appear in the regular defense budget. The issue was not merely security. There was a deliberate interest on the part of Ben Gurion and Peres to keep the senior officers of the IDF out of the financial picture, leaving them with the impression that the special project did not compete with the regular IDF needs.

This notwithstanding, the official figures of the defense budget indicate that in the late 1950s, and more so in the early 1960s, the science and R&D components of the defense budget grew significantly. The R&D budget of the defense budget was IL7 million (2.8 percent of the budget) in 1957, IL12 million (4.2 percent of the budget) in 1958, IL25 million (7.3 percent of the budget) in 1960, IL44 million (11.2 percent of the budget) in 1961, and IL99 million (14.4 percent of the budget) in 1963. By the mid-1960s the R&D component stabilized at the level of 11 percent.⁶⁰ In his diaries Ben Gurion mentioned authorization of U.S.$5 million in 1958—around 15 percent of the defense budget, and more than twice that in 1959—for Mifalei Pituach (Development Projects), the bureaucratic name for the Dimona project.⁶¹ According to official data presented by Israel privately to the United States in early 1961, “the reactor and ancillary facilities are expected to cost $34 million, of which $17.8 million would be foreign exchange. The reactor itself is expected to cost $15.4 million, of which $10 million would be foreign exchange.”⁶² Even these figures, certainly not the complete numbers, highlight how heavy the Dimona cost was in relation to the rest of the defense budget.⁶³

In his 1995 memoires Shimon Peres writes that the Dimona reactor alone cost about $80 million (in 1960 dollars).⁶⁴ Other estimates made by critics of Peres referred to a cost of about $300 million.⁶⁵ It is likely that the real numbers concerning the initiation of the Dimona project would never be fully known.⁶⁶

Much of the scientific criticism of the Dimona project centered on the ability of the EMET/IAEC team under Bergmann and Mardor to meet the engineering challenge. Peres appointed a three-man planning committee (va’adat tichnun), headed by de Shalit with Ze’ev (Venia) Hadari Pomerantz and Zvi Lipkin as members, bypassing both Bergmann and Mardor. The fate of the project depended on whether the right person would lead it. Lipkin recalls that they “were impressed by the French engineers who had come to visit Israel during this period. Those engineers were really top grade engineers who knew how to handle large scale projects.” The EMET/IAEC team was not qualified for the job.

Peres, who accepted the recommendation, could think of only one man with the required qualities. He was Colonel Manes Pratt, an engineer by training who had been an Ordnance Corps chief, and who served in 1956 as Israel’s military attaché in Burma. Though Pratt had no scientific background or knowledge of nuclear issues, he seemed to have the prerequisite temperament. With de Shalit, Hadari, and Lipkin with him, Peres called Pratt in Burma and offered him the opportunity to be Dimona’s builder. “I looked for a ‘pedant,’ a man who would not compromise over detail, whether vital or ostensibly marginal,” Peres wrote. “I knew that in the nuclear realm the most minor relaxation of standards could lead to national disaster…. At the same time, the candidate had to be a man with an ‘open mind,’ that is, a capacity to learn on the job; … I knew when I appointed him that he would give me a hard time, and indeed he did.”⁶⁷

Pratt asked for time to learn the subject. “Within a few months,” Peres wrote, “he became Israel’s foremost expert in nuclear engineering.”⁶⁸ In those few months Lipkin became Pratt’s tutor in everything that had to do with reactor physics and engineering. Lipkin became Pratt’s “constant companion, teaching him everything he needed to know about nuclear physics and nuclear engineering, and being available to answer and explain any questions … that might arise.”⁶⁹ The massive excavation work at the Dimona site began sometime in late 1957 or early 1958.⁷⁰

Selecting Pratt to be czar of Dimona, reporting only to Ben Gurion and Peres, was decisive for the nuclear project. It also had bureaucratic repercussions. In early 1957 Mardor decided to take a leave of absence from EMET,⁷¹ perhaps in protest over the decision to build and operate Dimona outside EMET. Mardor’s leave, however, did not last long. In the spring of 1958 Peres asked him to return to the ministry. “New programs emerged,” Mardor wrote, “big projects of development and manufacturing of sophisticated weapons systems.”⁷² On 5 June 1958 Ben Gurion reorganized EMET as a new research and development authority within the Ministry of Defense.⁷³ The new authority was renamed RAFAEL, the Hebrew acronym for the Armaments Development Authority.

RAFAEL was a continuation of EMET, but the change was more than in its name. The new organization had a new mission, new approach, and new management style. EMET was a research-oriented organization; it was organized according to fields of research (that is, electronics, mechanics, chemistry, physics). RAFAEL was more development oriented, and, in addition to the fields of research, it was organized by specific projects.⁷⁴ The organizational changes were designed to achieve an integrative work aimed at producing complete weapon systems. RAFAEL was to bring Israel, in Mardor’s oblique words, into the age of “large and long-term projects, aiming at weapon systems, integrated technologies, and a knowledge base that the great powers had.”⁷⁵ RAFAEL’s mission was “the development of powerful and sophisticated deterrent weapons systems that Israel could not purchase elsewhere.”⁷⁶ “We were convinced,” wrote Mardor, “of the vital need for those new powerful weapons systems that would assure the state of Israel against those who are against its existence.”⁷⁷

The founding of Dimona and RAFAEL were landmarks in Israel’s nuclear pursuit. Dimona and RAFAEL were different types of organizations. RAFAEL was devoted to research and development of large military projects, while Dimona was a gigantic construction project which required materials, technical expertise, and financing that were unavailable in Israel and had to be obtained abroad. Dimona did not require special research and development. This difference, in addition to Pratt’s insistence on autonomy, led to the decision to build Dimona outside the jurisdiction of EMET or RAFAEL. The problems resulting from this division would haunt the project from the start.

The problem of managing the program was more complicated than the problem which, in the United States, is called interservice rivalry. The Israeli project, unlike the Manhattan Project, was dependent on outside assistance. Israel thus did not need a General Groves or Robert Oppenheimer as the project’s leaders. Instead, an improvising politician like Peres, with the gift of finding and exploiting opportunities, became the project’s leader. He was able to get the materials, technical experts, and funding needed for the project. Everything depended on him.

Peres’s management style, and the initial separation among the different units working on different aspects of the project, determined the project’s organizational structure. It was divided among administrations, outside organizations, contractors, and managers, with an inherent redundancy and duplication. In the area of theoretical physics calculations, for example, the effort was initially divided among three quasi-academic research groups, each focusing on essentially the same problems but working separately and independently. The Milchamot Ha’yehudim (Wars of the Jews) over budgets and authority among these organizations took much of Peres’s attention, requiring him to employ “delicate inter-personal and inter-departmental diplomacy.”⁷⁸ Peres himself became the chief administrator of the entire project.

Because of the project’s dependence on outside assistance in materials, technical expertise, and financing, there was no multiyear master plan for the program in its first years. There were no guidelines that demarcated areas of responsibilities, missions, and budgets among the administrations and organizations involved. One reason for this was the uncertainty about the project’s budget as a whole, as well as its individual components. There was no multiyear budget for the project; in fact, even the annual budget was continually changing. Another reason was the political tentativeness associated with the French assistance over many years, an uncertainty that rippled through the program. Another reason was the Israeli lack of experience. For some years, for example, the project lacked a progress evaluation system. This was only corrected later, when PERT (Progress Evaluation Report Technique) was introduced.⁷⁹

Financing was an important aspect of the nuclear project. Its funding was as unorthodox as any of its other aspects. Dimona was built largely through a special fund-raising effort that Ben Gurion and Peres conducted outside the official state budget. “We set up a discreet fund-raising operation, which raised contributions totaling more than $40 million—half of the cost of the reactor, and a very considerable sum in those days,” Peres wrote. “Most of this money came from direct personal appeals, by Ben Gurion and myself, to friends of Israel around the world.”⁸⁰

In his diary Ben Gurion noted laconically that, on 2 June 1958, he discussed with Finance Minister Eshkol the “benediction [kiddush] of the atomic power station.”⁸¹ A later entry, written in his diary on 31 October 1958, Ben Gurion summarized a conversation he had with Abe Feinberg, a wealthy Jewish businessman and major Democratic fund-raiser. “We have talked about the Weizmann Institute,” Ben Gurion wrote, “and I told him about Lord Rothschild’s two proposals. With regard to the second proposal—benedictions—he told me that there is already a beginning. It appears that [Issac] Wolfson has given $5 million dollars. There is a need for $25 million, because the annual budget deficit is about a million and a half. Benedictions will provide 5 percent and a sum of twenty-five million will be sufficient. He believes that it would be possible to find ‘benedictors’ among American Jews.”⁸² The idea of keeping a separate financing system for the nuclear program was important not only for secrecy but also to avoid a debate with the army over budgets and doctrine. This feature of the project lasted many years.

Ben Gurion’s decisions in 1957–58, and the groundbreaking excavation at Dimona, did not bring an end to the opposition to the project. In the first three years of the project, despite the secrecy, there remained a few pockets of opposition and criticism. Some of it reflected anger about the lack of due process and procedure; some of it stemmed from financial concerns; and some of it involved domestic party politics.

In February 1958 all seven members of the IAEC signed a collective letter of resignation to Ben Gurion, leaving Bergmann a chairman without a committee.⁸³ The resignation, orchestrated by Racah, Sambursky, and Ollendorff, was over procedure, not substance. The letter stated that even though the IAEC had not been convened once since 1956, “things were allegedly done in the name of the IAEC, which in fact did not exist, without the Israeli scientists who were close to the profession participating in the planning, if such planning existed.”⁸⁴ Still, some of the critical decisions on Dimona were made outside Bergmann’s IAEC. The IAEC had become no more than a rubber stamp. Most of its commissioners had little sense of how and for what purpose their chair, Bergmann, was using it. Subsequently Ben Gurion met Racah and Ollendorff in an effort to form two separate committees—the scientific and administrative committees—which would allow the scientists a role in research while keeping them out of defense projects. Ben Gurion told them that under the new arrangement, they should seek out Peres if they needed information, but that all principal issues would come to him.⁸⁵ This effort to reorganize the IAEC failed, and it remained an empty shell at the Ministry of Defense for many years.

There were indications of a broader opposition to the nuclear project in the scientific community. Mardor writes of an “aggressive, well-focused and continuous” campaign by “distinguished scientists and representatives of academic institutions against the intents of the defense establishment and its research and development apparatus.”⁸⁶ RAFAEL found it difficult to recruit senior scientists to take part in its projects.

In the late 1950s, however, the real opposition to the project came from Ben Gurion’s colleagues in MAPAI. Ben Gurion did not obtain a cabinet decision on the secret project he had initiated, and he did not allow the issue to be debated in the military. Only the senior cabinet members who had to know about the project—Meir, Eshkol, and Minister of Commerce Pinhas Sapir—were told about it,⁸⁷ and even they knew only the aspects relevant to them, not much more.

By 1958–60 the fact that a huge project was in the making could no longer be concealed from the other members of the leadership. The excavation and building of Dimona were unprecedented in its scope and in security requirements. Some aspects of the project were more visible: the shortage in some raw materials for construction, the hundreds of French employees, the sizable manpower needed to guard the new excavation and construction site. Senior military officers were also aware of Ben Gurion’s interest in a nuclear option. Ben Gurion was also concerned about the reactions of the scientific and political communities to the project. Both groups could claim to have a say on a decision of such magnitude. The cost of the project, even more than its political and strategic aspects, was the most susceptible to debate.

Yet Ben Gurion was determined to avoid a debate, even behind closed doors. He feared that even the most secret debate about the project in the cabinet or military would compromise it. Any leak could destroy the feeble connection with the French. Such a debate would also force him to declare his strategic objectives, something with which he was uncomfortable. To maintain secrecy and minimize the risk of opposition, Ben Gurion and Peres decided to run the nuclear project underground, outside the normal state budget.

The secrecy was not sufficient to eliminate all opposition. At about 1959–60 some of Ben Gurion’s senior political colleagues in MAPAI had reservations about the project, and skepticism about the project became enmeshed with criticism of Ben Gurion’s direction on issues of technology and politics. Peres’s credibility and motives also came under criticism, and Golda Meir led the charge.⁸⁸ Meir and Peres had feuded over many issues for many years. Meir was concerned about two aspects of the project: the reliability of the French, and the repercussions of an American discovery of the Dimona secret.⁸⁹ She thought that Israel should inform the United States of the Dimona reactor, stating that the project was for peaceful purposes and leaving room for a future weapons option.

In 1959–60 Meir’s opposition to Peres and the nuclear issue became entangled with the generational struggle for leadership in MAPAI. It became increasingly difficult to separate the policy issues from the political and personal issues. Peres was perceived by his older political opponents as a man of technological fantasies and a political threat; they believed he was building a secret state within a state, accountable to no one but Ben Gurion and himself, under the cover of secrecy and security. They feared he would bring down Ben Gurion and the party, damaging Israel’s foreign relations.

Still, in the late 1950s, before the Lavon Affair erupted, no one could dispute Ben Gurion’s political and moral authority in MAPAI and the cabinet. Ben Gurion made clear to dissenting ministers that the Dimona project was his project, and that Peres was acting under his authority. In early 1960 Dimona’s opponents in the cabinet, headed by Eshkol, proposed bringing the issue to a debate before the leadership forum of MAPAI (Haverenu), hoping that a wider discussion would solidify the opposition. Ben Gurion refused, insisting that the issue would be discussed only among himself, Eshkol, Meir, and Peres.⁹⁰ Because of his unquestioned authority on defense issues, and the sensitivity of the project, the critics reluctantly accepted that the project was too close to Ben Gurion’s heart, and gave up the effort to pursue a broader discussion of the subject.

A year and a half after the excavation of the Dimona site had begun, the fears of the project’s critics materialized. At the end of May 1958 Charles de Gaulle was named France’s new prime minister, and in December he became the first president—for a term of seven years—of the new Fifth Republic. He was brought back from a self-imposed political exile, entrusted with the task of curing the ills that had plagued the Fourth Republic. By June de Gaulle had become aware of what he later termed “the improper military collaboration established between Tel Aviv and Paris after the Suez Expedition, which permanently placed Israelis at all levels of French services,” and he was determined to end it.⁹¹ De Gaulle was taken aback when he learned of the unorthodox manner in which the relations were conducted.⁹² According to Péan, the excavation for the reactor began a few months before de Gaulle took power, but the massive work under the supervision of the CEA began after the change of government.⁹³ It took almost two years to translate de Gaulle’s determination into a new French nuclear policy vis-à-vis Israel.⁹⁴

These two years, mostly during the term of Jacques Soustelle, minister of atomic energy and a staunch supporter of Israel, were critical and made the future of the Dimona project possible, as the construction of much of the Dimona reactor under the supervision of the CEA continued as planned.⁹⁵ By the second part of 1959 Saint Gobain Nucleaire began supervising the excavation work for the reprocessing plant, “which took place next to and below the building site of the reactor.”⁹⁶ By that time dozens of Israeli scientists and technicians were doing research and training at Saclay, Marcoule, and other CEA sites.

Things changed with the resignation of Soustelle. After Soustelle’s departure, Perrin asked for a meeting with de Gaulle in which he informed him that, throughout 1959, the construction of the reprocessing plant had continued despite de Gaulle’s instructions. De Gaulle again demanded an end to this cooperation. When Perrin returned to the CEA he ordered all cooperation to cease.⁹⁷ On 13 May 1960 Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville formally notified the Israeli ambassador, Walter Eitan, that France had decided to sever its nuclear ties with Israel. France made three demands on Israel, indicating that the objective of the new French policy was to prohibit the production and reprocessing of weapon-quality plutonium in Dimona. The French asked Israel to lift the secrecy over Dimona and to declare the reactor’s peaceful nature. France also wanted the reactor to be subjected to international inspection, probably by the IAEA. Finally, until Israel accepted these conditions, France would not supply it with natural uranium fuel for the reactor.⁹⁸

The French decision caused consternation in Ben Gurion’s inner circle. The end of French assistance would put the entire Dimona project at risk. De Gaulle’s decision was a sharp reversal from the written and unwritten obligations of his predecessors. Mollet and Bourges-Maunoury understood what the Dimona commitment was all about, which made the French assistance so unique and sensitive. De Gaulle recognized how unprecedented the deal was, and for this reason refused to go along with it, reluctant to provide Israel with a nuclear option. France was trying to regain its position in the Arab world, and nuclear cooperation with Israel would not be helpful in that effort.

In reaction to the French decision, Ben Gurion asked to see de Gaulle, and a meeting between the two was hastily arranged for 14 June 1960. Peres, who had been sent a few days earlier to prepare the meeting, heard from Couve de Murville the reason for the French decision: France had never given such assistance to another country, and it could not afford to do so now.⁹⁹ The French were flexible on the timing of making Dimona public. The concern of the French was not the reactor or its secrecy as such, but the essence of the project—the reprocessing plant. Peres responded that “Israel is now in the middle of the lake, to return is just as complicated as to go ahead.”¹⁰⁰ Couve de Murville repeated his arguments, but he left the issue open. A cable from Eitan to Jerusalem indicated that both he and Peres felt that some progress had been made.¹⁰¹ The issue was left to the leaders.

De Gaulle met Ben Gurion on 14 June. Most of their conversation was a general exchange on world affairs and ideas between two elderly statesmen. The real issue—Dimona—was hardly mentioned. When the meeting ended without reference to nuclear and military cooperation between the two countries, de Gaulle suggested that they schedule a working meeting three days later.¹⁰² In the meantime, Ben Gurion met with Prime Minister Michel Debré and discussed the nuclear issue, but no progress was made. Eitan noted in his cable that “Debré talked from the mouth of Couve. The matter has not yet been discussed with de Gaulle.”¹⁰³

On 17 June Ben Gurion and de Gaulle met again privately. This time the talks focused on nuclear cooperation. Both sides wanted to avoid confrontation, but they found no immediate solution. Ben Gurion pledged that Israel would not build a nuclear weapon, and said he understood de Gaulle’s need to change France’s assistance to Israel, but he suggested deferring the decision for further talks between Peres and Guillaumat.¹⁰⁴ De Gaulle was not convinced, but promised to “reconsider” the French position.¹⁰⁵ Despite de Gaulle’s expressions of friendship, the trip produced no resolution of the nuclear impasse.

On 1 August 1960 Couve de Murville summoned Eitan and notified him that France was determined to end its nuclear assistance if Israel continued to oppose publicity and an inspection of the Dimona reactor site. In exchange, France would be ready to compensate Israel financially for abrogating the agreement.¹⁰⁶ Ben Gurion saw two alternatives—accepting the money and ending French assistance or refusing to accept the French decision as final and insisting on finding another solution. The second avenue would be a difficult one, but Israel had little to lose at that point. Ben Gurion rejected the French offer and sent Peres to Paris to negotiate a compromise. In the meantime, Pratt and his advisers studied what would be the minimum requirements under which the completion of the project would be possible, even if slowed down significantly.

It took three months before Peres was ready to negotiate the matter with Couve de Murville. Peres’s argument was that the French proposal “meant both reneging on previous French government decisions and robbing Israel of its eventual reactor and of five years of Herculean effort. No amount of money could compensate us for the wasted work.”¹⁰⁷ Peres also said that revealing the details of the agreement between France and Israel would lead to an Arab boycott of the French companies that had cooperated with Israel.¹⁰⁸

A compromise was reached: while the government of France would end its own direct involvement through the CEA in the Dimona project, it would allow French companies with existing contracts to continue their work on the reactor. This would allow Israel to continue the project on its own. Israel, for its part, would soon make a public statement about the peaceful purposes of the Dimona project, and in return France would drop its demand for outside inspection.¹⁰⁹

This was the second major delay in two and a half years of translating de Gaulle’s orders into policy. The nine-month delay, and Peres’s compromise, were critical to the project. The firm responsible for building the reactor received no instructions to stop, and its work continued until the reactor was handed over to the Israelis after the start-up stage, sometime in 1963 or 1964.¹¹⁰ As to the reprocessing plant, Israel “went on the hunt to find French industrialists” who could replace Saint Gobain in furnishing the equipment and carrying out the assembly of the chemical plant.¹¹¹ By that time, having acquired the plans and specifications from Saint Gobain, Israel had taken over construction of the reprocessing plant.¹¹² In 1963 SIECC returned to spend two more years completing the three less sensitive elements of the chemical plant, leaving Dimona in June 1965.¹¹³

The Manhattan Project provided the first model. On 9 October 1941, at the conclusion of a meeting in the White House in which the president’s science adviser, Vannevar Bush, and Vice President Henry Wallace participated, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the decision to initiate a research and development program aimed at producing an atomic bomb. Bush briefed Roosevelt about the British study—the Maud Report—which explored the feasibility of building a uranium bomb. The report concluded that such a bomb was practicable, and likely to lead to decisive results in the war,” and it urged the British government to make this project “the highest priority” in order “to obtain the weapons in the shortest possible time.”¹¹⁴ Bush told Roosevelt that such a project would require building expensive production plants and stressed the vast uncertainties involved. He asked Roosevelt to authorize an immediate action on a research project which, if successful, would lead to the development and production of the atom bomb. Roosevelt authorized it on the spot. He told Bush, however, not to proceed beyond research without further instructions from him. He also instructed Bush that funds would be available from a special source, and emphasized the need for secrecy.

Roosevelt’s decision set in motion the biggest and most secretive American project of the Second World War. The initiating decision was a lonely decision, a decision not backed up by a policy debate. For the sake of secrecy Roosevelt authorized bypassing normal procedures of government. The project’s expenditures were buried in the Department of War’s budget, and it was exempted from congressional oversight. The Manhattan Project set up the precedent of a secret project operating like a state within a state whose leaders reported directly to the president and to the secretary of war. Despite the secrecy, however, the initial decision was a dedicated, top-to-bottom decision. This, too, was a precedent: the project’s decisions could be traced and timed. They were secret but explicit decisions.

The British nuclear project followed a similar pattern. The British initiating decision was made in January 1947 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee and a small cabinet subcommittee. Most members of his cabinet knew nothing about it. The decision was made without parliamentary or public debate. Secrecy was deemed essential until the project became an accomplished fact. As in the American case, it was a top-bottom decision by the national leadership. Here, too, the objectives of the project were defined explicitly at the highest level.¹¹⁵

France followed a different path. “If the Fourth Republic had lasted beyond the spring of 1958,” writes McGeorge Bundy, “we might have a full case history of a country that acquired nuclear weapons mainly because the government never decided not to.”¹¹⁶ The French “invented” nuclear opacity. Bureaucrats, supported by cabinet ministers, advanced the nuclear project while premiers publicly insisted that no final decision had been made. Instead of one decision, like in the American and British cases, there were many small decisions.

The fragmentation of the decision into many smaller decisions allowed French bureaucrats to continue in their weapons work, while also allowing room for political deniability at the top. As a result, no political decision to move forward to produce nuclear weapons was made. This ambivalence ended when Prime Minister Guy Mollet became convinced, in the wake of the 1956 Suez campaign, that France needed an independent nuclear deterrent. When, in April 1958, Prime Minister Félix Gaillard announced that France would conduct a nuclear test, it was after all the critical decisions had already been made.

French nuclear opacity, not the result of a deliberate and well-planned strategy of ambiguity but of a manifestation of the weak Fourth Republic, was short-lived. By 1960 French nuclear conduct came to resemble the American and British. In France, as in the United States and Britain, less than five years elapsed between a commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons and becoming a nuclear-weapon state. In each of the cases the incubation period was short. Public declaration became the last stage of the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Israeli case combines features of the American-British and French models. Without archival material, it is impossible to reconstruct how exactly the Israeli project was initiated in 1955–58, but there are hints to draw the general picture. For example, Munya Mardor noted that certain veiled comments by Ben Gurion were understood to mean “a positive attitude and confirmation for the existence of the long-term and big projects, and an intention to act to implement them.”¹¹⁷ It appears that in 1955 EMET executives were waiting for the go-ahead signal, and they took Ben Gurion’s comments to be that signal. Ben Gurion did not have to spell out his wishes or issue written directives. In his eulogy to Shalheveth Freier, Peres noted that Ben Gurion was reluctant to “nail down” the specifics of his nuclear vision, “for nailing down would have meant to identify specific objectives too early, and too fast, and that would have been too complicated.”¹¹⁸ Those objectives were left unspelled, somewhat ambiguous. Ben Gurion was thus able to maintain maximum flexibility, and also maximum deniability.

Peres and other project executives behaved similarly. Peres said that the word “bomb” was never used; it was a taboo word. Mardor used to present the issue in terms of a research of various “subcomponents,” emphasizing that no decision was made about producing a complete weapon system. Freier said that the most important decisions in the early days of the project were never written down. The paper trail was often designed to conceal or mislead.

This modus operandi was thus remarkably similar to the way France started its nuclear project, with which Ben Gurion’s executives became intimately acquainted. Long-term objectives were kept not only secret but also opaque. Like the French, Ben Gurion presented the project in terms of building “options” for the future—civil energy or security—in order to escape a debate at home and avoid confrontations with foreign powers.

At the same time, Israel’s nuclear path also exhibits elements of the Anglo-American model. The nuclear project was conceived by the highest political authority, David Ben Gurion, who, since 1955, made it a national priority. Like Roosevelt and Attlee, Ben Gurion, on his own, made the early decisions that made the project possible. Like them, he recognized the need for secrecy and was apprehensive about the consequences of a policy debate, even among top ministers and governmental officials, fearing that such debate would endanger the future of the project. Like them, Ben Gurion, at the beginning, sought funds for the nuclear project outside the normal government channels, and exempted the project from democratic accountability.

In the end, all the nuclear-weapon projects that preceded the Israeli program emerged into the open. They led to nuclear testing, followed by a political declaration. The presence and role of nuclear weapons were acknowledged. In this respect, perhaps more than in others, the Israeli project is unique: opacity has become its permanent feature.