Since about 1970 it has been commonly assumed that Israel has been a nuclear-weapon state. The Israeli nuclear program, however, has remained opaque—shrouded in secrecy, officially unacknowledged, and insulated from domestic Israeli politics. How did Israel’s nuclear opacity evolve? What made it possible?
Israel began its nuclear program in earnest about four decades ago, when it constructed the core of its nuclear infrastructure in Dimona. In 1966–67 Israel completed the development stage of its first nuclear weapon, and on the eve of the Six-Day War it already had a rudimentary, but operational, nuclear weapons capability.1 By 1970 Israel’s status as a nuclear-weapon state became an accepted convention.2
Israel was the sixth nation in the world and the first in the Middle East to acquire nuclear weapons. Its nuclear behavior, however, has been distinct from that of the first five states. To this day, Israel has not acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons. Israel’s nuclear weapons development notwithstanding, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced more than three decades ago that Israel would not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, and the six Israeli prime ministers who followed him have adhered to this declaratory policy. Israel’s nuclear posture has remained opaque.
It is important to distinguish between opaque and ambiguous nuclear postures. In an article Benjamin Frankel and I wrote in 1988 we characterize the difference:3
“Ambiguity” is probably still the most often used term in reference to proliferator states. It has been invoked to refer to almost any kind of suspect proliferation behavior. The trouble is that the term itself is ambiguous. The dictionary provides two definitions for the word: one, “doubtful or uncertain”; the other, “capable of being understood in two or more possible senses.” The term may thus be used in the nuclear proliferation context to denote two distinct situations of ambiguity, which may or may not overlap.
In the former there is a genuine uncertainty, that is, lack of sufficient knowledge as to the technical nuclear status of the country under study. In this case, ambiguity is the result of a lack of clarity as to the degree of [technical advancement] of the nuclear program in question. Argentina and Brazil can be said to be such ambiguous nuclear states.
The other sense of nuclear ambiguity refers to an ambivalence—political, military or even cultural in origin—on the part of the suspect country’s leadership concerning nuclear weapons. Such ambivalence can be found even among states with undisputed weaponized nuclear programs.4
Israel is an ideal type of nuclear opacity. Nuclear opacity has been Israel’s way of coping with the tensions and problems attending the possession of nuclear weapons. It has also been Israel’s contribution to the nuclear age (in addition to pioneering certain weapon designs). Nuclear opacity is a situation in which a state’s nuclear capability has not been acknowledged, but is recognized in a way that influences other nations’ perceptions and actions, encompassing the second sense of nuclear ambiguity.
This book is a political history of Israel’s nuclear program in its formative years, documenting the origins and evolution of Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity. It focuses on a two-decade period, from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben Gurion’s vision of Israel as a nuclear-weapon state was realized.
There is, however, an appearance of paradox in writing a history of Israel’s nuclear program: How can one write a history whose central characteristic is opacity? Can opacity be studied?
Some who were involved in the events discussed in the book have suggested that writing the history of Israel’s nuclear program was, for the time being, an “impossible task.” The archives of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), for example, are still sealed and are likely to remain so for many years. Without the IAEC archival material it is impossible to write a comprehensive history of Israel’s nuclear project. Recognizing that much of the technological and organizational sources were unavailable, I have chosen to focus on the political dimensions.5 This study is thus primarily an effort to reconstruct the domestic and international politics, and understand the culture, which gave rise to Israel’s posture of nuclear opacity. Within the limits of the available material and considerations of national security, it is possible to reconstruct the political history of Israel’s nuclear quest.6
Over the last three decades, Israel’s nuclear opacity has evolved into a national security strategy. It is considered by most Israelis to have been a successful policy, consonant with the complexity of Israel’s security situation. Nuclear opacity, however, has not been the product of a well-thought-out strategy. It grew in fits and starts in response to emerging needs and shifting pressures on different levels. Like much else in Israeli history, opacity is a product of a series of improvisations. It evolved in four stages from the mid-1950s to 1970: secrecy, denial, ambiguity, and opacity; and it had four sources: domestic, international, regional, and conceptual-technical.
The domestic sources of opacity are found in the dispositions of individuals, elite groups, and societal and cultural attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Though Ben Gurion did not think in terms of nuclear opacity, his attitudes were essential in shaping Israel’s nuclear stance. When the critical decisions concerning Dimona and related issues were made in 1957–58, Ben Gurion shared with his senior colleagues only the minimum amount of information necessary; it was only discussed on a “need to know” basis. Secrecy, concealment, and vagueness were Ben Gurion’s traits in dealing with nuclear matters, at home and abroad.
All Zionist parties, on the Left and Right alike, felt inhibited in voicing reservations in public regarding the nuclear project. Owing to the secrecy and technological complexity of the subject, few were competent and informed enough to debate the issue. Even those who understood Ben Gurion’s interest in a nuclear option were reluctant to discuss the issue in public. Notwithstanding some reservations, Zionist parties were committed to the imperative of kdushat ha-bitachon—the sanctity of security. For those few who did insist on debating the issue in public, the efforts of the military censor made it difficult to state their case properly. The taboo, however, was more self-imposed than imposed by law. It is among the most powerful societal sources of opacity, and it has endured to the present.
The drift toward opacity accelerated under Eshkol. The nuclear issue remained insulated from the rest of the domestic political agenda. Eshkol never brought the nuclear issue to the cabinet, except to get approval of his reorganization of the IAEC in 1966. Eshkol shifted Ben Gurion’s denial policy to a policy of ambiguity. In line with his promise to President Johnson not to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, Eshkol strengthened his commitment to conventional deterrence through arms purchases from the United States.
After the 1967 war Israel moved toward a “bomb-in-the-basement” posture. As domestic politics became less relevant to the nation’s nuclear policy, bureaucratic politics became more of a factor. It was the appointed guardians, not the politicians, who made the real decisions. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), for example, was hardly discussed in the cabinet. By 1970 a tradition had been established which held that the political arena was not the appropriate forum in which to decide the nation’s nuclear policy. This pattern, too, was an important tenet of opacity. Chapters 1–4, 8, 12, and 15 focus on these domestic sources of opacity.
Opacity was also shaped by Israel’s interactions with outside powers. In the early stages of the project, Israel’s relationship with France was essential to its embarking on the nuclear weapons path. France’s contribution to the Israeli project went beyond supplying materials and know-how. In Paris in the mid-1950s Shimon Peres and his associates learned how a democratic nation can become a nuclear state without making an explicit decision to do so. There were, as a result, many similarities between the French and Israeli treatment of nuclear issues. The French contribution to Israel’s nuclear project is described in chapters 3 and 4.
If France was the nation from which Israel learned how a democracy can go nuclear opaquely, then the United States was the superpower whose response to Israel’s nuclear program greatly shaped the way Israel stumbled into opacity. The record indicates that Israel’s manner of acquiring a nuclear capability, and the mode of nuclear proliferation it developed, were strongly influenced by the evolution of American nonproliferation policy in the 1960s.
The United States was not in a position to stop the Israeli nuclear program, but the American-Israeli security dialogue determined how Israel became a nuclear-weapon state. Israel did so opaquely, not overtly, in a way that was considerate of American policies and that avoided defying American nonproliferation policy. During the 1960s the United States and Israel groped for answers that would satisfy their strategic needs, national goals, and political requirements. The search continued for nearly a decade, marked by three pairs of leaders: Kennedy-Ben Gurion, Johnson-Eshkol, and Nixon-Meir. In a Hegelian dialectical path, the search progressed through three political phases: confrontation, ambiguity, and reconciliation. Israel’s nuclear opacity was the answer to this decade-long search.
The Israeli nuclear case was an important factor in the shaping and evolution of American nonproliferation policy throughout the 1960s. Israel was the first case of nuclear weapons proliferation with which the United States had to contend, outside Russia, Britain, France, and China, and at a time when the United States had not yet developed a coherent nonproliferation policy. Israel was a small, friendly state surrounded by larger enemies, and, unlike Germany—about whose nuclear ambitions the United States also worried—it was outside the sphere of superpower containment. Moreover, unlike the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France (and, later, China and India), Israel did not aspire to the status of a great power. Israel also enjoyed strong domestic support in the United States. The challenge of how to apply the American opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons to the complexity of the Israeli case had lasting effects, and was an important learning experience for three American administrations in their search for a coherent nonproliferation policy.
The American-Israeli security dialogue in the 1960s evolved around three issues: the supply of American conventional weapons to Israel; American assurances for Israeli security; and inhibitions on Israel’s nuclear program. On a few occasions the two parties were on the verge of collision, but a public showdown was avoided because neither wanted it. Through these episodes of confrontation and near-confrontation, the United States and Israel learned how to cope with the Israeli nuclear program. The nuclear relationship between the United States and Israel is covered in eight chapters, 5–7, 9–11, and 16–17.
The Israeli nuclear posture was also influenced by the Arab world, particularly Egypt. Israel had to be careful not to provoke the Arabs to develop their own nuclear weapons. Secrecy and ambiguity were essential to keep the Arabs at bay. It was also believed that if the Arabs became convinced that Israel was developing nuclear weapons, they would launch a preemptive attack on Dimona to prevent it. This concern was featured in American-Israeli discussions at the time. The United States was also concerned that Israeli nuclearization would lead to Soviet involvement in the nuclear escalation in the region, either by providing Egypt with nuclear weapons or by including it under the Soviet nuclear umbrella.
Apart from seemingly contributing to the escalation of the crisis that preceded the Six-Day War, the Israeli nuclear program did not become a major issue in the Arab world. As long as Israel kept a low profile, Arab governments and leaders tended to marginalize the issue. The Egyptian defeat in the 1967 war created circumstances that eased the Israeli drift from ambiguity to opacity. However, the Arab pattern of using Israeli opacity to maintain a low profile on the nuclear issue continued. In a peculiar way, the Arabs were also a partner, albeit a junior one, in the making of opacity. Chapter 13 discusses the reactions of the Arab world to Israel’s nuclear program.
Finally, an important aspect of the makeup of Israel’s nuclear opacity involved a cluster of conceptual-epistemic-technical issues concerning the definition of nuclear weapons: What constitutes a nation’s nuclear-weapon status? When is the nuclear-weapon threshold crossed? What is the meaning of Israel’s “nonintroduction” pledge?
In the case of all five declared nuclear states—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China—crossing the nuclear threshold was symbolized by a full-yield nuclear test. For years a nuclear test was taken as a necessary step in the nuclear proliferation ladder, both for technical and political reasons. Technically, the testing of a weapons system—any weapons system—was considered the last stage in the development process.7 Politically, the first full-yield nuclear test signifies the transition from secrecy to the public phase. A test provided a clear-cut and visible criterion for recognizing when and how the nuclear threshold had been crossed.
Nuclear proliferation was thus perceived as an either/or process: as long as a country did not conduct a full-yield test it was still given the benefit of the doubt concerning its nuclear status. Israel made its nuclear pursuit piecemeal and by taking advantage of this conceptualization of the proliferation process. It became a nuclear-weapon state, while avowing not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.
The issue of Israel’s nuclear status became more subtle after the 1967 war. At that time Israel was interested in changing the perception of its nuclear program without breaking its earlier pledges. During the battle over the NPT in October 1968, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Foreign Minister Abba Eban stated that Israel “has now acquired the technical know-how” to produce nuclear weapons, even though both emphasized, “it was a long way from this to producing nuclear weapons.”8 These statements, while leaving unclear the question of what Israel was doing in the nuclear field, conveyed the notion that Israel should be regarded as having a nuclear weapons capability or option.
These ambiguities became a matter of contention between the United States and Israel in late 1968, during the negotiations on the sale of the American F-4 Phantom jets. During the early period of the Nixon administration, questions were raised again about Israel’s commitment not to introduce nuclear weapons into the region, but not for long. By 1970 it was accepted that Israel was a nuclear-weapon state. I discuss these issues in chapters 16 and 17.
Israel chose a road less traveled to reach an independent nuclear deterrence capability. It was not a lonely road, however. This book is about that journey and Israel’s travel companions. The history I offer is incomplete and interpretative. Because of opacity, some aspects of the story can be traced only indirectly and circumstantially. Like black holes in cosmology or elementary particles in subatomic physics, opaque nuclear programs leave traces through their effects.
This work is not the last word on the subject, but rather an opening of a historical dialogue. Future historians, with access to more archival documentation, should be able to fill the gaps and correct the unavoidable mistakes. Even historians with access to all the archival material, however, will have difficulties reconstructing Israel’s nuclear history. In the early years many of the important decisions were made in secret and in oral discussions, leaving no paper trail.9 Such a secret history dies with those who made it or knew of it. Since opacity evolved through disinformation and subterfuge, often subtle, even insiders face difficulty in later years in distinguishing truth from fiction. The final word, therefore, is a call for skepticism.
In the end I am of two philosophical minds about the book. I believe that the history I offer is about what “actually” happened. I also recognize that it is ultimately a “story,” and all stories are mere interpretations. In the end, we are always within the hermeneutic circle. I stress the interpretative quality of this narrative not merely because of my own antipositivistic, skeptical outlook. It is derived primarily from the fact that Israel’s nuclear past remains fundamentally opaque, perhaps even to its own makers. It is a story about opacity.