Opinion Editorials, December 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
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Israel’s WMD Arsenal
Arab News 24 December 2003
Colonel Qaddafi may not have intended it, but a further welcome development from his decision to end Libya’s weapons of mass destruction program has been to throw the spotlight on Israel’s own WMD arsenal.
It is an open secret that Israel is a nuclear power. Such technology as was not actually given to Israel — initially by the French and then by the Americans — was stolen from the US by Mossad spies. The highly secure nuclear center at Dimona has been the location of an Israeli nuclear program since 1958. The only firm evidence that the outside world has ever had came from an Israeli scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, who gave extensive details to a British newspaper in 1986. Kidnapped in Rome by Mossad agents, Vanunu was jailed for 18 years.
The reason that we know no more is that Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would make it subject to snap inspections by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Since the Israelis have avoided their international responsibility in the nuclear weapons sphere, it seems reasonable to assume that they have also been working on chemical and biological weapons, though doubtless they will pretend that such research has been for purely “defensive” purposes.
Saddam Hussein claimed just the same thing, even though it now seems clear that he no longer had a single WMD. Yet his country was invaded and his regime overthrown. Libya has chosen the wise course of admitting WMD programs and opening itself to international inspection, first of its nuclear facilities and then of its chemical and biological programs.
When can we expect to hear from the Israelis? It is clearly wrong that Israel should be the only state in the Middle East with WMD capability. For the sake of equity, Israel’s deadly program must first be revealed and then demolished. There can be no more excuse for Ariel Sharon to possess such a threatening arsenal than for Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi.
Or are we going to be treated to yet another depressing demonstration of US-sponsored double standard when it comes to Israel and the Arab world? Plucky little Israel, encompassed by Arabs, needs every defense it can beg, borrow or steal from its friends. Like the US-built Huey helicopters with their missiles which are used to defend Israel from Palestinian civilians; like the US-built warplanes that bomb Palestinian homes and hospitals; like the massive tanks that defend Israel from Palestinian children; like the communications and photographic surveillance information sent to Israel by Washington from US spy satellites, allowing Israelis to target individual members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad with awesome accuracy.
Libya has set an example of a WMD power coming in from the cold. Israel too must now rejoin the international community by signing the non-proliferation treaty and abandoning its WMD programs.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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