The State of Israel’s security concerns for its self-preservation since its creation in 1948, in a hostile neighborhood, has strongly influenced its policy and the region’s feelings towards weapons of mass destruction. In this paper we evaluate Israel’s scientific and technical capabilities to develop WMD, as well as the political intent to utilize this for offensive and/or defensive purposes.
The Israeli nuclear arsenal is linked to the optimal ability for deterrence and counter-strikes, if the state’s existence is threatened. Nuclear capability is central to Israel’s security. Despite this, Israel has never admitted possession of nuclear weapons although considerable and overwhelming evidence exist to the contrary. It is believed that Israel probably keeps its nuclear arsenal in an unassembled mode. If a situation was to arise which would require nuclear weapons, fully functional weapons could be completed in a matter of days. In addition to the nuclear warheads, Israel has developed an offensive chemical and biological warfare (CBW) arsenal. It is difficult to conclude if these offensive programs still remain active but there is no doubt that Israel has both the scientific know-how, and the industrial infrastructure to produce CBW if needed. Israel also has the capability to produce CBW in a relatively short timeframe, which could be complemented with chemical weapons (CW) agents produced in the past, if still stockpiled. The most likely present focus of the Israeli chemical and biological program is to develop agents for small-scale covert use, i.e., the so-called ‘dirty tricks’ program.
Israeli incentives for embarking on a scientific track to develop WMD were present and strong from the beginning of the states’ formation. The most central aspects of these incentives were the combination of being a small country with very limited resources (human and financial) together with the fact that Israel had no close allies in a hostile region where some neighboring Arab states denied it its right to exist. Israel initiated its programs in all fields of WMD with the knowledge that a significant CBW capability was the fastest option to reach a strategic impact, while the nuclear capability was being developed. Syria was probably the only actor in the region with a military capable WMD arsenal. Nonetheless, the Syrian capacity was not perceived by Israel as an existential threat that could motivate Tel Aviv to deploy chemical or biological weapons, even less so now that Syria was debilitated by its civil war. However, the possible development of a nuclear program in Iran has made Teheran a potential existential threat to Israel.
Israel’s nuclear program has contributed to a dead-lock with respect to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). From an outside perspective it is reasonable that an Israeli adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), could to a large degree serve Israeli interests in several aspects. However, the most likely rationale behind the continued position to ignore the conventions is that the ambiguous policy with regard to CBW still serves a vital purpose in Israel’s overall strategy of projecting a credible and massive deterrence capability. The deterrence policy, which constitutes a cornerstone in Israeli security strategy, seems to be shaped by the Israeli defense planners’ outlook that they simply cannot forsake any means of the ability to, through self-reliance, reassure the state of Israel’s future existence.
In the aftermath of 9/11 several issues came up with regards to WMD: the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, the disclosure of Iran’s efforts to conceal parts of its nuclear program, the disclosure of a Pakistani nuclear proliferation network with links to the Middle East, the Libyan decision to open its offensive programs for international inspections, new non-proliferation and counter proliferation strategies from the West, and an overall increased concern for terrorists acquiring WMD. These events have generated an increased focus on WMD in the Middle East, and on non-democratic states sponsoring terrorism.
In this paper we shall only highlight the aspects of Israel’s threat perceptions and strategies that are considered to express the state’s position with regard to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Other aspects of significant Israeli threat perspectives such as terrorism, shrinking Jewish majority and dilemmas concerning natural resources, are not covered here.
The creation of the Jewish state was dramatic and modest at the same time. Its territory was smaller than Wales, its population hardly exceeded half a million people and the country was surrounded by hostile neighbors. The initial task was to secure the survival of the new state, and the tools at hand were minimal. Hence the directives from the state’s first Prime and Defense Minister David Ben Gurion in April 1948 to one of his operatives in Europe to recruit Jewish scientists who could “either increase the capacity to kill masses or to cure masses: both things are important”.
The newly formed state’s first objectives were based on four precepts: procurement of military supplies, availability of financial support, the movements of immigrants, and the enlistment of international goodwill.
Threat perception has traditionally been divided into two levels. The first level constituted the existential threat that imperiled the very existence of Israel. The sources of this threat have traditionally been constituted by the Arab states who have attempted to invade a few times. The second level of threat was termed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as the ‘current threat’ or challenges to daily life of the Israelis. During Israel’s first four decades the “current threat” referred to border clashes with the armies of the Arab states. Since late 1980s this level is referring to the Palestinian uprising and fundamentalist Islamic groups targeting Israel and Israelis worldwide.
Terrorism by Islamic fundamentalism and the Palestinian uprising are the main security dilemmas that Israel is facing on a daily basis. Israel has increased its defense expenditures during the years of recession (1996-2003) mainly as a consequence of the second Intifada, initiated in September 2000. Heavy cutbacks on governmental non-military expenditures made this possible.
A coalition of Arab armies was regarded as the worst-case scenario during Israel’s first three decades, with the 1948 War of Independence highlighting this fact. During the mid-1950s, Israeli troops were outnumbered at a rate of 25 to 1, and the quantity of its military equipment was at a ratio of 3 to 1 in favor of the Arab states. In 1955, a massive arms deal between the Soviet Union and Egypt, through Czechoslovakia, contributed heavily to the imbalance between Israel and the Arab states. The sudden inflow of advanced Soviet armaments to Egypt came as a horrifying shock to Israel, whose security margins always had been precarious. At this time the United States continued to abide by its policy of an abstention from arms supplies to the contending parties in the Middle East. It would take until the Kennedy administration before the U.S. decided to supply Israel with weapon systems. In 1956, as Ben Gurion started to prepare the nation for war with Egypt, he instructed the Defense Ministry to track all possible sources for weapon systems and technology urgently needed by Israel.
There has been a 40 % increase in military expenditures in the Middle East region during the last decade, foremost as a consequence of heightened tension in the region over Iraq, Syria, Daesh, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite this fact, during the same period there has been a decline of the armed forces amongst the Arab countries with a historical grudge towards Israel. The neighbors armed forces has stagnated, or become weaker for several reasons, including massive political changes, US-Russia relations, lack of financial resources, imposed sanctions, etc. Also, Egypt’s dependence on the U.S. for both financial and military resources make a military confrontation with Israel highly unrealistic under present circumstances.
Israel is formally still in a state of war with Syria and Lebanon, but the overall security policy developments in the region and the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, have dramatically lessened the prospects of a future armed confrontation with neighboring Arab states. Israel’s currently most pressing security dilemma is the long conflict with the Palestinians and militant Islamic fundamentalists. An emerging existential threat to Israel is posed by the Iranian development of a nuclear capabilities and support of terrorism.
Israel never signed the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Conventions (BTWC), and never explained the reasons behind its refusal. In fact, Israel has never issued a public policy statement on Biological Weapons and maintains a policy ambiguity. In the beginning of the 1990s the Bush administration made an effort to get Israel, Syria and Egypt to sign and ratify all the relevant WMD treaties existing at that time. Israel referred to national security when the BTWC was on the agenda. Israel signed the CWC 1993, but has not ratified the convention.
The Israeli military capability was foremost focused on an offensive warfare as this mode of warfare always has been considered by Israeli strategists to be the most efficient way of compensating from the state’s precarious strategic position regarding terrain, lack of manpower, poor finances, and absence of allies. The Israel view is that offensive capabilities provide better prospects of deterring the outbreak of war.
The strategy is to dissuade its enemies from initiating a war by using the IDF’s relative superiority in the tactical field and in rapid development of technological platforms. If this fails, they initiate pre-emptive strikes in order to neutralize the aggressor’s forces and remove the immediate threat.
There exists almost universal consensus among analysts that Israel has the largest nuclear weapons arsenal outside of the five states declared as nuclear weapon states in the NPT. Some apparently well-informed sources also claim that Israel has developed an offensive BC-capacity. Moreover, Israel together with North Korea, have the worst record in the world when it comes to signing and ratifying multilateral WMD treaties. Israel is one of only four states outside of the NPT and has signed, but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
When discussing a country’s biological and chemical weapons programs it should be stressed that the two conventions banning this type of weapons entered into force in 1975 (BTWC) and in 1997 (CWC), respectively. Development of BW and CW capacity before this time does not breach any international treaties. The 1925 Geneva Protocol does ban “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases” and “the use of bacteriological methods of warfare”, but has no implications in the research, production, stockpiling or destruction of such weapons or agents. It should be observed that Israel as a non-member of both BTWC and CWC does not breach these treaties by stockpiling B or C agents.
The nuclear capability is central to Israel’s present deterrence. The nuclear development was initiated after independence and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission was created in the spring of 1952. The agreement to start building the Dimona research reactor, which was to become central for the nuclear development, was signed by France and Israel in October 1957.
Dimona was not publicly disclosed until 1960 when a statement was issued in the Israeli Knesset. In a meeting on April 2, 1963, Shimon Peres assured the U.S. President Kennedy that “we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first”. This remark, and slightly different versions of it, has since then been repeated over and over again by Israeli officials. In March 1965, it appeared for the first time in a document, a U.S.-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding. Kennedy also persuaded Israel to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August 1963, in which signatories promised not to perform atmospheric nuclear weapon tests. By late 1966 or early 1967, the reprocessing plant at Dimona had produced enough plutonium for Israel’s first nuclear device. By the Six-Day War in June 1967, it is believed that Israel had prepared a couple of nuclear devices that could have been delivered to a target by an airplane. Towards the end of Johnson’s Presidency, the U.S. was trying to persuade Israel to sign the NPT which had been opened for signature in mid-1968. Israel took part in the negotiations and in return for their signing Tel Aviv was seeking U.S. Phantom jets to strengthen its conventional weapons capacity. In addition, Israel wanted an American guarantee to maintain Israel’s military superiority in the Middle East and to shield Israel from Soviet aggression. Despite never signing the NPT, Israel received U.S. fighter jets. With the change of presidents in January 1969, the NPT issue quietly disappeared from the U.S.-Israeli agenda. Both President Nixon and his security advisor Henry Kissinger were ready to accept that Israel needed nuclear weapons for its own security.
The nuclear issue also disappeared from the Israeli internal political debate after 1967. There are reports of Israeli observers being allowed at French nuclear weapons tests during 1960-64. Thus, Israel then probably also received firsthand information on nuclear device construction. There are also indications of an Israeli nuclear weapons test in the Indian Ocean in 1979.
After Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 supplied the British newspaper The Sunday Times with a set of photographs of the reprocessing plant at Dimona, until then hidden from the public, there has been little doubt among analysts concerning the success of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Today, it is estimated that Israel has an arsenal in the range of 100-200 warheads. Understandably, it is difficult to estimate the nuclear weapon arsenals of the known nuclear states since very few details concerning nuclear weapons usually are made public. Naturally, it is then even more difficult to estimate a program that does not officially exist.
It seems quite certain that Israel has at least developed its nuclear force for delivery by aircrafts, such as F16 and F-4E-2000, and by the land-based missiles Jericho I and Jericho II. The Jericho II, which was deployed in 1990, has a range of 1 500 - 4 000 km as compared to its predecessor’s 500-km range. The three modern submarines, the Dolphin, the Leviathan, and the Tekumah, which were delivered to Israel in 1999-2000, appears to have given Israel a third pillar of nuclear defense. Whereas the first two submarines were paid for by Germany, because Scuds shot at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War were equipped with warheads at least partially developed by German firms, the Tekumah was financed by Israel itself. In 2004, Israel and Germany signed a deal for two more submarines for delivery not earlier than 2008. Already in 2000, Israeli tests with nuclear-capable cruise missiles were reported to have taken place in the Indian Ocean.
A fourth line of Israeli nuclear arms development may be tactical nuclear weapons such as landmines and artillery shells. There are no indications of an Israeli development of deeply-penetrating nuclear weapons. For obvious reasons, such a development would be of interest regarding Israel’s line of action towards Iran.
The present Israeli doctrine for use of nuclear weapons is unknown. In the past the use of nuclear weapons was reserved for situations with an existential threat against the State of Israel such as:
Arab military penetration into populated areas within Israel’s post-1949 borders;
The destruction of the Israeli Air Force;
Massive attacks with biological and chemical weapons on Israeli cities
The use of nuclear weapons against Israeli territory.
To summarize, it is indisputable that Israel has a nuclear capability and it is equally indisputable that the current Israeli position towards possession of nuclear weapons is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.
With regards to other types of WMD, Israel’s track record of the use of non-conventional weapons stems back to the time of the foundation of the nation. There are well-grounded accusations of Israeli use of biological agents to prevent reoccupation of conquered Arab villages during 1948. Bacteria causing dysentery and typhoid were mentioned as agents of choice. Outbreaks of cholera in Egypt in November 1947 and on the Palestine-Syrian border in February 1948 have also been ascribed to biological warfare by Israel.
A biological warfare unit, ‘Hemed Beit’, was formed within the IDF Science Corps as early as 1948. The CBW capacity was probably seen as a relatively fast way to develop a nonconventional capacity while the nuclear program matured. It is claimed that in 1955 Ben-Gurion initiated a project to more quickly develop a non-conventional weapons capacity that would be more rapidly available than the nuclear option. There is one unconfirmed report that Israeli scientists visited a French testing site for CBW in the Algerian Sahara around 1960. Another rare reference to actual Israeli testing of CW is later found in a 1990 report by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the report Israel maintains a CW testing facility in the Negev desert.
There is other information and events that point to the fact that Israel had ongoing offensive CW programs. The Economist Foreign Report, in an article that discusses Israel advising China in conventional and CW matters, states in 1984 that Israel now has stockpiles of nerve agents, mustard gas and several riot-control agents. These stockpiles are said to be a response to the alleged Egyptian use of CW (mustard gas and tear gas) in the Yemenite civil war in 1963-67. In 1992, an Israeli El Al cargo Boeing 747 crashed in a residential area in Amsterdam, killing 43 people. Six years later, the aftermath of this tragedy gave a rare insight into the Israeli CW research when it was finally officially admitted that the airplane had carried a precursor chemical for the nerve gas sarin. It was revealed that the plane was on route to Israel from the U.S. Apparently the chemical, 190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), had been sold by an American company to IIBR and an export license had been obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 1998, an Israeli military source is quoted to have said that Israeli crews of F-16 fighters, within minutes of receiving the command to attack, have been trained to load active chemical or biological weapons on their airplanes.
It is believed that Israel does not stockpile or mass-produce biological weapons today. However, Israel has the capability to produce biological weapons and CW. The knowledge base was built during the 1950s and 1960s but today’s technology can be used to upgrade potential BW and CW agents and their behavior in the environment. There is, however, no conclusive evidence that show that Israel’s offensive programs still remain active today. By active offensive CBW programs we mean:
an active R&D to develop and/or improve warfare agents;
the development of improved production techniques for specific warfare agents;
the optimization of agents for large-scale dissemination in the environment;
continuously ongoing production of specific warfare agents and weaponization of these agents;
continuously upgrading deployed operational weapons and storage depots for bulk agents to be used in weapons or the ready-made operational weapons.
The advanced pharmaceutical industry in Israel can provide the country with valuable knowledge on production of biological agents and formulation of aerosolized biological material. Besides a production capacity, a country that is proliferating within the BW field is also, among other things, helped by domestic strain collections for microorganisms and large animal facilities.
The establishment in Ness Ziona with all the secrecy around that facility clearly indicates that activities were going on in the past that was not supposed to be transparent for the public. The great reluctance to talk about the establishment still exists and scientists from Israel do barely want to touch on the subject at international scientific meetings. Our assessment is that the main portion of the biological research performed in Ness Ziona today is for BW protection.
A more modern example covert use of CW is the assassination attack on the Hamas leader in Amman 1997. According to press sources, the Israeli security agents attempted to assassinate the Jordan based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. The reported plot was to spray a suitable dose of the anesthetic Fentanyl in the ear of Meshal. The chemical would then be absorbed by the skin and later cause his death. By then, it would be hard to forensically detect the deadly agents in the victim. The attack was conducted more or less as planned, but was noticed by bystanders, which in the end led to the arrest of the two perpetrators and four others fled to the Israeli Embassy. The event led to a serious diplomatic crisis between Israel and Jordan, and in the end, Israel revealed what chemical that had been used. Fentanyl was later used by Russian authorities in the Moscow Dubrovka theatre siege in 2002 to try to sedate the hostage takers, but with well-known fatal consequences.
In conclusion, it seems that Israel does not have an active production of ‘traditional’ CW agents today. However, as stated above many indications exist that Israel has had an advanced CW program in the past, including nerve agents. Chemical agents and weapons produced within this program could very well still be functional and stockpiled today. If such stockpiles exist depends on the quality and type of agents and weapons produced in the past program. The advanced CW program could very well have been developing binary nerve agents which are very suitable for long-time storage. However, no hard evidence exists that can confirm this type of agents. The potential Israeli CW stockpiles would not be deployed at military installations, such as airfields, but rather centrally stored ready to be transported to suitable locations if needed.