Questions whether Israel considered atomic blast

Research suggesting Israel may have considered detonating an atomic device on the eve of the Six-Day War 50 years ago to deter its Arab neighbors sparked debate and denials yesterday. Israel’s presumed status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear-armed nation remains a highly taboo subject for the country, which neither confirms nor denies such capability. The foreign ministry declined to comment, but one minister who has also written a book on the Six-Day War dismissed the claim.

Research by Avner Cohen, a historian who specializes in Israel’s nuclear program, sparked the debate coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, fought from June 5-10, 1967. The research was published yesterday on the website of the US-based Wilson Center think tank, whose work includes tracking nuclear proliferation. Findings were also published over the weekend in the New York Times.

Cohen’s research includes interviews with Yitzhak Yaakov, a retired Israeli brigadier general who had been head of weapons research and development. Yaakov, who died in 2013, told Cohen that in 1967 he came up with a plan called “Samson” or “Shimshon” in Hebrew that would involve detonating an “improvised” atomic device purely as a warning. Yaakov stressed that Israel had not yet developed a nuclear bomb. The plan called for it to be detonated atop a mountain in the eastern Sinai Peninsula some 20 km from the Abu Ageila Egyptian strategic military complex.

Cohen wrote that “a small paratroop force would have diverted the attention of the Egyptian army in the area to allow the team to prepare the nuclear demonstration upon an order from both the prime minister and the chief of staff”.

The blast would have been seen “for many tens (of) kilometres throughout the Sinai and the Negev” desert, he wrote. “Look, it was so natural,” a transcript on the Woodrow Center’s website quoted Yaakov as saying. —AFP