Time for another reassessment

In light of the recent NPT Review Conference results, Israel should rethink the value of all US promises, regardless of how or where they were made.


Arye Eldad
Op-Ed/JPost
15 June '10

The term “reassessment” entered the diplomatic discourse between Israel and the United States in 1975. Secretary of state Henry Kissinger sought to pressure prime minister Yitzhak Rabin into an “interim agreement” with Egypt, by which IDF forces would withdraw from the Yom Kippur War cease-fire lines to the Mitla and Gidi passes in Sinai. Kissinger froze US arms shipments and hinted that more drastic measures would follow. Rabin was unfazed and took his case to the Senate. President Gerald Ford and Kissinger relented.

Even at the height of that crisis, the US did not dare to endanger the heart of its strategic understanding with Israel: its ambiguous nuclear policy. President Lyndon Johnson and prime minister Golda Meir set the policy in 1969 that has been followed by all the presidents and prime ministers since. This policy has often been articulated in written agreements between them, but occasionally simply by mutual understanding.


“Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East,” said prime ministers Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, and all who followed. US presidents have come and gone; sometimes they had questions, sometimes they asked for clarifications, but ultimately they all accepted the formula and agreed to abide by it. Until Barack Obama.

After his election, Obama promised Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to maintain the ambiguity. Two weeks ago he betrayed that promise.

On May 28, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which meets once every five years, called unanimously – with America’s support – for Israel to sign the treaty and open its nuclear installations to external supervision. Israel is not a signatory to the treaty; Iran is a signatory, yet Iran is rushing toward production of nuclear weapons. Syria and Libya are signatories, but their signatures have not prevented them from building uranium enrichment plants for military purposes.

North Korea built a bomb and tests nuclear weapons, mocking the entire world supposedly opposed to it. Pakistani scientists, led by the “father of the Pakistan’s nuclear bomb” Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold nuclear secrets and technology necessary for the building of nuclear weapons to Iran, Syria, Libya and possibly North Korea. In the face of this burgeoning industry, the US gave in to an Egyptian initiative and agreed to single out Israel as the country the world should be worried about. Israel alone was mentioned in the NPT Review Committee’s report. Apparently only its installations need to be examined.

THE TIME has come for a reassessment of US-Israeli relations. Israel may want the billions of dollars it receives in military aid from the US, and in the event of a long war, it may need the US munitions reserves currently stored here and resupply lines for the IDF; the US market is also of great importance for the economy; and US intervention often limits our international isolation. But the fact is, we can no longer rely on US support.

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