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Israeli nukes, their history and politics



In July 1956 President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal.

This was a major event in world politics – and history.

Anthony Eden's government in Britain and Guy Mollet's government in France saw this as a major blow to their prestige and interests.

They decided to invade Egypt, overthrow Nasser, seize the Canal and hand it back to the Suez Canal Company, in which they were major shareholders. Most British and French citizens opposed this policy. They did not want their sons to risk their lives in a war for a colonial empire in which they no longer believed. After WW2 the era of empires and colonies was over. The people of the colonies had information, and ability, to become free, and struggles for national liberation started in every colony of Britain, France, Portugal, Holland, and Belgium.

The US too opposed an invasion of Egypt. It wanted Egypt to join the Baghdad Pact directed against the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union provided arms and political support to many liberation struggles against colonial powers. It financed and helped to build the high ham in Aswan. Nasser didn't want to antagonize it. He refused to join the Baghdad Pact.

The US wanted to change his policy by economic pressure, not by force.

So Eden and Mollet decided to disguise their war as a "peace keeping operation".

They agreed with Ben-Gurion, Israel's PM, that Israel will invade Egypt, seize the Sinai Peninsula and approach the Suez Canal from the east. Then Britain and France will issue an ultimatum to both Israel and Egypt to withdraw 10 miles from either side of the Canal, to "ensure freedom of passage in the Canal to ships of all nations". They knew Nasser could not accept this ultimatum while Egypt was invaded, but Ben-Gurion will accept it, as it invited him to annex the Sinai.

Ben-Gurion flew to Paris on 22.10.1956 and signed this secret pact with Eden and Mollet.. In Israel he denied he had done so, and kept denying this till his death in 1973.

So too did Shimon Peres, who only admitted it 30 years later, in 1986.

Israel, itself a product of British imperial politics in the Middle-East in WW1, always depended on political, financial, and military support of foreign powers dominating the Middle East. The military presence of the British Army in the region enhanced Israel's security. BG opposed the departure of the British from Egypt, Iraq, Cyprus, and Jordan and of the French Army from Algeria and Tunisia. .The Israeli secret service used contacts with Jewish communities in North Africa to help the French in their war against the liberation movements in Algeria, and Tunisia.

Most Israeli citizens did not know about these clandestine operations and would have opposed them had they known about them. BG was aware of this and therefore withheld the truth from them. In 1956 most Israelis opposed collaboration with colonial powers. So BG sent Shimon Peres - who was not a member of the Cabinet or Knesset - as his personal messenger - to France to bypass the Cabinet, the Knesset, and the Press. One of the bonuses France offered Israel was construction of a nuclear reactor in Israel capable of producing plutonium for nuclear bombs.

BG was afraid the majority in the Knesset and in his Cabinet would oppose his decision to invade Egypt, and likewise his decision to produce nuclear weapons in Israel. He kept both decision secret. Peres never informed the Cabinet or the Knesset about his negotiations in Paris.

He commuted between Paris and Jerusalem to negotiate the military agreement between BG, Mollet and Eden, report only to B.G.

On October 29, 1956, Israeli paratroopers commanded by Ariel Sharon landed in the Sinai, Israel seized the peninsula as planned and reached the Suez Canal. Eden and Mollet issued their ultimatum and their troops invaded the Suez Canal zone. It seemed as if the plan was going to succeed. But US President Eisenhower was outraged and forced Israel, Britain, and France to withdraw from Egypt. The war ended in a fiasco. Britain and France ceased to be counted among "The four great powers". The era of the Two Superpowers - USA and USSR - has begun.

Eden and Mollet had to resign but BG stayed in power, presenting his war to the Israelis as a "preventive war" that prevented an Egyptian attack on Israel. Actually, Nasser had offered BG Peace rather than a war…

He did this in a public statement at the Bandung Conference in 1955.

Despite being forced by the US to withdraw from the Sinai (and from the Gaza strip) BG (and Peres) considered the construction of the nuclear reactor in Dimona by France to be a major achievement well worth the losses in this war.