Palestinians want Israel to rid itself of nuclear weapons in final status agreement
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 1/10/2000

The Palestinians plan to demand the inclusion of a special clause in the final status agreement with Israel that would prevent Israel from keeping its nuclear arsenal.

Palestinian sources said Sunday that in the event of a permanent settlement being reached with Israel, the latter has to join a regional agreement by which all Middle Eastern countries pledge to rid themselves of their nuclear weapons, as part of the security arrangements that should prevail in the Middle East after such an agreement is signed.

Israeli sources said that the Palestinian delegates to the final status talks have already presented to their Israeli counterparts a working paper that included the demands from Israel to clean itself from nuclear weapons. According to the Palestinian document, Israel is to be compelled to sign an agreement that forbids the possession of nuclear weapons.

Various international sources, including US intelligence reports, assess that Israel has at least 200 nuclear bombs that are fully operational and can be used any minute. Israel also has the missile capacity to deliver those bombs to any destination in the Arab states. Therefore, Palestinian sources said, it is totally inconceivable to sign a peace treaty with Israel while the latter keeps its nuclear arsenal and continues to threaten stability in the Middle East.

"All of the Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, must commit, within the framework of an international treaty, to relinquishing their weapons of mass destruction, in order to establish a safe area that is free from nuclear weapons," read the Palestinian document. It also asked Israel to undertake, upon signing the final status arrangement agreement, not to proliferate nuclear weapons.

Israeli officials blame Egypt for standing behind the Palestinian demand. They noted that Egyptian officials have spoken openly and on a number of occasions against Israel's nuclear weapons and have demanded that the Jewish state should close its atomic reactor in Dimona.

For a number of years now, Egypt has been leading the Arab battle to rid Israel and the region of its nuclear arsenal. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is considered to be the chief supporter of President Yasser Arafat who consults frequently with Mubarak.

Israel has for decades refrained from commenting on international reports about its nuclear arsenal, and successive Israeli prime ministers have always argued that leaving the question ambiguous would help maintain what they called Israel's deterrent power against the Arab countries. The first official reference by Israel to its nuclear arsenal was made four years ago when then Prime Minister Shimon Peres suggested to swap Israel's nuclear power with a permanent peace treaty with the Arab world. "Give me peace and I will give up our nuclear weapons," Peres told a closed meeting of newspaper and television editors. Many senior officers in the defense establishment then criticized Peres's remarks and said that their prime minister had broken the code of secrecy on Israel's nuclear capacity and has helped Israel's critics all over the world.

Officials in the prime minister's office confirmed that they were presented with the Palestinian demands and said that the Israeli delegates had refused to respond instantly to the request. The matter, sources in Ehud Barak's office said, is currently being discussed. They said that the Palestinian delegates had submitted their presentation of their view of the future of the Middle East in terms of security issues. "The Palestinians said that they saw the Middle East without nuclear or other non-conventional weapons," the sources said.

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