Aside from occasional references, matters rested until 1986. That year the experts were sent scurrying back to their figures by the defection of Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona plant. From the point of view of the mass media, Vanunu’s greatest significance consisted in that he made available the first pictures of Israel’s highly sophisticated plutonium separation plant, thus filling in a critical gap in the puzzle that had mystified experts since the sixties. To those in the know, however, two other points were more important.30 First, it appeared that the capacity of the reactor had been enlarged at least once. Based on these calculations, it should have been able to produce much more plutonium than originally thought; this caused the estimate of the number of bombs already built to be revised, up to as many as 100-200.31 Second, Israel apparently had been interested in lithium deutride; indeed heavy isotopes of hydrogen were later said to have been among the materials Israel provided South Africa.32 This in turn indicated plans to build hydrogen bombs (either true fusion devices or so-called boosted fission devices with lithium cores), neutron bombs, or tactical nuclear weapons. Supposing it weighed about a half-ton, a warhead belonging to any one of the three types would have explained the Rabin government’s decision to purchase short-range but deadly accurate Lance missiles from the United States.33 At any rate, in principle Israel should have been able to pursue all three courses simultaneously had it wanted to.
If Israel, as foreign reports have claimed, did in fact acquire its first nuclear devices before the Six Day War, then its only delivery vehicle would have been the French-made Vautour light bombers available at the time (assuming, that is, a bomb weighing no more than a ton and also that IAI would have had the capacity to carry out the necessary modifications). In 1968-1970 these aircraft were joined by Skyhawks and Phantoms, both of which possessed much larger ordnance payloads. At any rate, and in light of the losses it took during the war, the IAF cannot have felt comfortable with aircraft as the only delivery vehicle.
Long before, in fact, Israel had started work on the development of surface-to-surface missiles.34 From the late fifties on, RAFAEL was designing and building a solid-fuel, two-stage meteorological rocket capable of carrying a five-pound (two-kg) payload to an altitude of sixty-five miles. A test-firing took place in July 1961, the timing dictated by the need to forestall the Egyptians displaying their missiles (which did not work) on Revolution Day. Observers outside Israel were left to speculate on what would happen if the Israelis succeeded in marrying their rocket to a nuclear warhead. In fact the subsequent fate of Shavit (Comet) 2, as the rocket was known, is not clear (published accounts of its development end with the test launch). It cannot have been judged a great success, or else Shimon Peres in September 1962 would scarcely have signed a contract with the French company Dassault to develop a 280-mile-range, two-stage surface-to-surface missile capable of carrying a 750-kg warhead.
According to journalist Seymour Hersh, work on the missiles’ underground storage tubes was approaching completion in December 1967 when Dayan gave orders for Yigal Allon to be allowed to visit them—the idea being to convert the minister who previously had been among the bomb’s staunchest opponents.35 A recent Dassault publication claims that when de Gaulle imposed his embargo in January 1969, only prototypes and parts were ready and were subsequently delivered to Israel in spite of the French president’s orders.36 At the time the October War broke out, some of the missiles may or may not have been operational,37 but for our purpose it matters little. The main point is that if foreign sources may be believed, at some moment during the seventies Israel’s efforts led to the deployment at Chirbet Zachariya, a remote area in the Judean foothills, of nuclear-tipped surface-to-surface missiles. They had the range to reach the capitals of each neighbor (although, in the case of Cairo, with little to spare).
Against this background, the entire character of the Arab-Israeli conflict began to change. Already in the early sixties some Arab commentators had concluded that stalemate would ensue should Israel obtain nuclear weapons; any hope of wiping the Zionist entity off the map would vanish forever. Faced with the need to recover lost territory, between 1967 and 1973 the Egyptians in particular did their best to close their eyes to the strong probability that an Israeli bomb already existed, going so far as to insist that any reports on the matter were merely part of an Israeli psychological warfare campaign. In the wake of the October War, however, such an attitude became more and more difficult to sustain. What is more, if it had been sustained it would have begged the real question: Why did the “victorious” Arabs not husband all their resources and launch another war modeled on the 1973 one (as was demanded, for example, by the former Egyptian chief of staff, Saad Shazly)?
For its part, Israel during these years maintained its official line and continued to insist that it would not be the first to introduce the bomb into the Middle East. Nevertheless, from time to time hints concerning Israel’s nuclear capability were dropped as if by accident. Thus, in December 1974 Pres. Efrayim Katsir—a founder of TAAS and former member of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission—answered a question concerning the existence of nuclear weapons by saying that civilian and nuclear energy were inseparable.38 In March 1976 a story concerning a state of nuclear alert that Israel had allegedly proclaimed during the October War surfaced in Time and was reprinted word for word on the front page of Israel’s daily (itself a remarkable occurrence since the IDF censor has the power to prevent such publication and often used it in the past). On both occasions relations with Syria happened to be particularly tense, and the IDF mobilized its reserves. I leave it to the reader to guess whether there are grounds for assuming these facts are connected.
According to two Israeli specialists who have studied the matter, “The period between 1977 and 1986 [the Vanunu revelations] was characterized above all by the elimination of any doubt in the Arab world as to the existence of an Israeli bomb and the possibility that Israel might use it in case of an existential threat.”39 In fact, references to the question began to multiply almost immediately after the October War; thus the editor of Egypt’s Al Aharam (and Nasser’s former minister of information), Muhamad Heikal, wrote that Israel’s “defeat” in that conflict would cause it to place greater reliance on nuclear weapons.40 Writing in a Lebanese newspaper toward the middle of 1974, a retired Syrian intelligence officer, Mohammed Ayubi, presented a similar line of thought. In his opinion the October War had shattered Tel Aviv’s belief in the superiority of its conventional arms. Accordingly, should there be another clash it might well resort to the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.41
Although spokesmen in both Cairo and Damascus thus agreed on the danger of launching another 1973-style attack on Israel, the conclusions they drew differed. In the case of Egypt, the near certainties that an Israeli bomb existed and that its use could not be ruled out seem to have played important roles in the events that led to the Camp David Accords (even though this could never be acknowledged since it would make peace look very much like a surrender).42 The position of Syria was more difficult. Rabin’s government had shown itself prepared to move toward peace with Egypt by relinquishing part of the Sinai. However, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon was a representative of the Jordan Valley settlements; coming from Ginossar on the shore of Lake Galilee, he vehemently opposed any return of the Golan Heights. Besides, the Israelis reserved special hatred for the Syrians, regarded as the most implacable of their enemies. Had not Israeli prisoners taken during the fifties been savagely tortured and finally returned as madmen? Begin, who took over from Rabin in 1977, was even more determined to retain the Golan Heights. In 1980 he passed a law through the Knesset, formally annexing it to Israel.
Thus, since Israel’s attachment to the Golan was stronger than to the Sinai, even had the Syrians wanted to—which was and remains doubtful—they would have found the road to peace more difficult than for the Egyptians. While Sadat was taking that road, Assad on various occasions still talked about t
he need for a military solution that, he claimed, was being prepared. To do so he had to convince himself and his audience that a way existed to implement such a solution without risking nuclear war. A careful reading of his statements between the mid-seventies and late eighties shows him toying with several possibilities.43 At times he returned to the pre-1967 notion of a popular war, using Algeria, Vietnam, “and other countries which I do not wish to mention” as analogous cases.44 At times he insisted that since Israel was such a small country it would not be able to use any nuclear weapons it had.45 At other times he referred to something called “strategic parity,” either announcing that the Arabs too would acquire nuclear weapons or appearing to put his trust in chemical warfare as a means for offsetting the Israeli nuclear threat.46 Finally, in 1985 he seems to have tried to obtain a nuclear guarantee from the Soviet Union.47 Judging by the fact that new hostilities have not broken out a quartercentury after the 1973 October War, none of these “solutions” seems to have been satisfactory. Moreover, there is no reason to think that the Arabs are more capable of finding their way out of the nuclear predicament than were the superpowers during the Cold War.
Partly because of the looming if unacknowledged nuclear factor, partly for other reasons, in the late seventies Israel’s strategic position was becoming “completely different” (in the words of Ezer Weizman).48 First came the peace talks with Egypt, which were crowned by the Camp David Accords. Following the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, the peninsula was demilitarized and the pre-1967 situation restored in many respects. The Israelis no longer confronted the Egyptians eyeball-to-eyeball; instead more than one hundred miles of desert terrain and a small UN force separated the former enemies in the south. Last but not least, Israel was able to retain the Gaza Strip. Consequently it no longer had Egypt’s army standing within fifty miles of Tel Aviv.
To replace the two modern airfields that the IAF had to return to Egypt (not allowed to be used for military purposes) the United States financed and helped build two better ones inside the Negev Desert. Though Sharm al-Sheikh had to be surrendered, so long as peace lasted the opening of the Suez Canal enabled Israel’s navy to transfer warships between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea for the first time. Militarily Egypt was now more or less out of the picture; although its army remains strong in regional terms, it is difficult to imagine it engaging in major hostilities against Israel without the support of a superpower, which, of course, it no longer has. To be sure, it was still necessary to take some precautions. But when the Israelis invaded Lebanon, Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubaraq, did not stir.
On the eastern front, the same was true of Iraq. Its nuclear potential aside, throughout the seventies its growing conventional power had bothered the IDF. The latter did not forget how Iraqi expeditionary forces had participated in most wars from 1948 through 1973. Some IDF commanders even argued that it had been the Iraqi expeditionary force that had stopped the drive toward Damascus in 1973,49 although how so few (one brigade) could have achieved so much against so many (two divisions) remains unclear. Be this as it may, in 1980 Saddam Hussein engaged in a murderous war against Iran and for several years thereafter appeared to be on the brink of defeat. Israel for its part did not conceal its delight: Chief of Staff Eytan at one point said that “both sides are so stubborn—may they go on [fighting each other].” This left Syria and, at a pinch, Jordan with whose king Begin was unable to establish the kind of rapport that Rabin and Allon had enjoyed.50 However, by 1979, Israel was outspending both countries combined by a ratio of 3:2;51 measured in terms of accumulation of military capital, the ratio was 1.46:1.52
Traditionally Israel had regarded itself, not without justification, as a small island amid an Arab sea. Whatever the underlying “strategic” realities, its public can be excused for regarding itself as subject to destruction at the hands of pitiless Arab hordes bent not only on eliminating the state but also on physically killing its people. In 1948 this feeling motivated the young Rabin when he had made “an inner resolution to devote my life so that never again will Israel be caught unprepared for war which may be forced on us, but will be prepared to fight back with well-trained soldiers and the best available weapons.”53 The feeling of imminent disaster prevailed during the horrible weeks preceding the 1967 Six Day War and again during April-May 1970 (when there were ominous signs that the USSR might intervene in the War of Attrition while the West, judging by its record in Czechoslovakia in 1968, would do nothing). The climax came during and immediately after the 1973 October War, when there was much talk of the Holocaust syndrome and the Masada complex.
But during the years under discussion, this feeling began to fade away. Some, among them Bar Lev and Weizman, felt that the seemingly unending cycle of wars was finally about to be broken.54 Others, such as Ariel Sharon, were less optimistic but basked in the IDF’s newly found power; during his tenure as minister of defense he stated that Israel was capable of overrunning the entire Arab Middle East from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf.55 Always tending to be stout, by now he had developed almost preternatural girth. The minister of defense appeared to personify the new IDF; perhaps no longer lean, it was definitely mean. However, in this case as in so many others the outcome of hubris was tragedy. In June 1982 the mighty military machine Israel had built was destined to be thrown away in the one country, and against the one opponent, where it stood no chance and was foredoomed to defeat.
“The Lebanese Morass”: “I went to Beirut a-Hunting Arabs.”
CHAPTER 17
“THE LEBANESE MORASS”
UNTIL 1968 the Israel-Lebanon border had been the most peaceful. Indeed Israeli politicians often said that Lebanon would be the second Arab country to conclude peace with Israel, presumably after a larger neighbor showed the way. In that year, however, the quiet was interrupted when the Palestine Liberation Organization started using the country’s southern districts—including in particular the difficult terrain on the foothills of Mount Chermon—as a base for terrorist operations against Israel. Over the next year or two a dreary pattern emerged.1 Various Arab guerrilla organizations such as al Fatach, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Syrian-supported al Saiqa would rocket and infiltrate and ambush and plant mines. Not then or later did they achieve any strategic gains, but they did inflict military and civilian casualties.
Seeking to counter the threat, IDF Northern Command would patrol, shell, bomb, and raid. Some of its operations were aimed directly at the guerrillas in the field. Others sought to hit the villages and refugee camps that gave them shelter and in which their headquarters, recruitment areas, training grounds, and arms stores were allegedly located. From time to time an exasperated Israel sought to counter the threat with larger measures, using the IAF and navy to strike deep into Lebanon or mounting miniature invasions. For example, on May 12, 1969, two columns of some one hundred vehicles crossed the border. Supported from the air, they occupied a forty-five-square-mile area opposite Kiryat Shmona, held it for thirty-four hours, and screened the population of the six villages it contained. After killing twenty presumed guerrillas, the Israelis withdrew. The enemy remained undaunted, however, and less than twelve hours later, mortar rounds and rockets were again falling on Israeli soil.
Then and later, some of the attacks were launched by Palestinian organizations on their own initiative. Others were assisted by Syria’s army, which provided weapons and used the Palestinians as proxies. The Lebanese government was ambivalent. Lebanon was and remains a country divided among numerous ethnic groups such as Christians, Druze, Shiites, and Sunnis. All were further divided into subgroups, and many were being manipulated to one extent or another by the powerful Syrian neighbor on the east—not to mention other Arab rulers who, if only to thwart Syria, also had a finger in the pie. Depending on the momentary balance of power among the various parties, the prime minister would attempt to suppress the guerrillas or allow them a free hand or cooperate with them or pretend to do on
e of these three while in fact doing something else. Coming under Israeli attack, the Lebanese would loudly complain that they were not to blame. And in fact theirs is less a unified state than a beehive of competing peoples and factions, all heavily armed and with a tradition of mutual hatred.
In May 1973, following one particularly vicious Israeli raid into the center of Beirut, Lebanon’s slide into civil war began. As riots broke out in the refugee camps, Christian Pres. Suleyman Franjiyeh ordered Lebanon’s army and air force into action against the Palestinians. They soon discovered that the latter had allied with the Druze and Shiites, both of whom feared the move might herald a Christian attempt to achieve supremacy at their expense. Beset on all sides at once, the army simply melted away. By 1975 the country was in chaos as an astounding number of militias fought each other tooth and nail. The Christians alone fielded four different militias: Bashir Gemayel’s Phalange, Kamel Chamoun’s Tigers, and two smaller forces belonging to Franjiyeh and George Kassis. Counting the various religious and Palestinian militias, the total number must have come to more than fifty.
The Sword And The Olive Page 38