'What if' questions of Gaza war
AS THE CRIMINAL march of Hamas rocket fire continues across the territory of Israel, the rockets' red glare casts a new light on Israel's and the world's dangerous nuclear complacency. Rockets have fallen, to the north of Gaza, within about 20 miles of Tel Aviv. But even more threatening, they have fallen, to the east, within about 20 miles of Dimona, Israel's ultra-secret nuclear facility in the Negev desert. Although Israel neither confirms nor denies its possession of a nuclear arsenal, it is clear that, since the 1960s, a plutonium production reactor has been operating at Dimona, and is believed to have created enough material for up to 200 nuclear weapons, which have been manufactured in an adjacent underground facility. What would happen if Hamas rockets rained down on such a place?
That this question can even be asked points to yet another drastic consequence of Israel's misbegotten war against Gaza. The range of the rocket fire has increased over the weeks, and Hamas threatens to have longer-range rockets, and no doubt aims to acquire a more deadly arsenal like Hezbollah's in Lebanon. Dimona is protected with sophisticated air and missile defenses, and is mostly a hardened target. Yet the very presence of the nuclear weapons facility in the war zone defines the danger.
While it is not inconceivable that even such primitive weapons as Hamas musters could damage the dome of the Dimona reactor to cause a widely fatal radiation leak, the larger point is that when Israel engages in high-stakes military operations against its enemies, it is a grand illusion to think that Israel's own nuclear reservation won't eventually be targeted, with a massive escalation of psychological and political tensions. Israel's nuclear arsenal is a taboo subject, not to be spoken of, yet Israel's own war now forces the question.
Once, the Israeli bomb might have provided a deterrent, giving heavily armed Arab nations in the region reason to limit their war aims. (The suspected existence of an Israeli bomb did not deter Egyptian and Syrian attacks in 1973.) Israel, in a fight for survival, was seen to have cause for exempting itself from the nuclear nonproliferation regime. But that changed after peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and Arab League acceptance of Israel, when security came from agreement, not threat. Israel would surely justify its nuclear readiness now as a deterrent against Iran, whose leaders swear to exterminate the Jewish state, and, perhaps, Syria, which apparently was engaged in a secret nuclear program of its own. Yet Israel's possession of the bomb adds to the pressures that drive Tehran's nuclear ambition.
America's axis-of-evil belligerence also surely strengthens nuclear hard-liners within Iran, but with a new administration that dynamic will now perhaps be muted, and even changed.
Will Israel's security continue to be enhanced by a nuclear arsenal that, more than deterring, gives enemies both motive and excuse to pursue their own? Convincing Tehran to limit its nuclear appetite requires every nuclear power, beginning with the United States, to recommit itself to nuclear abolition. What applies to one nation applies to all. That means Israel, too.
In addition to generating Israel's deterrent, Dimona generates radioactive pressure toward the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the region, what experts warn of as a "cascade" that, once flowing, would run from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Turkey and perhaps to others. And how, if that unfolds, is Israel made safer?
But rockets approaching Dimona raise another question. The inhumanity of Israel's disproportionate assault against the civilian population of Gaza is one thing, but yet another is the historic irresponsibility of attempting to resolve such a dispute through massive military force in the nuclear age. The presence of nuclear weapons in Dimona, and in US, Russian, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, and perhaps North Korean arsenals now overshadows every war.
Limited wars inexorably push against limits. Limited wars are a lie. This new condition requires that political leaders move away from war as an instrument of national policy. What Israel is doing in Gaza as a response to Hamas is sending dangerous ripples across the region and beyond. The way to stop this madness is to stop it.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. 