WMDs good and bad
A BBC documentary on Israel's nuclear programme has been hailed in the Arab world and condemned by Israel. Dina Ezzat reports
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Palestinian girls watch from a mosque as the body of Mohamed Abu Ataya is laid to rest in Gaza
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Which country in the Middle East has an undeclared and uninspected nuclear programme? Which country has undeclared chemical and biological weapons? Those were just some of the questions asked by a BBC television production that aired this week in the Middle East.
The answer the programme gave? Israel. The airing of the documentary, while welcomed in the Arab world was met with angry response on the part of Israel.
The hour-long show detailed the inside story of Israel's nuclear programme, focussing on Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the country's infamous nuclear reactor Dimona. Sixteen years ago, Vanunu went public with Israel's secret: the facility in the Negev was not a factory, as it had claimed, but a nuclear reactor and extensive facilities for making materials used in nuclear weapons.
While the documentary brings little new information to light, the timing of its broadcast -- just months after the US-British war on Iraq that was waged on the justification that it possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) -- highlights the different treatment accorded to Israel over its own arsenal. The documentary also exposes the limits of Israeli democracy with its telling of the tale of how Vanunu was kidnapped in Italy and spirited to Israel shortly after giving his story to the Sunday Times. Since then he has been imprisoned and kept in solitary confinement.
Israel unsuccessfully lobbied to prevent the programme from being aired. Since the show was broadcast the Israeli government announced in a press release that it was "cutting all contacts with the BBC, which presented Israel as the devil, and aired a programme that amounts to anti-Semitism". It went on to describe the programme as presenting Israel as a "criminal police state, which plays into the hands of anti-Israel campaigners in Europe". The statement said, "Israeli officials, including state ministers, are prohibited from making statements to the BBC or giving it interviews until otherwise notified." It warned that all of the network's correspondents in Israel should expect delays when obtaining press passes, although they may attend press conferences at the office of the prime minister.
Drawing on extensive interviews with Israelis, the BBC quotes Israeli disarmament activists and journalists as arguing that Israel "started" the nuclear race in the Middle East with the support and protection of "America and her allies" who treat Israel "as the number one privileged state" in the world.
Meanwhile, in the Arab world the documentary received considerable positive attention. Front page coverage was accorded the programme by newspapers in many Arab countries. Among those dailies, Al-Ahram also dedicated a full page to printing an excerpt from its transcript. Television channels, too, mentioned the programme, including Egyptian state television.
"This programme is an objective and impartial testimonial about Israel's uninspected nuclear activities," commented Hesham Youssef, chief of staff and official spokesman of the Arab League secretary-general. "It is a delayed warning bell to the world that there is a country in the Middle East that possesses weapons of mass destruction, which is getting away with this without any meaningful international pressure or criticism due to protection accorded by the world's sole superpower."
According to Youssef, the fact that Israel was so alarmed about this programme indicates that it is intent on continuing its deception about its nuclear capabilities.
Youssef told Al-Ahram Weekly that anyone interested in peace and stability in the Middle East would admire the BBC's "courage and professionalism" in putting together and airing the documentary. He suggested that admiration should be equally accorded to those Israeli citizens who provided information showing Israel's role in starting an arms race in the Middle East and to criticise the US for allowing Israel to have such weapons while waging a war against Iraq for allegedly possessing WMDs.
"We in the Arab world have often said that the Middle East should be made a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. In the early 1990s, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak launched an initiative to this effect, which should be pursued seriously," Youssef said.
Arab capitals took up Mubarak's call demanding that Israel open its nuclear sites to United Nations' inspectors. The Egyptian president's suggestion related to Article 14 of UN Security Council Resolution 687 that authorised the disarmament of Iraq in the wake of its invasion of Kuwait clearly stipulates that disarming Iraq should be part of a larger effort to make the Middle East a zone free of WMDs.
In a little more than a decade, Iraq has been disarmed and occupied, while Arab countries including Syria and Libya have been threatened by US officials for allegedly acquiring WMDs. Meanwhile the US is pressuring Iran to end its declared civilian nuclear programme, which has been subject to international inspection.
Israel, however, has neither been questioned nor even censured.
Just a few weeks ago, Syria, the current Arab member of the Security Council, submitted a motion to initiate a diplomatic process to make the Middle East a zone free of WMDs. The motion was quickly scuppered by the US, which declared that the time was not right for such an action.
"We know that this is not something that is going to happen overnight. But it is something we have to work on," commented Wael Al-Assad, head of the Disarmament Department at the Arab League. The league, he explained, has been working on a draft treaty for declaring the Middle East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction. This effort began in 1994 and was inspired by Mubarak's initiative.
"Serious progress is being made," Al-Assad said, after a meeting of the Arab League committee working on the draft to review the document and start work on its annexes. The outcome of this meeting will be presented to Arab foreign ministers when they convene for their next regular meeting in the first week of September.
Meanwhile, the league is keeping a close watch on Israel's nuclear activities that are proceeding in violation of the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Last week's meeting also reviewed a Saudi report asserting the need for Arab action to seek an end to the US rule that pictures taken by commercial satellites of Israeli nuclear facilities should be printed in poor resolution. "This is a dour exception for a country that has so far refused to join the NPT, has turned down requests for any inspection and only last year refused to sign an international code of conduct on ballistic missiles that are used to deliver nuclear weapons," Al-Assad said.
The committee also reviewed a report that Jordan submitted on the hazards of radiation from the 40-year-old Dimona reactor. "There is serious concern about the damage that could be sustained by Israel's immediate neighbours due to the excessive radiation from this very old and uninspected reactor," Al-Assad warned.
The very concerns mentioned in those reports were among those brought to the attention of views of the BBC documentary.
When it came to bringing up the matter of Israel's nuclear arsenal in Washington, the BBC was unsuccessful. Though the documentary team had been promised an interview with Douglas Feith, the US undersecretary of defense, when he was alerted that the interview was on Israel's nuclear programme, Feith backed out. The BBC said that Feith subsequently agreed to an interview on the condition that the team pose questions about Iraq -- not Israel.
