By: George Kurzom
https://www.maan-ctr.org/magazine/article/3443/
An Israeli submarine carrying nuclear warheads
Exclusive to Environment and Development Horizons (Afaq magazine):
The nuclear negotiations in Vienna focus on the Republic of Iran, which has not been proven to possess a nuclear weapon. In this context it is only valid to ask, "What is the truth about Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons? Why does the West and the so-called international community not make a move towards forcing Israel to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection?"
In the military nuclear field, various international sources revealed that Israel is currently considered a military nuclear power. It possesses a nuclear arsenal estimated by foreign experts to be no less than (200-300) nuclear explosive warheads, long-range nuclear missiles, and nuclear submarines capable of carrying strategic nuclear missiles and projectiles.
The nuclear facilities that Israel possesses are scattered in a few locations in Palestine, such as Nahal Sorek, Dimona in the Negev desert, Haifa, Akka (Acre) and others.
The Israeli nuclear expert "Vanunu" published "Israel's" nuclear secrets in the "Sunday Times" newspaper in 1986, and this disclosure showed that the Israeli nuclear program is larger and more advanced than expected.
The hypocritical, colonial West, led by the United States of America, protests eagerly and widely against North Korea's nuclear tests, but is always silent about the horrific Israeli nuclear arsenal, and the war crimes committed by Israel against innocents in Palestine and Lebanon.
The disgusting irony is that the foreign ministers of Egypt, Morocco, the UAE and Bahrain, who met in late March in the Negev desert with the Israeli and American foreign ministers (Yair Lapid) and (Anthony Blinken), to pre-empt the expected international nuclear agreement with Iran in Vienna , and to reformulate the regional and Arab alliances, by forming an Israeli-Arab security-military alliance to confront Iran under the pretext that it has a nuclear program that threatens the region - the disgusting irony that these ministers completely ignored that the Israeli Dimona nuclear reactor and its stockpile of military nuclear warheads that are only a few kilometers away from where they were meeting, taking into consideration that the meeting place is the settlement of "Sdeh Boker" in the Negev, specifically near the tomb of "David Ben Gurion", the founder of the Jewish state. On the other hand, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran does not possess any nuclear weapons.
The fact that the western countries wouldn’t act against Israel to force it to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection stems mainly from the fact that Israel is considered part of the west. It is considered as an investment and a colonial military project. Therefore, this project is treated as a strategic military base, which is an extension of the western strategic, nuclear and ballistic military arsenal in general, and the US in particular. Its main functional role entrusted to it in the West and the United States is to ensure the fragmentation of the Arab world on a religious, sectarian, ethnic and clan basis also to deepen its backwardness and poverty, squander its natural and financial resources, and to encourage internal civil strife by means of the tools of the colonial West and Israel.
What are the risks posed by the Israeli nuclear arsenal?
First, this arsenal poses an existential threat not only to the humans in the Arab and Islamic region, but also to all forms of plants, animals and marine life.
Second, the most important aspect of serious concern in Israel's nuclear activity is the fact that Palestine is a very small country, therefore, the strategic consequences that may result from any serious radioactive nuclear imbalance, from radioactive contamination of underground water basins due to the leakage of radioactive materials, to the massive spread of gases and radioactive particles throughout Palestine due to a major technical defect that may occur in the nuclear reactor.
Since Palestine is located in a seismically active geological area, a major earthquake could destroy nuclear reactors and lead to the release of dangerous radioactive materials, as happened at the time in Japan in 2011.
Israel has also turned some sites in the West Bank and the Golan Heights into landfills for its nuclear waste.
Some strong evidenced information indicates the presence of sites believed to contain "nuclear dumps" in some areas surrounding the villages and towns south of Hebron, such as Bani Naim desert dump.
Israel disposed and continues to dispose its nuclear waste in the following areas: the Mediterranean, the Hebron mountains and desert in the West Bank, the Negev desert, the Halusa area on the Egyptian border, and the Syrian Golan Heights.
All of these sites are close to a geological fault that is known by its seismic activity. Some experts believe that serious environmental and geological risks lie in burying these wastes in those sites, especially in terms of polluting the water with radioactive materials, and in terms of the possibilities of nuclear materials interacting with the weak earth crust in those areas.
Some evidenced information that have been monitored by international bodies indicates a high possibility of a radioactive leak in some sites in southern Hebron, either due to radioactive leaks from Israeli nuclear facilities (the Nahal Sorek Nuclear Research Center and Dimona reactor) in the Negev desert, or from landfills in the southern Hebron desert.
It is worth noting that more than a hundred lawsuits have been recently filed against the "Dimona" reactor, from Israeli workers in the reactor who got cancerous diseases, or from the families of workers who died in recent years due to exposure to nuclear radiation while working in the reactor.
Since the early nineties, some physicians and experts have observed a high rate of diseases, congenital malformations and cases of infertility that did not exist before, especially in the areas adjacent to the reactor, such as the Negev desert and the towns of Thahriyah and Yatta.
In 2005, Israeli doctor Michael Shapira from Hadassah Hospital confirmed the information about the abnormal spread of leukemia in the area of Mount Hebron, and the town of Yatta in particular. The doctor stated that there might be direct relation with the dangerous nuclear and chemical residues buried in areas close to that town without supervision, explaining that the spread of leukemia among many citizens means the presence of serious pollution in water sources.
So, there is a frightening escalation in the spread of horrific diseases that are known to be caused by radioactive effects, just as it has been proven before in Iraq and Kosovo.
Translated by: Rasha Abu Dayyeh
