Nuclear Nation: Let’s put the Israel Atomic Energy Commission under the rule of lawDimona is well passed it's due date and Israel's integration into
verifiable nuclear nations is not only good for Israel, it's good for everyone else as well. IMO the absolute worst outcome is to isolate Israel as a nuclear entity.
Of the three main secret organizations under the prime minister’s authority, the IAEC is the most secretive. This harms democratic rule and grants unqualified authority to the executive branch.About two weeks ago, some 100 Israelis petitioned the High Court of Justice to set a precedent and order the government to “normalize” the status of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission via primary legislation. The petition is based on the view that sensitive government activities in a liberal democracy must not take place in the shadows; they must be enshrined in law.
Because all over the world Israel is considered a nuclear
#weapons power in every way, and because nuclear activity is a fateful area with its own unique risks, it is imperative to define this realm with legislation. A reminder: Of the three main secret organizations under the prime minister’s authority, the IAEC is the most secretive. It is even forbidden to speak of its mission.
Today the IAEC’s sources of authority are the cabinet’s secret decisions whose validity is based on the “residual powers” principle – a sort of default case in which the government is entitled to act according to its judgment and without reservation in all areas not delineated by law. Israel’s nuclear activities are in this twilight zone beyond the law, and in a few cases are even granted an exemption by the law.
The
#IAEC was established in 1952 under a secret order by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion; only two years later did its existence become public knowledge. The word “commission” was borrowed and translated (poorly) into Hebrew from the atomic research institutions in the United States and France, where government nuclear activities were organized under a council of commissioners (commissariat in French). The word “commission” is, in a sense, misleading. In all its incarnations, the Israeli committee has never functioned as a committee or council of commissioners.
When the vision of the Dimona nuclear research center began to take shape, the commission and its heads were pushed to the sidelines of the actual work. In 1966, Prime Minister
#LeviEshkol reestablished the commission, again via a secret cabinet decision, as a scientific administration in the executive branch and subordinate to the prime minister himself, (who also became the commission chairman).
Since then, the commission has been responsible for all national nuclear activities. These same secret cabinet decisions are updated occasionally, the last time in 2011.
The current situation is problematic because it reflects widespread harm to the foundations of democratic rule while granting unqualified authority to the executive branch. In addition to the damage to the principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law, the current situation creates a serious conflict of interest, as well as a lack of clarity about the source and division of responsibility and authority.
There is also the weakened status of the committee’s internal and external oversight bodies. This last problem is particularly acute because there is practically no public oversight of the commission.
A similar situation existed in the Shin Bet security service, whose status and authority were a lacuna in Israeli democracy that gave rise to a long list of grave affairs that all occurred in the shadows. The introduction of the so-called
#ShinBet Law in 2002 wasn’t a simple matter, but in the end the organization was subordinated to the rule of law.
Two objections can be raised against the High Court petition. The first is based on security considerations, claiming that any legislation on the nuclear issue will conflict with the holy of holies – Israel’s opacity policy on the nuclear issue – so it’s impossible to change the status quo.
The second objection is a claim of liberality (mixed with cynicism) saying that legal formalism is nice, and possibly even works in a true liberal
#democracy, but in Israel, with this government, it will achieve the opposite of the desired results.
That is, even if the High Court intervenes and forces the government to consider legislation on the matter, which is unlikely, Prime Minister Benjamin
#Netanyahu, Defense Minister
#AvigdorLieberman and Justice Minister Ayelet
#Shaked will simply pass legislation that will further tighten the chains of the nuclear taboo. So what good will the effort do?
As for the first objection, the friction between nuclear legislation and the opacity policy depends on the content of the legislation itself. In the minimalist version, it’s definitely possible to conceive of a law without much teeth that will live peacefully with the current practice of opacity. It’s also possible to think about a nuclear law that would reduce this opacity policy. Either way, a law isn’t passed in a day, and the working through of the opacity issue via legislation would be only for the best.
After all, many Israelis in the public sphere feel that the nuclear-opacity policy has outlived its usefulness and its practice is anachronistic, antidemocratic and no longer necessary. The trick of discussing nuclear matters with the wink of “according to foreign sources” has exhausted itself.
As for the second objection, the petition is not about an immediate change; above all, it’s a challenge to the distorted situation and a call to think about how to end it. Any attempt to loosen the chains of the Israeli nuclear taboo will be a long and exhausting process. The High Court petition has civic significance no less than its legal significance.
These two objections represent opposite ideological poles, but they share the view that the here and now is the most important thing. The petition aims to challenge this view precisely. It’s an attempt to think about this forbidden matter for the long term, beyond the current status quo
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.724354?v=4081FB7B813E5C256E6DA34B6FB05353Declassified: How Israel misled the U.S. about its nuclear programBen-Gurion’s mumbling to Kennedy helped delay the Americans’ assessment that Jerusalem was on the verge of building a bomb.
Fifty U.S. documents from the early 1960s were declassified by the U.S. National Security Archive on Thursday, shedding light on Israel’s attempts to hide one of its best-kept secrets to this day: details on its nuclear program. The Americans ultimately believed the Israelis were providing “untruthful cover” about intentions to build a bomb.
The documents include papers from the White House, the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission
#AEC and U.S. intelligence agencies. The editors are 'AvnerCohen, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and William Burr, the head of nuclear affairs documentation at the National Security Archive, which is based at George Washington University in the capital.
One document provides the minutes of a meeting between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on May 30,1961, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
Cohen and Burr call that meeting a “nuclear conference” – Israel’s nuclear program greatly concerned Kennedy. When he met his predecessor Dwight D.
#Eisenhower before the changeover of January 20, 1961, he was quick to ask which countries Ike believed were determined to obtain
#nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Christian Herter replied: “India and
#Israel,” before recommending that Kennedy pressure Israel into agreeing to have its nuclear facilities inspected.
According to the details of that meeting, already published in the past,
#Ben-Gurion told
#Kennedy that Israel's Dimona project was peaceful. The American transcript says: “Our main – and for the time being only – purpose is [cheap energy]. We do not know what will happen in the future.”
The Israeli transcript says: “For the time being, the only purposes are for peace … but we will see what happens in the Middle East. It does not depend on us.”
In the newly released minutes, the Americans said “Ben-Gurion spoke rapidly and in a low voice so that some words were missed.” Kennedy had a hard time asking concrete questions.
“Ben-Gurion mumbled and spoke very softly. It was hard to hear him and understand what he was saying, partly due to his accent,” Cohen, author of “Israel and the Bomb," told Haaretz.
“Ben-Gurion, in what he said and in what he didn’t, was hinting that the nuclear reactor in Dimona could have military potential in the distant future, or at least that is what Talbot believed he heard,” write Cohen and Burr in their explanatory notes to the documents.
Ten days before that meeting, another key meeting took place. This was the first visit by American inspectors (as the Americans called them –
#Israel called them visitors) at the
#Dimona reactor. The Israelis considered the visit productive. The inspectors believed the facility was under construction and consistent with the Israelis’ description: a research reactor for peaceful purposes. But there was much more
#plutonium than known.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.715741?v=0F4658F88D656E9D46574F82D9354A21Kennedy, Dimona and the Nuclear Proliferation Problem: 1961-1962National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 547#NSA #DECLASSIFIED Posted - April 21, 2016
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb547-Kennedy-Dimona-and-the-Nuclear-Proliferation-Problem-1961-1962/John F. Kennedy was a member of Congress when he first met Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1951. In this photograph taken at Ben-Gurion’s home, Franklin D.
#Roosevelt, Jr., then a member of Congress from New York, sat between them. (Image from Geopolitiek in Perspectief)
