Today’s (June 3, 2017) edition of the Times Of Israel, reports that Israel’s senior political and military leadership had decided to detonate an atomic weapon in the Sinai — if they believed that the Arab armies would likely prevail in the 1967, Six-Day War. “On the eve of the Six-Day War, with the country surrounded by enemies; and, unsure of its future, Israel developed a ‘Doomsday Plan,’ to detonate an atomic bomb in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — as a warning to the Arabs,” the New York Times reported on its website, June 3, 2017. According to the Times of Israel, this report “is based on an interview between leading Israeli nuclear scholar Avner Cohen, and retired Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Brigadier General Itzhak Yaakov, — who reportedly oversaw the plan,” and presumably would have made the operational decision to do so.
“It is the last secret of the 1967, Six-Day War,” Mr. Cohen told the New York Times. The full interview, including this most significant, new revelation, is to be published in Monday’s edition of the publication, as part of the 50th anniversary of the war that significantly altered the political, military, and strategic landscape of the Middle East.
Brig. Gen. Yaakov told the New York Times, that Israel was “deeply fearful before the war.” Israel’s senior political and military leadership, took at face value, Arab threats to “throw Israel into the sea;” and, Israeli leaders apparently decided that to save their country, they would detonate an atomic bomb in the Sinai Peninsula — to prevent such an outcome.
The Times of Israel notes that “BG. Yaakov, who died in 2013 at the age of 87,” gave an extensive interview to Mr. Cohen in 1999 and 2000, in which he revealed “how Israel developed a plan code-named, ‘Shimshon’, or Samson,” whereby Israeli commandos, flown by helicopter, would deliver an atomic device to a mountain-top site about 12 miles from an Egyptian military complex at Abu Agelia. The plan, if activated by the Israeli Prime Minister and the IDF Chief of Staff, was to send a small paratrooper force to divert the Egyptian Army in the desert area, so that an IDF team [likely special operations forces] could prepare the atomic weapon for detonation.”
“Two large helicopters were to land, and deliver the nuclear device; and then, create a command post in a mountain creek or canyon,” the Times of Israel reports. “If the order came to detonate, the blinding flash and mushroom cloud would have been seen throughout the Sinai and Negev deserts, and perhaps as far away as Cairo,” the paper noted. In the 1999 and 2000 transcript, BG. “Yaakov describes a helicopter flight he made to the site with Israel Dostrovsky, Israel’s First Director General of their Atomic Energy Commission — that had to be aborted, after Egyptian fighter jets scrambled,” to intercept them. The adversary gets a vote. Clearly, this is what we would call a site survey; and, a thumbs up/thumbs down about the choice of location to detonate a nuclear weapon; but, the Egyptian military had other ideas. “We got very close,” BG. Yaakov reportedly said. “We saw the mountain, and we saw there is [was] a place to hide there [stay concealed], in some canyon.”
“As it turned out, Israel’s victory was swift and decisive; and, there was no need for any doomsday plan,” the Times of Israel noted; but, “BG. Yaakov still believed Israel should have gone ahead with it [the nuclear detonation],and openly declared its nuclear prowess. I still think to this day, that we should have done it,” he told Mr. Cohen, who is the author of, “Israel And The Bomb: The Worst Kept Secret.”
“In 2001, some 2 years after his conversations with Cohen, Yaakov was arrested in Israel and charged with passing secret information with intent to harm state security,” the Times of Israel reported. “The charges related to memoirs he wrote,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in its obituary of Yaakov in 2013. BG Yaakov, “was acquitted of the main charge; but, found guilty of the unauthorized handing over of secret information,” Haaretz reported, adding that “he received a two-year suspended sentence.”
There are still significant gaps in our complete understanding of all of the important, key decisions that were made on all sides, why those decisions were made, and what options were considered — such as the one described here. My guess is that no one in the White House, nor the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, were witting, nor aware of the Israeli decision to detonate a nuclear weapon in the Sinai — if things went south for the Israeli military. I, of course do not know that for sure; and, it is only a guess. And. would the National Security Agency (NSA) have intercepted any communications intelligence that was related to this operation? If they did, that communication would no doubt, still be highly classified today. If the U.S. did not know, then this would be a case of Israel ‘begging forgiveness, than asking permission.’ And, what did the Soviet’s know?
But, what does come to mind is the old quotation — ‘Desperate times, call for desperate measures.’ Does North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, have a similar doomsday plan? I would defer to David Maxwell; but, I would not want to bet against that possibility. If he sees that the end is near, would he detonate a pre-positioned nuclear weapon, so that it would kill the maximum number of South Korean and U.S. military personnel? And, are there those in the North Korean high command who would ensure that such an order is carried out?; or, is there a chance that they might disobey and/or, kill Un first? Again, one would not want to bet the ‘farm’ on that outcome. No good answers, and a lot to worry about.
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