Do you think Israel have any Nuclear Weapons?

This is a hotly contested issue.
Some say that the US has given Israel nuclear weapons. “The US has given Israel all the military hardware they own, why wouldn’t they give them nukes?”

Israel steadfastly denies possession of any nuclear weapons.
If it was revealed that Israel did indeed posses atomic weaponry, the middle east would be outraged and an international incident would likely follow.

“Put that thing away! You can hurt someone with that”

Yes. And the international reaction would be completely irrational and full of doublespeak, as international reactions to anything about Israel are. Ultimately, we would have confirmed what everyone has known for a long time, and nothing would really change.

I don’t think there is any proof either way. But I agree with Mamradpivo (you like beer?) about the implications of that. I think it would be quite an awkward situation for many countries (especially those that bombed Iraq over and over again only to find out that there were no nukes there after all).

If Clinton gave North Korea the capacity to make nukes, you can bet your ass the Israel has them too.

There is no longer any question. Israel does have nuclear weapons, and has for many years. Clinton had nothing to do with North Korea having nukes – Pakistan’s rogue nuclear establishment sold nuclear technology to N. Korea, also to Iran.

@pdworkin
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/91-141.htm

That article explains that Clinton negotiated with NK to cease the nuclear program for weaponry, in exchange he would receive light water nuclear reactors. I’m no nuclear scientist here, but it is probably safe to say that nuclear electricity producing facilities would be easily converted into weapon making facilities.

But they had previously purchased the technological means to have a program at all from Pakistan.

Of course. But they will neither confirm nor deny the possibility. Exactly the way it should be.
Let’s add it up. Highly educated population, wealthy economy, surrounded and outnumbered by populations that wish to destroy them. I’d say that adds up to nuke ownership.
Wouldn’t you have them if you were in that position?

I seem to remember former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accidentally admitting that his country has nukes when he listed off nations with nuclear capability and included Israel.

Besides, there was an Israeli nuclear technician (Mordechai Vanunu was his name, I think) who gave interviews where he discussed Israel’s nukes.

@Darbio16 The ability to weaponize nuclear technology is a significant leap in technical and theoretical understanding from the ability to make nuclear energy as a starting point. To make nuclear energy you just need a net gain of energy and a way of controlling the reaction so it doesn’t get out of hand. To make nuclear weapons you need a chain reaction that occurs across a very short time scale, not to mention a strategic way of delivering the weapon (generally very advanced targeting computers and flight controls). There are a lot of ways to go wrong. This is why we don’t consider a nation a “nuclear power” until they have a successful test.

There’s also the amount of fissionable material to consider. Basically, you need more than a ton of reactor-grade material to make a small nuclear warhead. So centrifuges that make reactor-grade material need to be multiplied significantly (in quantity) to even produce a single warhead. This is the main reason Iran did not have nuclear weapons in the past…but they recently passed the point where they could feasibly take all of the nuclear material in their country and use it to build a single warhead. It seems unlikely that they would sacrifice their nuclear power production for one warhead.

As for Israel, if they have nuclear weapons they are not making them themselves, most likely. The U.S. has a lot more fissionable material than it needs and is supposed to be actively disarming its nuclear weapons. And it’s true that Israel’s advanced military technology is either directly from the U.S. or based on U.S. technology…though they may have purchased some heavy equipment from Russia also.

My two cents.

Mordechai Vanunu was a nuclear technician that spent 18 years in prison for revealing detail about Israels nuclear weapons program.

Israel has nukes without question.

Yes, I do believe Israel has nuclear weapons and no, it is not something they will ever readily admit to even if they’re asked about it. What would be the point? I suspect that a portion of Middle Eastern countries already suspect that Israel has nuclear weapons and I don’t see any kind of international reaction at all. If there was going to be an uproar or protest or concern, it would’ve happened by now. It’s a case of live and let live even if that’s not a very popular opinion.

Of course.

It’s commonly accepted that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. There has been a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert since the early ‘60s, and the “disappearance” of 200 tons of yellowcake uranium from the Genoa-bound ship Scheersberg A in 1968 has been traced to Israeli intelligence. In addition, the 1979 south Atlantic explosion known as the Vela Incident is often regarded to have been a joint South African-Israeli nuclear test. It should be noted, however, that the U.S. (along with the rest of the world) long denied nuclear technology to Israel. If they have the bomb, they got it without any international assistance. We should also consider that Israel’s original nuclear interest was begun in response to an Egyptian nuclear program making use of former Nazi rocket scientists.

@quarkquarkquark

Top secret British documents[25][26] obtained by BBC Newsnight show that Britain made hundreds of secret shipments of restricted materials to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. These included specialist chemicals for reprocessing and samples of fissile material—uranium-235 in 1959, and plutonium in 1966, as well as highly enriched lithium-6 which is used to boost fission bombs and fuel hydrogen bombs.[27] The investigation also showed that Britain shipped 20 tons of heavy water directly to Israel in 1959 and 1960 to start up the Dimona reactor.[28] The transaction was made through a Norwegian front company called Noratom which took a 2% commission on the transaction. Britain was challenged about the heavy water deal at the International Atomic Energy Agency after it was exposed on Newsnight in 2005. British Foreign Minister Kim Howells claimed this was a sale to Norway. But a former British intelligence officer who investigated the deal at the time confirmed that this was really a sale to Israel and the Noratom contract was just a charade.[29] The Foreign Office finally admitted in March 2006 that Britain knew the destination was Israel all along.[30] Israel admits running the Dimona reactor with Norway’s heavy water since 1963. French engineers who helped build Dimona say the Israelis were expert operators, so only a relatively small portion of the water were lost during the years past since the first operation of the reactor.[31]

Source

I think Israel does have nuclear weapons… whether or not there’s proof of this is beyond my purview. However if they do have nuclear weapons and they have not threatened to use them on Palestine and other aggressors (states that harbour terrorists that carry out attacks on Israel among others) shows remarkable restraint. The very fact that they have been involved in such a drawn out conflict and have never mentioned these weapons says a lot about the Israeli people and government. No matter what they have done in defense of their nation be it in retaliation or a pre-emptive strike… they have shown great restraint in not OBLITERATING their enemies.

I am not sure if they have nukes or not. They probably do, but the important thing for Israel seems to be that their enemies think they do. It could very well be the worlds cheapest and most elaborate nuclear weapons program to date. Myth and rumor goes a long way.

Would they have and use them, however, it would probably be the end of Israel, a big part of middle-east civilization and likely a third world war. A surviving Israel would be a world pariah after that. I don’t think they are interested in that or launching nukes in their own neighborhood, unless forced to.

I think that as long as Israel relies on power and weaponry, instead of negotiation and true peace efforts, they will have few friends. Their future is not in the hands of the existence of a few hundred nukes, but in co-existence.

@RareDenver, didn’t know that

Yes. Israel does possess one of the largest, most dangerous Nuclear Reactors in the world: The Dimona Nulcear Facility.

However, Israel was hiding the possession of Nuclear Power for a number of decades before Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli Nuclear Assistant revealed everything. And for that matter, he was kidnapped and arrested by the Mosad in London, and had spent 18 years in prison.

Rome, he was kidnapped in Rome.

@quarkquarkquark

Oops, my mistake.
Yes, he was kidnapped in Rome indeed.

And by the way, his story of getting kidnapped is a typical lesson one should learn about love from the first sight.