LaRouche: Denuclearize Mideast,
Sharon Threatens Global Nuclear War

by Jeffrey Steinberg


If there is one nation on this planet that deserves to be described and
dealt with as a rogue state, armed with weapons of mass destruction and
intent on using them, it is Israel, under the terror reign of war criminal
Ariel Sharon.

If this was a matter of assertion or conjecture in the past, statements
coming out of top Israeli officials in the past days have eliminated any
cause for hesitation.

On June 26, the Israeli newspaper of record, Ha'aretz, cited two top
Israeli space scientists, who declared that Israel now has the capacity to
fire missiles at targets anywhere on earth. Prof. Moshe Gelman, head of the
Asher Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, boasted to
Ha'aretz that "From the moment the State of Israel has the capability to
launch a satellite into orbit around the earth at a height of hundreds of
kilometers, it established [its] capability to launch, by means of a
missile, a payload to any location on the face of the earth."

Dr. Gelman's words were seconded by Avi Har-Even, the director-general of
the Israeli Space Agency (ISA), which recently launched the Ofek 5
satellite, who told Ha'aretz's Amnon Barzilai that the Ofek 5 launch had
two strategic objectives: providing Israel with an independent spy
satellite capability to monitor military activities in targeted countries
throughout the entire Near East. "The second involves Israel's launch
capabilities."

Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche reacted strongly to
the Israeli announcement about an ICBM capability. He characterized it as a
direct threat by Ariel Sharon against any nation that attempts to interfere
with Israel's mad drive for its "Greater Israel" permanent annexation of
the West Bank and Gaza and the mass expulsion of the 3.5 million
Palestinians living in those territories. "Israel is threatening global
thermonuclear war," LaRouche warned, and this is unacceptable. He called
upon the international community to immediately make the entire Mideast
a "denuclearized zone," by forcing Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons
arsenal. LaRouche characterized the announcement of the Israeli ICBM
capability as a "phase-change" in a global strategic situation, already
driven to the brink of war by the onrushing financial collapse and the June
25 speech by President George W. Bush, which gave Sharon a defacto
American "green light" to take any action against the Palestinians which he
deems necessary.

NATO Officially Warned
The Israeli intent to use nuclear weapons was a topic of, at minimum,
implicit discussion, at a June 26 Brussels behind-closed-doors meeting of
NATO's North Atlantic Council, which was addressed by the current head of
the Israeli Mossad, Ephraim Halevy. According to the June 27 Ha'aretz,
Halevy reported to the NATO officials that Mossad is convinced that Iran is
developing intermediate and long range missiles, and "weapons-grade nuclear
capabilities," as well as VX gas and biological weapons. As Ha'aretz's Amir
Oren reported, Halevy asserted that "Israel cannot spare any effort to
foil, prevent or delay the attainment of weapons of mass destruction by
countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya."

According to Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld, who wrote
that "Sharon's Plan Is to Drive Palestinians Across the Jordan," the intent
of the present Israeli government is to seize upon either a U.S. military
attack on Iraq, aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein, or a serious
terrorist incident inside Israel to launch a "mass transfer" of more than
two million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, across the river
into Jordan.

"Should such circumstances arise," Van Creveld wrote in the April 28, 2002
issue of Conrad Black's Sunday Telegraph, "then Israel would mobilise with
lightening speed—even now, much of its male population is on standby."

He spelled out a precise order of battle for the "mass transfer," although
he wrote of his own personal opposition to the Sharon scheme:

"First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing
positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and
all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the
Government."

He continued, "A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armoured, plus various
territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five
against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would
leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside
every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny
ideas.

"The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They
would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive
them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in
comparison."

Van Creveld estimated that none of the Arab states would respond militarily
to the Israeli move, adding, "Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to
weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so 'awesome
and terrible' (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former Prime Minister once said) as
to defy the imagination." There is no question that this was a direct
reference to an Israeli use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.

He added, "Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over
in just eight days."

Van Creveld concluded that only the United States could stop such an
Israeli doomsday scenario from playing out, and right now, chances are slim
to nil that America will step in to stop Israel, which is seen by Bush as a
major ally in the "war on terrorism." After Bush's June 25 speech, copies
of Van Creveld's article were taken from the files and studied,
intensively, by many Arab military and intelligence commanders, according
to a well-informed Egyptian source.

Deadly Arsenal
The scale of the Israeli nuclear weapons program is vast, and has now been
qualitatively transformed, by Israel's acquisition of three German-made
diesel powered submarines, which, according to a recent study by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are armed with nuclear warheads
on Cruise missiles. Carnegie published a report early in June 2002,
detailing the Israeli nuclear weapons program. That booklength report on
global nuclear weapons proliferation, Deadly Arsenals—Tracking Weapons of
Mass Destruction, included a chapter on Israel's nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons program.

The authors wrote, "Probably the most important nuclear-related development
in Israel is the formation of its sea-based nuclear arm. By July 2000
Israel completed taking delivery of all three of the Dolphin-class
submarines it had ordered at the Thyssen-Nordseewerke shipyard in Kiel,
Germany. In doing so, it is widely believed, Israel moved significantly
toward acquiring a survivable second-strike nuclear capability. All
indications are that Israel is on the way to finalizing a restructuring of
its nuclear forces into a triad, like the United States.

"Since the early 1980s (and probably even earlier) the Israeli navy
(jointly with other governmental agencies) lobbied hard for the notion that
Israel should build a small fleet of modern diesel submarines
for 'strategic purposes,' an Israeli euphemism for a sea-launched nuclear
capability.... It is also believed (but not confirmed) that the most
sensitive aspect of the project, the cruise-missile technology that renders
the diesel submarines nuclear-capable launching platforms, was developed
and built in Israel.... According to one report in the London Sunday Times,
by early 2000 Israel had carried out the first launching tests of its
cruise missiles."

The Carnegie study concluded, "A fleet of three submarines is believed to
be the minimum that Israel needs to have a deployment at sea of one nuclear-
armed submarine at all times."

The fact that Israel has achieved a deployable nuclear triad was advertised
in a June 15 report in the Washington Post, under the headline, "Israel Has
Submarine-Based Atomic Arms Capability."

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