Neutron Landmines Near Golan
Matthew Campbell, Washington and Uzi Mahnaimi, Geneva
The Sunday Times, March 26 2000
THE Israeli government is considering planting small nuclear landmines
near the Golan Heights which could be
detonated to halt a Syrian invasion, according to military sources.
Under a secret military plan called "David's
Sling", the neutron bombs would be deployed in the manner of landmines
to thwart any tank advance after the
mountain region is handed back to Syria as a result of peace talks
between Damascus and Tel Aviv.
The military sources say that although the Israeli government will not
acknowledge it - Israel does not admit it
is a nuclear power - portable, low-yield neutron bombs have been
perfected over the past two decades at a factory
in the west of the country. A neutron artillery shell has also been
tested and laser-guided rockets with neutron
warheads are ready for use.
The plan, said to have satisfied Israeli military hawks who are loath
to contemplate the return of the Golan
without concrete security guarantees, is nevertheless certain to raise
concern as President Bill Clinton and
Syria's Hafez Al-Assad meet today in Geneva. They are discussing ways
of reviving stalled Israeli-Syrian
negotiations.
Israel, fearing a repeat of Syria's invasion in 1973, has demanded
that any deal include the withdrawal of all of
Assad's tank units north to the Damascus basin, but military
strategists concede that even if that were
implemented, a Syrian rapid invasion force could be at the new Israeli
border within 12 hours.
Under David's Sling, any Syrian invasion of Israel would be met with
neutron weapons that emit an intense burst of
radiation, penetrating tanks and killing the soldiers inside. Neutron
bombs differ from conventional nuclear
weapons in the greater amount of radiation they emit and lesser damage
they cause to buildings and other enemy
infrastructure.
Experts question the wisdom of a country using nuclear weapons, no
matter how small, so close to its own borders,
given the risk of contamination. At least one Israeli strategist
voiced concern: "I hope we'll never have to reach
that point," said a senior defence adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, the
former Prime Minister. "It would be
horrible."
The suddenness of the 1973 invasion, which was launched on the Israeli
holiday of Yom Kippur, has engendered what
some see as paranoia in Israeli military planning, in which Syria is
viewed as a constant menace.
Israeli sources traced the genesis of David's Sling back to the 1980s,
when a site near Kibbutz Ein Zivan, just a
few miles from the Syrian border, was chosen as suitable for planting
a "nuclear landmine". A special army unit
code-named "Maitar" - Hebrew for "strings" - was put on alert should
the need arise to transfer a bomb to the
region.
More recently the plans have been upgraded to include neutron bombs.
The existence of neutron bombs in Israel's
nuclear arsenal has long been rumored: a mysterious flash detected in
the Indian Ocean off South Africa's coast in
1979 has often been attributed by nuclear experts to a possible
Israeli test of neutron devices.
Since then, say the sources who outlined details of David's Sling to
The Sunday Times last week, Israeli
scientists have perfected a tactical neutron bomb that weighs less
than 100kg and can be carried by two soldiers.
It apparently has a yield of 250 tons and could subject anyone within
a radius of several hundred yards to a
potentially lethal dose of radiation while leaving military vehicles
beyond the point of impact largely intact.
Tritium, needed to make the neutron bombs, is provided by the nuclear
reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert, in
defiance of American attempts to persuade Israel to join the so-called
fissile material cut-off treaty, which
would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. For
years, Israeli defence experts have
considered the Golan plateau essential to the defence of Israel.
At the same time, whatever inducements Clinton offers Assad in Geneva,
Syria will not return to the negotiating
table until Israel agrees in principle to withdraw from the area. For
Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister, an
agreement to withdraw could cost him political support among
conservative Israelis, for whom the Golan is a
national rampart that should never be relinquished - even in exchange
for peace.
According to one of the sources, Barak, who is said to be seeking a
written pledge from Clinton not to put
pressure on Israel in the nuclear field, is resigned to giving back
the Golan. The nuclear deterrent of David's
Sling -the name is taken from the Bible and is also the title of a
book by Shimon Peres, the former defence
minister and founder of the Israeli nuclear programme - gives him
confidence to proceed.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, but Syria struck
back six years later as its ally, Egypt,
launched a parallel offensive on Israel from the Sinai desert. Israeli
counterattacks are generally credited as
having driven the Syrians out of the Golan, although there is evidence
that Israel may also have threatened to use
nuclear weapons.
During the Gulf War, the sources said, Israel proposed using neutron
weapons against Iraqi Scud missile sites. The
operation was blocked by the United States. As Professor Uzi Even, one
of Israel's leading nuclear experts, said:
"Introducing tactical nuclear weapons greatly increases the temptation
to use them - doing so would lead to an
escalation endangering the region's inhabitants."
