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The following commentary was written for ICAN by Heba Taha.
Heba is an Associate Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. She received a research grant from ICAN in 2023, focusing on nuclear politics in Israel/Palestine.
Photo by Emad El Byed on Unsplash. Gaza, July 2024.
In the past year, Israeli nuclear threats have escalated dramatically, without retraction, contributing to the dehumanization of Palestinians and increasing the risk of nuclear use. There has been extensive attention paid (in the English-language press) to Russian nuclear threats since its invasion of Ukraine, but there has been less focus on the implications of increased Israeli references to nuclear weapons. Despite Israel’s official stance of nuclear ambiguity, there has been a significant increase in references to Israel’s nuclear arsenal since 7 October 2023. Both Israeli and US officials have alluded to, or explicitly called for, the use of nuclear weapons against Palestinians in Gaza, and in some cases, even against Iran. This includes MP Tally Gotliv’s posts calling for the use of doomsday weapons to “restore the country’s dignity, strength, and security.” The statement insisted that Israel must crush and flatten all of Gaza, not only one neighborhood. Gotliv is a member of the Prime Minister’s Likud Party. Others, such as Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, indicated that a nuclear attack on Gaza was an option, insisting that there were no civilians in Gaza. Eliyahu was reprimanded by Netanyahu, but he was not suspended, as many news outlets incorrectly reported. Meanwhile, Republican officials in the US, such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tim Walberg, have invoked the US’s experience in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a lesson for Israel in its war in Gaza.
No official retractions of nuclear threats
While such statements have elicited widespread outrage, there has been no official retraction of these positions. This escalating nuclear rhetoric can be seen as part of the broader dehumanisation of Palestinians, and some nuclear scholars suggest that this language, which positions colonised Palestinians as nuclear targets, overlaps with other statements that indicate Israeli genocidal intent in Gaza. Typically, in Israel, military censors revise information containing confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Yet, the statements mentioned above do not only indicate possession, but even potential use. As some security analysts in Israel have noted, these statements threaten the posture of ambiguity.
Increase the risk of nuclear war in the Middle East
While it may be tempting to reduce these statements to wartime rhetoric and panic, they are particularly disconcerting when one considers that Israeli policies and conduct have not adhered to civilian protections. Many so-called ‘red lines’ imposed by the US or international actors have been ignored—while military assistance to Israel has not been interrupted.
These escalating statements indicate that when a state has nuclear weapons, they tend to arise as part of its considerations during times of war. Since these weapons are part of the country’s military and security strategy, this is not all that surprising. Historical precedents from 1967 and 1973 can serve as reminders that nuclear weapons were considered by Israeli leaders during moments of crisis.
Meanwhile, Iran has been said to be on the brink of nuclear proliferation after the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. Israel’s recent attack on Iran was limited in scope, but previous reports indicated Israeli intentions to target Iranian nuclear facilities, leading to anxieties about potential nuclear war in the Middle East.
Lack of critical examination of Israeli nuclear weapons
Israeli nuclear weapons have not been met with sufficient critical examination. They are still routinely described as having enabled the survival of the state or even having contributed to peace – claims that have been made by officials, which are often adopted in the nuclear literature. This approach treats nuclear weapons as a saviour and a guarantor of peace, overlooking how nuclear weapons align with a broader trend of militarisation that has come at the expense of political concessions or longer-term strategic thought that could lead to a durable peace agreement. More importantly, this focus on security overlooks the potential of nuclear weapons to inflict mass death. It ignores that nuclear weapons themselves pose an existential threat—both for Jewish-Israelis and also Palestinians, as well as the region more broadly.
Throughout the past year, the violence in Gaza has been described using nuclear analogies, with reports indicating, for example, that the destructive power of Israeli explosives dropped on Gaza is equivalent to, or surpasses, those of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. These metaphors try to link Gaza to these nuclear targets – to situate the destruction alongside them – as a desperate attempt to relay the extent of the violence to the world. In their attempt to make the Palestinian experience in Gaza recognisable or familiar, these reports also perhaps implicitly push back against the distinction between conventional and non-conventional weapons, since Gaza stands as a display of the immense damage and unimaginable violence that conventional weapons can cause.
Conclusion
The calls to flatten Gaza, in other words, are being heeded, though using conventional weapons supplied predominantly by the United States and combined with Artificial Intelligence tools accelerating the speed of death and destruction. In light of escalating nuclear threats, it is essential not only to understand the existential threat posed by Israeli nuclear weapons, but also to connect them to other infrastructures and technologies of warmaking. - Heba Taha