ABSTRACT
Israel's deployment of nuclear weapons would be a natural extension of its historical quest for security. For three decades, ever since 1948 when the United Nations formally acknowledged the sovereignty of Israel, Israeli and Arab have been at war. During the first years of the 1950s, Israel Dostrovsky of Weizmann discovered a new way to produce deuterium oxide, or "heavy water," an important moderator in "natural uranium" nuclear reactors that can be used to breed plutonium. The United States unwittingly aided Israel's research on the bomb in 1955, when President Dwight Eisenhower introduced that nation to his "Atoms for Peace" program. During the years of the Gallic-Israeli atomic partnership, Israel acquired the material and scientific resources necessary to become a nuclear power. France made its most important nuclear contribution when it sent atomic engineers to Israel to help design and build a 26-megawatt reactor at Dimona.
