ABSTRACT
Israel's Nuclear Programme, the Six Day War and Its Ramifications
Shlomo Aronson
The main thesis of this essay is that Israel's initial effort to acquire the ultimate deterrent, aimed at driving the Arabs to accept the Jewish state within its 1949 boundaries, was accompanied by a strategy of conventional pre-emption which was eventually implemented during the May 1967 crisis. The essay then proceeds to argue that following the Israeli conventional pre-emptive operations in June 1967, the Arabs adopted conventional war aims leading to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Combined with Israel's nuclear option, which survived the 1967 crisis unscathed, the peace negotiations between Israel and its neighbours following the 1973 War, the active regional role played by the United States, and changes in the Arab world and in the former Soviet Union, may explain the current peace process.
