Latest news with #Dimona
The National
a day ago
- Politics
- The National
Explained: Israel's secretive nuclear weapons programme
Israel's justification for its war against Iran is its claim that Tehran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fears that a nuclear-armed Iran would alter the balance of power in the Middle East and provide Tehran with the ability to follow through on calls for Israel's destruction. However, Israel remains the only country in the Middle East believed to possess a nuclear arsenal. It has never officially acknowledged holding nuclear weapons, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated last January that it has 90 nuclear warheads. Israel is also believed to possess enough fissile material to produce hundreds more warheads, according to the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Much of what is known or suspected about Israel's nuclear capabilities centres on its facility near the southern town of Dimona. The Negev Nuclear Research Centre is a secretive operation in the Negev Desert. Israel began its nuclear programme in 1952 by establishing its Atomic Energy Commission. It has operated a nuclear reactor and an underground plutonium separation plant in Dimona since the 1960s, according to the US-based Arms Control Association. It has been reported that the facility is home to decades-old underground laboratories that have worked to formulate weapons-grade plutonium for a nuclear bomb programme. For years, Israel has stuck to a policy of ambiguity, only saying it would not be the first nation to 'introduce' nuclear weapons to the Middle East. Worldwide, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency has said only nine countries openly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons or are believed to possess them. The US, Britain, France, Russia and China are officially counted as holders of a nuclear arsenal under the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty was signed in 1968 by major nuclear and non-nuclear powers and pledged co-operation in preventing the spread of atomic weapons. Israel has never joined the treaty. The country has fought a number of wars with its Arab neighbours since its founding in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust. An atomic weapons programme, even if undeclared, provides it with an edge to deter its enemies. Preventing Iran achieving nuclear status has been a key policy objective of the Israeli government, despite Iran long insisting its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and not aimed at making a bomb. Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968.
LBCI
2 days ago
- Politics
- LBCI
Potential nuclear risk: Could Israel's Dimona radiation reach Lebanon if targeted?
Report by Petra Abou Haidar, English adaptation by Yasmine Jaroudi As tensions escalate in the region, one question looms large: what happens if Israel's Dimona nuclear facility is targeted, which lies approximately 400 to 600 kilometers from Lebanon? Situated in the Negev desert, Dimona is widely believed to house a nuclear reactor, though Israel has never officially confirmed its exact nature or capabilities. According to international reports, it is classified as a power-generating nuclear reactor. A strike on such a facility could lead to radioactive leakage, potentially spreading beyond Israel's borders depending on wind direction and atmospheric conditions. Can radiation reach Lebanon in this case? While there is no way to definitively predict the extent of contamination in the event of a strike, the scale of radiation leakage and prevailing weather patterns would be determining factors. Crucially, Israel remains tight-lipped about the materials and exact functions of the site. In Lebanon, the body responsible for responding to such emergencies is the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission. Established in 1995 with support from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Lebanon's National Council for Scientific Research, the commission is responsible for monitoring radiation levels and implementing emergency measures as necessary. Should radiation be detected, protocols would involve analyzing air quality and assessing levels of radioactive spread before activating appropriate response plans. Although public anxiety is understandable, Lebanese experts urge against panic. They caution that fear-mongering—especially through social media ads promoting the so-called "comprehensive nuclear protection fund"—only fuels misinformation.
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Only US intervention can stop nuclear Iran — this is a 1940s moment
I srael attacked Iran because one Holocaust is one Holocaust too many. The very existence of the Jewish state is based on the solemn vow of never-again: never again will the Jews be helpless, never again will the Jews be slaughtered, never again will the Jews allow an evil empire to annihilate them. This is why the nascent State of Israel built the Dimona nuclear reactor a mere 15 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. This is why Israel created one of the most formidable air forces in the world. And this is why Israel has been so alarmed by Iran's nuclear project since the beginning of the third millennium. For over two decades, Israel has perceived the Ayatollah's Iran as a new Nazi Germany. But it was the trauma of October 7 that underlined the threat posed to the Jewish state and world order by radicals who venerate 11th-century values as they acquire 21st-century military capabilities.
LBCI
3 days ago
- Politics
- LBCI
Air raid sirens sound in Israel town home to nuclear site
Sirens sounded in parts of southern Israel on Tuesday, the military said, with the warnings of incoming Iranian missile fire also covering Dimona, a town that is home to a nuclear power plant. The warnings follow several barrages earlier in the day, as Iran and Israel exchanged fire for a fifth straight day. AFP
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
‘We are part of this land' - Thousands of Israel's Bedouin face demolitions and evictions in the Negev desert
Freij Al-Hawashleh's Israeli ID lists his date of birth as 00.00.1939, because no one in his village of Ras Jrabah was sure what month he was born. But he knows the spot, by a large tree in the dusty Negev desert, where he began life in a Bedouin tent: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.' The state of Israel was established when Al-Hawashleh was about nine. Tens of thousands of Bedouin were forced from the desert in 1948 or fled elsewhere in the region; those who remained were later granted Israeli citizenship and became part of Israel's Arab minority. Al-Hawashleh describes meeting Jewish Israelis who arrived in caravans at Ras Jrabah for the first time: 'We gave them water and milk.' Ras Jrabah lies on the outskirts of Dimona, a predominantly Jewish Israeli town built on the ancestral land of Al-Hawashleh's tribe. For two decades, he worked as a gardener for the municipality, maintaining the manicured parks and playgrounds that exist for both children and dogs in Dimona. READ MORE On the drive from Dimona to Ras Jrabah, the tarmac road turns to a dirt track that passes by a single toilet cubicle standing on the shrub land and rubber tubes snaking across the open ground carrying a rudimentary water supply to the Bedouin village. A tin-roofed mosque and a large concrete tube that has served as an inadequate, makeshift bomb shelter for lethal rockets falling in the Negev during the Israel-Hamas war mark the entrance to Ras Jrabah. Freij Al Hawashleh, a Bedouin elder in the village of Ras Jrabah in the Negev desert, southern Israel. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy About a third of the 310,000 Bedouin community in the Negev live in Bedouin villages like Ras Jrabah that are not legally recognised by the Israeli government. As a result, these communities are denied access to basic infrastructure including state electricity and sewage systems, as well as schools and medical clinics, while facing regular eviction and demolition orders for construction deemed illegal under Israel's planning laws – even if the construction predates the relevant law. Eleven unrecognised villages with 6,500 Bedouin are now fighting eviction orders in Israeli courts, while facing the highest rates of poverty in Israel – which have worsened amid the economic fallout of the war in Gaza. [ Israel's nomadic Bedouins at odds with modernised state Opens in new window ] Since 2019, the Ras Jrabah community – half of whose members are children – has been facing the threat of eviction after the Israel Land Authority filed 10 lawsuits accusing the Bedouin villagers of living illegally on state land zoned for the expansion of Dimona, a bastion of support for the right-wing Likud party led by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The community has been told it must move to one of the Bedouin villages recognised by the Israeli state in the 2000s. 'The government says we have to move to Qasr al-Sir,' says Al-Hawashleh, who believes there will be tension and possible violence if his tribe and the two other tribes living in Ras Jrabah move to land already occupied by the other Bedouin tribes in Qasr al-Sir. 'They want us to be at war with other tribes.' Freij Al Hawashleh: 'My grandfather was born here, I was born here. We are part of this land.' Photograph: Hannah McCarthy The rapid, state-driven urbanisation of Bedouin tribes after centuries of nomadic living has fractured long-standing familial structures and separated communities from the land and animals that formed the backbone of the Bedouin livelihood and culture. The seven Bedouin townships the Israeli state established in the 1960s have become ghettos where Bedouin live on the periphery of Israeli society, with few economic opportunities and high rates of crime. A handful of Bedouin villages were recently recognised , but Marwan Abu Frieh, a lawyer with Adalah, a Palestinian human rights centre in Israel, says: 'There is very little difference in practice between the infrastructure and services in recognised and unrecognised Bedouin villages.' [ Ireland condemns Israeli destruction of Bedouin homes in West Bank Opens in new window ] Born in an unrecognised Bedouin village since demolished, and now living in Rahat, the largest Bedouin town, Frieh says successive Israeli governments have concentrated Bedouin people into small, urban areas while building on Bedouin land, citing examples of Jewish Israeli towns, forests and military firing zones that have been built on Bedouin land – 'we've lost almost all of our lands'. Ras Jrabah residents are willing to become part of Dimona if a section of the new neighbourhood includes housing for them, as well as an agricultural zone for their livestock to graze on. 'We have lived here for years, and receive all of our services from the Dimona municipality,' says Al-Hawashleh. 'Our life is here.' Adalah and the NGO Bimkom submitted an alternative plan to the planning authority that outlined how the integration of 90 families from Ras Jrabah into Dimona could be achieved without obstructing or fundamentally altering the expansion plan for the Israeli town – which will double in size. The Ras Jrabah community is awaiting a decision from Israel's supreme court after Adalah appealed its eviction and the requirement to pay the state's legal expenses. Adalah lawyer Myssana Morany argued in March that the plan to evict residents of Ras Jrabah and expand the town of Dimona for other residents was 'clearly segregationist', citing numerous international human rights conventions that prohibit segregation and the forced displacement of populations, particularly indigenous peoples. One of the main roundabouts in Dimona features a display depicting a Bedouin with three camels. Israel refuses to classify camels as 'farm animals', preventing Bedouin herders from enjoying grazing rights in the Naqab desert region. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Dolev Arad, the chief of staff at the Bedouin Authority, the official agency for the development and settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev, which lacks popular support from Bedouin communities, said: 'We do not prevent anyone from living in Dimona, Beersheba or anywhere else they choose.' But without a section specifically zoned for Bedouin, housing in Dimona is unaffordable for impoverished Ras Jrabah villagers and ill-suited to their communal and agricultural lifestyle. Amos Sarig, a spokesman for Dimona municipality, rejected the claim that Ras Jrabah predated Dimona, and noted that the district court has ruled that the evidence demonstrated only that it had existed since 1978, despite aerial photographs filed in court demonstrating that the village was already there in 1956. Bedouin leaders say they often struggle to meet demands for proof of ownership because they have not historically kept physical records. Sarig says the Dimona municipality has asked for the supreme court appeal to be expedited 'because thousands of housing units need to be built there'. There was, however, low demand for Dimona – which is near a nuclear facility – when the government ran a national housing lottery in 2021, while newly constructed apartments have been slow to sell. Frieh is not optimistic about Ras Jrabah's chances of succeeding at the supreme court. 'You can postpone yes, but to win a case regarding land in Israel, they have maybe a 10 per cent chance [of winning],' he says. According to the far right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir , there was a 400 per cent increase in demolition orders carried out in the Negev in 2024, with many families dismantling their own homes to avoid onerous penalties if the Israeli authorities demolish them. 'People come to my office with more than $100,000 in fines,' says Frieh. [ Defiance in Bedouin hamlet as Israel prepares to demolish it Opens in new window ] Not far from Ras Jrabah is what remains of another unrecognised Bedouin village that was once home to 70 families. Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on t he pretext of expanding the highway that runs by the Bedouin community. Wadi al-Khalil was razed in May 2024 in the presence of hundreds of Israeli security personnel on the pretext of expanding the highway that runs by the Bedouin community. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Piles of rubble and household debris – with a handful of tents for Bedouin families with nowhere else to go – are all that's left. 'Many of them lost everything,' says Frieh.
