Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel's Nuclear Project (1948-1954)

Abstract

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR PROJECT STARTED IN earnest in 1955. The year was marked by two developments, one domestic and the other international, that proved fateful for the initiation of the project. On the domestic scene, David Ben-Gurion, who always believed in the atomic vision, returned to power, first as minister of defense and a few months later as prime minister. On the international scene, President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative, announced a year earlier, created a sense that a great era for nuclear energy was on the horizon. In August 1955, the same month that Ben-Gurion was re-elected as prime minister, the first international conference on atomic energy convened in Geneva. It was the biggest scientific extravaganza ever held, entirely devoted to promoting the nuclear revolution. Professor David Ernst Bergmann, the chairman of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), wrote an enthusiastic top-secret report to Ben-Gurion urging him to beef up the groundwork for the desired project. The next two years, 1956-1957, were devoted to just that: debating alternatives, searching for overseas partners, recruiting new personnel, and regrouping organizationally. It turned out that these activities coincided with the coalescence of the FrenchIsraeli alliance. The Dimona projectconceived and sought-after in 1956, put together in 1957, and initiated in 1958 -was the product of those efforts. This was the dawn of Israel's nuclear history There was, however, a special period before the beginning. This was the five-year period 1949-1953, when the faith that Israel would have a national nuclear project in the not-too-distant future, and the confidence that such a project was not beyond its scientific and technological reach, was planted and nurtured. I call it before the beginning, because no project