Speaking at an occasion to mark a change of management on the nation’s Atomic Energy Commission, Lapid referred to Israel’s defensive and offensive capabilities, in addition to what he known as its “different capabilities” — understood to be a reference to nuclear weapons.
“The operational area within the invisible dome above us is constructed on defensive capabilities and offensive capabilities, and what the international media tends to name ‘different capabilities.’ These different capabilities hold us alive and can hold us alive as long as we and our kids are right here,” Lapid mentioned.
Israel is broadly believed to own a number of hundred nuclear weapons, creating the know-how within the Nineteen Sixties. Unlike most assumed nuclear weapons states, Israel has by no means formally declared possession.
Instead it pursues a coverage of ‘opacity’ — that means Israeli leaders, when pushed, have most popular to make solely indirect or ambiguous reference to nukes.
The first such assertion was made within the early Nineteen Sixties by then junior protection minister Shimon Peres who mentioned that Israel would “definitely not be the primary to introduce nuclear weapons into the area.”
More just lately, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared to acknowledge the nuclear functionality when he listed Israel, together with the United States, Russia and France, as having nuclear weapons, although he later tried to row again the feedback, which had been made on German tv.
Benjamin Netanyahu too as soon as referred to Israel as a “nuclear energy” throughout a presentation to his Cabinet, earlier than he corrected himself to say “vitality energy.”