Israel ‘came very close’ to using nuclear bombs during 1967 war

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israel had a top secret plan to explode a nuclear bomb in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula if it faced defeat during the 1967 Middle East war, new documents reveal, according to The Sun.

The under-fire nation planned to detonate the huge weapon on the top of a mountain in the hope it would scare off rival Egyptian and Arab forces.

Luckily for all of those involved, the deadly Operation Shimshon (Samson) never came to fruition as Israel defeated its enemies in just six days.

It’s now been revealed the plan was dubbed a “doomsday operation” by Itzhak Yaakov, a retired brigadier general whowas chief liason between the Israeli military and the defence industries.

The revelations have been made by the the Wilson Center to mark the the 50th anniversary of the conflict.

It has released groundbreaking historical documents and testimonies by key Israeli figures which reveal the desperate n-bomb plan.

The operation’s name invoked the biblical figure of great power and aimed to scare Arab armies into retreat.

In a series of interviews in 1999, Yaakov detailed how he came up with the plans at his superiors’ urging and how a pair of helicopters was chosen for the mission along with forces from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit.

The selected landing site was a mountain in eastern Sinai, about 12 miles from the large Egyptian military complex in Abu Ageila.

There, a powerful device was to be connected with its nuclear core and linked to ignition wires.

"You've got an enemy, and he says he's going to throw you to the sea. You believe him," Mr Yaakov said.

"How can you stop him?" he asked. "You scare him. If you've got something you can scare him with, you scare him."

Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying the existence of an arsenal, but it is widely believed to secretly possess hundreds of nukes.