In a letter to the United Nation Secretary-General, Israel requested that “all states of the Middle East, and the States adjacent to the region … indicate in the course of 1981 their consent to the holding of a preparatory conference to discuss the modalities of such a conference of States of the Middle East with a view to negotiating a multilateral treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East”.

The letter asserted Israel’s position that a NWFZ can only be established if “each state is contractually assured of compliance with the commitment by all the other states in the region to abstain from introducing nuclear weapons into the region.” Also, the need for peace relations and agreements were considered essential, “as long as the resort to war is not ruled out, little faith can be placed [either] in unilateral declarations ...” and that adherence to NPT cannot be “presented as a credible alternative” to the establishment of a NWFZ.

The Israeli letter also supported Egypt’s request from 24 April 1981 for the Secretary-General to undertake a study to explore the modalities for establishing a NWFZ in the Middle East and proposed that such a study be undertaken by qualified experts from the Middle East, and that such an undertaking would qualify as a “valuable step in the direction of building much needed confidence between the states of the region.”

Photo credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

Informal consultations before a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Yehuda Z. Blum (Centre), Israeli representative. June 05, 1982