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The official paper discloses communications between John Robinson, a former British ambassador to Tel Aviv, and the UK Foreign Office, in which the former diplomat cautioned about an Israeli nuclear attack.
“If they (Israelis) are to be destroyed, they will go down fighting this time. They will be ready to use their atomic weapon,” Reuters quoted Robinson as stating in the newly declassified cable dated May 4, 1980.
Robinson’s message, published on December 29 under a rule that allows official British documents to be released after 30 years, also voiced concern that US-hosted talks between Palestinians and Israelis would not lead to an agreement on the Middle East conflict.
“As long as there is no agreement on the West Bank and al-Quds (Jerusalem) which satisfies the Palestinians, they will be driven increasingly to extremism; moderate governments in the area and Western interest will be increasingly threatened; opportunities for Soviet influence and intervention will increase; and so will the danger of a new war,” the cable read.
Israel, which is widely believed to be the sole possessor of a nuclear warheads cache in the Middle East, has so far neither confirmed nor denied having a nuclear arsenal.
In 1986, Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, leaked the news that Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons.
Vanunu was a former technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert.
In May 2010, the British daily The Guardian newspaper reported that secret South African documents revealed that in 1975, Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the then-apartheid regime in South Africa.
The regime in Tel Aviv has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has also adamantly rejected international inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including East al-Quds, during the Six Day War in 1967 and has settled around 500,000 Jews in the occupied area. Constructing settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal under the international law.
Palestinians insist that continued expansion of Jewish settlements on their occupied lands will make the establishment of an independent Palestinian state impossible
