The Untold Story of Dimona

摘要

The strategic landscape of the Middle East is a difficult puzzle of covert alliances, clandestine nuclear activities, incompatible political behaviours and contesting territorial claims of regional states. A complex network of intelligence communities actively working in a troublesome environment is an additional factor dominating the ongoing wave of crisis which is fundamentally inherited in unsettled Arab-lsrael relations. The most significant and importantly unspoken element of Middle Eastern security environment is the nuclear ambition of Israel and its historical attachment to the Negev Desert. The sands of the Negev desert made the nuclear dream of Jewish leaders a successful reality when the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, decided to build a nuclear research centre, officially known Negev Nuclear Research Center (NNRC). This research laboratory was completed nearly a decade after the creation of Israel and became the first nuclear facility of the Jewish nation. The initial purpose of NNRC apparently was to enrich the nuclear knowledge of the newly born Jewish state which could be invested in the peaceful directions in future. The NNRC later became the Dimona nuclear facility due to its geographical location. The first plan to start this nuclear project began with a geological survey by a team of researchers in the Negev desert hopping to discover uranium deposits.