Security chiefs step out of the shadows to praise Peres

The death of former president Shimon Peres on Wednesday elicited statements from some of Israel’s most secretive organizations.

Ze’ev Snir, head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, paid tribute to Peres’s “substantive contribution” to the establishment of the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, in southern Israel, and to the “founding of Israel’s nuclear policy as a significant plank in ensuring the national strength of the country.”

When still in his 30s, during the 1950s, Peres played a key part in Israel’s pursuit of a nuclear capability at the urging of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

He reached a secret agreement with France that led to the building of a nuclear reactor at Dimona, which went critical around 1962.

Israel is now considered to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear-armed power, although it has never confirmed it, maintaining a policy of ambiguity.

It is estimated to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium at Dimona to arm between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, according to the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Peres, who was president and twice prime minister, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role in negotiating the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, and saw no contradiction between that achievement and his nuclear efforts.

“Dimona helped us to achieve Oslo,” he told Time magazine in an interview in February.

“Because many Arabs, out of suspicion, came to the conclusion that it’s very hard to destroy Israel because of it, because of their suspicion.

“Well if the result is Dimona, I think I was right. Anyway, we’ve never threatened anybody with nuclear bombs, and we’ve never tested it.”

In other tributes to the late former president, Nadav Argaman, head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, eulogized Peres’s “massive contribution to the design and establishment of Israel’s security outlook and its strength.”

Peres had “laid with his own hands the iron foundations” upon which the entire security system had been built, and his heritage would forever be a “compass and beacon,” Argaman said.

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich said Peres was “a man of vision and action, from his youth until the end of his days.”

“His entire history is closely interwoven with the history of the State of Israel,” said Alsheich. “The Israel Police extends its condolences to the bereaved family and to the entire nation over our loss of one of the nation’s greats.”

Mossad head Yossi Cohen noted that Peres had “acted with the Mossad, throughout the years, in operations and activities for the [benefit] of Israel’s security.”

Peres, he said, was “one of the most prominent of the state’s leaders — a symbol of peace and comradeship and a person who made a great contribution to the strengthening of Israel’s security.”