Israel's Nuclear Option

Zaki Shalom is a member of the research staff at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies and at Ashkelon Academic College. He is the author of Israel's Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy between Dimona and Washington (Sussex Academic Press and Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 2005), and Ben-Gurions Political Struggles, 19631967: A Lion in Winter (Routledge, 2006). In 2007 he was awarded the Prime Ministers prestigious David Ben-Gurion Memorial Prize for his book Fire in His Bones, which relates Ben-Gurions activities following his resignation as prime minister and until his death.

• Introduction - Neutralism in Retrospect: Definitions and Paradigms; Syrias Road to Independence: The Emergence of Pragmatic/Calculative Nationalist Neutralism; The Rise of 'Anti-Western Neutralism' in Post-Mandatory Syria; Neutralism in Practice: Syria and the Consolidation of the Arab-Asian Group; Communism, Syria, and Neutralist Trends; Syrias Rival Schools of Neutralism and the Road to Union; Nasserite 'Positive Neutralism' and the United Arab Republic; Conclusion - The Rise of the Neo-Bath and the Gradual Demise of Neutralism; Appendix - Modes of Practised Arab Neutralism; Index.

"Zaki Shalom recounts the US-Israel dialogue on Israel's nuclear project, and delineates the limitations a superpower faces when trying to impose its security agenda on a regional ally. Shalom's book is an important contribution to our understanding of the Israeli nuclear project, and the diplomacy of arms control." -- Prof. Yair Evron, The School of Government and Policy, The Security Studies Program, Tel Aviv University."In recent years much of the vaunted 'opacity' of Israel's nuclear weapons status has been stripped away by scholars and critics. In this context, Zaki Shalom contributes a thorough, painstakingly documented blow-by-blow account of the diplomatic dimension of the process by which Israel, unbidden, penetrated the nuclear club. Shalom's work is exemplary archival research, refreshingly old-fashioned in its assiduous attention to multiple primary sources, showing the strengths of a documentary focus even on such a 'sensitive' topic. As an established scholar of David Ben-Gurion he is particularly effective in underlining how Ben-Gurion's audacity was key to the decision to push ahead; put simply, there was nothing preordained or certain, in the 1950s and 1960s, about Israel's seemingly quixotic pursuit of nuclear capability." -- Alan Dowty, Kahanoff Chair Professor of Israel Studies, University of Calgary.