Netanyahu Cancels Nuclear Summit Trip
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that he is canceling his planned attendance to an international summit on nuclear weapons, putting further strain on already tense relations between the United States and Israel. However, Dan Meridor, deputy prime minister of atomic energy for Israel, will be taking Netanyahu’s place.
The Obama administration has lately been critical of Israel’s plans to continue building settlements in the West Bank, an area of land highly contested between Israel and Palestine, while Netanyahu and most Israeli leaders support further construction of settlements, and claim that Obama intentionally snubbed Netanyahu during a White House meeting several weeks ago. Netanyahu stated that he decided not to attend the summit after hearing that Egypt and Turkey, nations with whom Israel has had testy relationships, would be attending. The thought is that they will likely pressure Israel to agree to Obama’s recent nuclear policy and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which 189 nations have signed since 1970. India, Israel, and Pakistan are the notable exceptions.
Although Israel has never directly announced details of its nuclear program, it is an open secret that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. This makes it the only Middle Eastern nation with nuclear weapons, and most analysts agree that Israel has as many 200 warheads. The summit hosted by Obama will discuss the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran – both of which will not be attending and have been banned from the conference – and goals to reduce the total number of nuclear weapons in the world.