By Eitan Barak
The Covid-19 pandemic and allegations that the virus was engineered in China before spreading globally, even if inadvertently, have made clear to all the inherent danger of biological weapons )BW) use. This category of weapons has been declared illegal under international law due to the inherit inability to use them while simultaneously maintaining the required distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Even the most lethal agents require substantial time (“a latency period”) before the victims are aware of their fate. Undoubtedly, in the modern era, even several hours is sufficient for infected combatants to travel to populated areas and infect masses of innocent civilians.
Therefore, by the 1970s, the international community had drafted a treaty (commonly referred to as “The Biological Weapons Convention” or BWC) with the intent of eliminating all BWs. By joining (through ratification or accession) the Convention, the member states committed themselves to never develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain these weapons, alongside fulfilling their obligation to destroy or divert existing BWs in their arsenals to peaceful use within nine months of joining,
Indeed, on March 26, 2020, while the world was celebrating the BWC’s 45th anniversary, [IE1] the pandemic reverberated throughout in all the respective addresses, including that of the U.S. representative, ironically the state which is the main culprit for the Convention’s intrinsic flaw: the absence of an effective verification regime. Thus, despite various significant steps introduced during the years to strengthen BW verification, many perceived the BWC’s main function to be the symbolic declaration of a universal moral stance.
Nevertheless, the Convention’s universal acceptance has steadily spread, with 183 member states currently counted. Four additional states (Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, and Syria) have only signed the treaty.
Unfortunately, Israel, together with the r island states of the Comoro Islands, Kiribati, Micronesia, and Tuvalu, as well as five African nations (Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Namibia, and South Sudan) has kept itself completely outside the Convention. Furthermore, according to UN reports, in addition to Haiti, which is under process of ratification, initial procedures (or final ones in the cases of Micronesia and South Sudan) to join the Convention have started in all nine states except the Comoro Islands and Eritrea.
In short, Israel finds itself belonging to a club of only five states (Egypt, Syria, Somalia, the Comoro Islands and Eritrea) having no intent of joining the Convention. Given the other members’ identities, Israel has surely gained little prestige by its membership.
As such, the question of Israel’s refusal remains prickly. After all, in 1969, Israel joined the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol, banning the use of chemical and “bacteriological methods of warfare”. Although Israel has reserved the right to retaliate in kind, it is clear that even if Israel does possess such abhorrent weapons, they simply won’t be used, even within the context of retaliation. For a democratic state seeking to be part of the West and being dependent, to some extent, on the U.S., the moral taboo on using such weapons and the expected harsh reaction of the international community effectively rules out any such action.
A serious explanation of this refusal is not to be found in the official statements where Israel has justified its longstanding refusal to accede to the BWC by making the somehow traditional claim that BW disarmament requires regional negotiations aimed at establishing a weapons of mass destruction-free zone (WMDFZ), including the elimination of ballistic missiles.
Given that such weapons provide Israel with no valuable strategic military benefits, we must turn to the political setting for an answer. However, the treaty’s absence of penetrating means of verification, assured that Israel’s historic concerns over abuse of these means by its foes are irrelevant. Instead, it appears that the main reason for its refusal is hard to formally articulate: the dangers aroused by the “slippery slope” scenario.
According to this reasoning, Israel’s joining the BWC will broaden and accelerate the efforts of the Arab states and their supporters in the international community to force Israel to relinquish its alleged nuclear arsenal. Formally, this can be done either by forcing accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel can join only as non-nuclear weapons state, or by extracting its consent to the establishment of a regional WMDFZ. The latter means overruling Israel’s preconditions for such a zone – mainly the signing of peace agreements with all its neighbor states, including Iraq and Iran, and the elapse of a two-year period following the signing of these agreements to ensure that they are indeed lasting. Armament, according to the contested Israeli view, is not the “disease” to be cured; rather, it is the main symptom. Therefore, if an appropriate response to the real “disease” (the absence of lasting peace agreements in the region) is to be found, the symptom must first, naturally, be resolved.
In fact, some argue that the anticipated pressures on Israel to disarm its alleged nuclear arsenal may come only after an “intermediate phase” in the process: an attempt made to force Israel to ratify its 1993 signature of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Due to the strong link in the international community between these two categories of weapons – well-reflected in the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol – this scenario is quite plausible.
In light of this troublesome situation and the isolation in which Israel finds itself, it is worthwhile viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as a unique window of opportunity in which to do “the right thing” and join the BWC. The pandemic provides Israel with the framework as well as the valuable justification for taking such a step while making it very difficult for her adversaries to misrepresent her joining. Should it join the BWC, Israel can be portrayed as a nation that, by virtue of the current unique circumstances, knows how to set aside the trivial political considerations belonging to a pre-Coronavirus world. Any abusive attempt to realize the “slippery slope” would then be perceived very negatively.
Eighteen years ago, Avner Cohen wrote with respect to the BWC that: “The time has come” for Israel “to [finally-EB] put itself squarely on the ‘right’ side, that of Western civilization”. If this was a call for action in the pre-COVID world, it is surely a cry for action in its wake.
Dr. Eitan Barak is a senior researcher at the International Relations Department, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Prior to joining the Department, Dr. Barak was a Fulbright postdoctoral grantee in the International Security Program at Harvard. Read full bio here.