Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

Less than one month before the United States opened its Desert Storm offensive against Iraq in January 1991, U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia were put on "red alert" after satellites recorded the launch of a nuclear-capable Jericho medium-range missile by Israel. After it was determined that the missile was unarmed and headed harmlessly out over the Mediterranean, the alert was canceled.

World attention is frequently focused on the Middle East. The central concerns are usually about the peace negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis, problems created by Saddam Hussein, new tensions between Syria and Israel, the importance of the flow of oil and other related issues.

The Madrid Peace Conference convened from October 30, 1991, to November 3, 1991. Cosponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union, attendees included a joint Jordanian/Palestinian delegation and delegates from Syria, the European Community, Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, a critical military challenge of generals and politicians throughout the Middle East has been to integrate nonconventional and ballistic missile capabilities into coherent, workable, and affordable strategic doctrines.

"The most dangerous of these [hostile] regimes is Iran, which has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy. If this regime, or its despotic neighbor Iraq, were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.