Yigal Allon

Yigal Allon was a 1948 war hero and a close adviser to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. He was an advocate of West Bank resettlement. Allon, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, believed that Israel's essential advantage over the Arabs was the quality and training of its military personnel, and viewed nuclear weapons as nothing more than a great equalizer.¹

In early December 1967, Allon was given a private look at Israel's early work on its first nuclear missile field, under construction at Hirbat Zachariah. This experience moved him to tears, as he saw it as a new kind of military security for the nation. The concealed shelters at the site were built by Tahal, the government-owned water planning corporation, and the launch barrels were imported marked as lengths of pipeline. He couldn't resist boasting about what he had seen, stunning his cabinet colleagues by warning Egypt in a public speech that Israel would reply in kind to any Egyptian attack on a population center using advanced weapons. His cryptic assertions were privately attacked by other government officials as a breach of security and publicly criticized in the press for creating panic.¹

Allon was among those in the kitchen cabinet who assembled for an all-night session in Golda Meir's office in Tel Aviv on Monday, October 8, 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. The Israeli leadership resolved to implement three critical decisions: rally its collapsing forces for a major counterattack; arm and target its nuclear arsenal in the event of total collapse and subsequent need for the Samson Option; and inform Washington, D.C. of its unprecedented nuclear action to demand an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition.²