Although not well-known in the public sphere, even among those with a keen interest in security affairs, the arms control community over the past three years has been engaged in a debate over a conference on a Weapons of Mass Destruction free-zone (WMDFZ) for the Middle East. After the regional parties could not agree on either the framework or the content, and with the events unfolding in the region, the conference — slated to take place in Helsinki during 2012 — was postponed indefinitely.
The lack of agreement among the regional parties is grounded in their longstanding different approaches to regional stability and security, specifically the source of security threats and regional tensions in the Middle East. The Arab side aims to reduce regional security dialogue to an exclusive focus on WMD, the implication being that weapons as such are the major concern, which enables Arab states to focus their attention on the perceived advantage that Israel maintains in this regard, to the exclusion of almost every other security concern. For Israel, however, its “security deficit” is primarily a function of its highly problematic relations with its neighbors.
