US-Russia deal to strip President Bashar Assad of his chemical weapons stockpile has some policymakers in Jerusalem concerned that Israel may be forced to sign an international chemical weapons ban treaty, something it has been unwilling to do until now.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, an international arms control pact which bans the production and amassing of chemical weapons materiel, is ratified by 183 states. Only Israel and Myanmar have signed the treaty but not ratified it into law.

Israel refused to ratify the treaty on the claim that “there is no significance to being part of an agreement like this while a neighboring country like Syria possesses a vast stockpile of chemical weapons,” Channel 10 reported Sunday night.

“Israel cannot allow itself to be the one that everyone thinks doesn’t have chemical weapons,” retired brigadier general Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of Tel Aviv University’s Security Studies department, told the station.

Neither Syria nor Egypt signed the CWC, and both have active chemical weapons programs. South Sudan, North Korea and Angola are the remaining non-signatory states.