A story involving nanotech, weapons and Israel is a dead cert to get press coverage, and so Shimon Peres’ invitation to “15 top thinkers to focus on developing futuristic weaponry” and a few speculative asides rapidly escalates into the usually sort of stories about nanotech enabling a whole range of futuristic weaponry, with Science|Business putting together a reasonable summary.
Most of the applications mentioned such as ‘electronics for computing and information’ or ‘power generation and storage’ also have a variety of non military uses, so we shouldn’t expect nanotech to either prolong or solve the Middle East conflict any time soon, although clean water applications would be a step in the right direction.