Since its establishment after World War II, the State of Israel has
sought alliances with non-Arab and non-Muslim countries and
minorities in the Middle East, as well as Arab states
geographically distant from the Arab-Israel conflict. The text
presents and explains this regional orientation and its continuing
implications for war and peace. It examines Israel's strategy of
outflanking, both geographically and politically, the hostile Sunni
Arab Middle East core that surrounded it in the early decades of
its sovereign history, a strategy that became a pillar of the
Israeli foreign and defense policy. This "periphery doctrine" was a
grand strategy, meant to attain the major political-security goal
of countering Arab hostility through relations with alternative
regional powers and potential allies. It was quietly abandoned when
the Sadat initiative and the emerging coexistence between Israel
and Jordan reflected a readiness on the part of the Sunni Arab core
to deal with Israel politically rather than militarily. For a brief
interval following the 1991 Madrid conference and the 1993 Oslo
accords, Israel seemed to be accepted by all its neighbors,
prompting then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to muse that it could
even consider joining the Arab League. Yet this periphery strategy
had been internalized to some extent in Israel's strategic thinking
and it began to reappear after 2010, following a new era of Arab
revolution. The rise of political Islam in Egypt, Turkey, Gaza,
southern Lebanon and possibly Syria, coupled with the Islamic
regime in Iran, has generated concern in Israel that it is again
being surrounded by a ring of hostile states-in this case,
Islamists rather than Arab nationalists. The book analyzes Israel's
strategic thinking about the Middle East region, evaluating its
success or failure in maintaining both Israel's security and the
viability of Israeli-American strategic cooperation. It looks at
the importance of the periphery strategy for Israeli, moderate
Arab, and American, and European efforts to advance the Arab-Israel
peace process, and its potential role as the Arab Spring brings
about greater Islamization of the Arab Middle East. Already,
Israeli strategic planners are talking of "spheres of containment"
and "crescents" wherein countries like Cyprus, Greece, Azerbaijan,
and Ethiopia constitute a kind of new periphery. By looking at
Israel's search for Middle East allies then and now, the book
explores a key component of Israel's strategic behavior. Written in
an accessible manner for all students, it provides a better
understanding of Israel's role in the Middle East region and its
Middle East identity.
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