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Death Tango traces the Middle East dynamic back to the events of
March 27-29, 2002. March 27, Passover Eve, witnessed the most
bloody and traumatic Arab terrorist attack in Israel's history, the
Park Hotel bombing in Netanya. On March 28, an Arab League summit
in Beirut adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, the most far-reaching
Arab attempt to set parameters for ending the Israel-Arab conflict.
The next day, Israel invaded and reoccupied the West Bank in
Operation Defensive Shield. Alpher illustrates the interaction
between these three critical events and depicts the key
personalities-politicians, generals, and a star journalist-involved
on all sides. It moves from a suicide bombing to the deliberations
of Arab leaders; from the Israel Prime Minister's Office-where
Ariel Sharon fulminated against Yasser Arafat-to Washington, where
the United States fumbled and misunderstood the dynamics at work;
and on to the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers won a
bloody military battle but Israel lost the media battle of public
opinion. Based on extensive interviews and his deep personal
knowledge, Alpher analyzes the three days in late March 2002 as a
catalyst of extensive change in the Middle East, concluding that
Arabs and Israelis are dancing a kind of "death tango."
Yossi Alpher, a veteran of peace process research and dialogue,
explains how Israel got into its current situation of growing
international isolation, political stalemate, and gathering
messianic political influence. He investigates the inability of
Israelis and Palestinians to make peace and end their conflict
before suggesting not "solutions" (as there is no current prospect
for a realistic comprehensive solution), but ways to moderate and
soften the worst aspects of the situation and "muddle through" as
Israel looks to a somber bi-national future. Alpher argues that a
sober reassessment is long overdue in the way the West looks at the
Israeli-Palestinian relationship. He submits that we have to stop
talking about "the peace process" as if it still seriously exists,
that 20 years of the Oslo process have failed for very substantial
reasons that the professional peacemakers ignore at their risk, and
that Israel is more likely to sink into a single-state reality than
to remain truly "Jewish and democratic." Yet, his is a
non-ideological, no nonsense book. Israel will not disappear, will
not become impoverished, and will still find strategic partners.
The book opens with a true story of two sisters whose lives were
separated in 1947, as a parable for what is still happening in
Israel's relations with the Arab world in general and the
Palestinians in particular. It then offers brief analyses of how
Israel looks today in the world, from a rejection of deceptive
nostalgia for imaginary "good old days" to a discussion of Israel's
increasingly problematic internal cohesion and the paralysis this
generates in decision making regarding territories-for-peace
issues. A discussion of Diaspora Jewish influence focuses on the
Diaspora's anachronistic approach to the peace process. It is
followed by a look at the highly negative effect regional
developments are having on Israeli attitudes toward Arabs in
general and peace in particular, using the summer 2014 war with
Gaza-based Hamas as a case in point. Next comes a discussion of the
history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process,
looking at the principal processes and dynamics that have thwarted
peace and coexistence since the 1930s. Alpher argues that peace
process practitioners on all sides-Israel, Palestinians, other
Arabs, the US, the UN-have consistently ignored these dynamics or
refused to take them seriously, producing today's stalemate. The
book concludes with a look at the scaled-down alternatives
available today for avoiding, or at least delaying, total paralysis
and a one-state reality. These include a UN approach and another
unilateral withdrawal. It concludes with an examination of the
increasingly influential Israeli proponents of a one-state solution
and the spectacular damage their policies are bringing about.
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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