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.