ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the particular problems of designing confidence building measures (CBM) for the Middle East, in order to identify the questions of particular relevance for Israeli domestic politics. Clearly the feasibility of any measures to build mutual trust between Arabs and Israelis depends on the political acceptability of these measures, among other things. The thesis argued that both first-order and second-order CBMs are necessary and important, but that absence of progress with the second will—at least in the Arab-Israeli context—severely limit the possibilities of the first. The Israeli political system has always been distinguished by a high level of participation, measured by voting or by other activities, and by high levels of political awareness and knowledge. Israeli parties had organized themselves along the three axes: the usual left-right socioeconomic continuum; a spectrum of dovish or hawkish security positions only partly correlated with the first axis; and a religious-secular division basically independent of the other dimensions.
