Introduction

Starting in 2012, the concept of a periphery doctrine resurfaced in the reports of Israeli media and think tanks. This concept posits that to overcome the hostilities of its neighbors, Israel should engage with the peripheral, non-Arab, countries of the Middle East. This renaissance is the starting point of the book, which argues that this idea of the periphery can be understood as a paradigm of Israel’s foreign policy. To make the case, it shows how this concept emerged from the early Zionist debates regarding the regional strategy of the nascent Jewish State and was then applied by Ben-Gurion in the late fifties mainly with Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia. Based on field research, the book analyzes the birth and development of the periphery doctrine from the early twentieth century to today.