Israeli Policy Research Articles

Disability and Identity Transformation in Selma Dabbagh’s Out of It

This paper examines the significance of disability in Arab British novelist Selma Dabbagh’s Out of It (2011). It underscores how disability engenders an identity transformation that Sabri Mujahed undergoes in the novel. The study highlights how disability triggers resistance strategies to the oppressive socio-political norms and occupying powers. The paper also draws attention to the psychological and socio-cultural impacts of disability on the life of Sabri Mujahed. Sabri turns his skills toward a great mission of writing the history of Palestinian resistance and exposing aggressive Israeli policies. The process of writing itself has a therapeutic effect that helps Sabri overcome his disability and channel his mental powers to a greater cause. Taking into consideration disability studies’ tendency to provide a fresh approach to understand a disabled character’s inner world, this paper employs disability studies as a theoretical and critical framework in light of which the novel is analyzed. The paper also foregrounds the socio-political, cultural and historical conditions and circumstances that Palestinians in Gaza experience and undergo. In this context, continuous Israeli military attacks, a stifling blockade and internal factional conflicts are some of the challenges that people in Gaza, including disabled Sabri, have to cope with on daily basis.

Monetary policy rules in practice: The case of Israel

This paper presents a case study of how communication on monetary policy rules in Israel allows for discretionary deviations within a rule-like policy framework without impairment to central bank credibility. We quantitatively analyze a monetary policy rule that has described Bank of Israel policy formally since 2012 and informally since 2007. We demonstrate the value of a policy rule as a tool of communication and show how policymakers leverage this rule in times of economic uncertainty. We identify periods of discretionary deviation from the policy rule and show how communication on financial stability concerns derived from monthly interest rate announcements explains these deviations. Finally, we show how policymakers in Israel were able to anchor market expectations, even in times of great economic uncertainty. We assess how market expectations about the future path of the short-term interest rate respond both to communication related to the rule and exercised flexibility during the financial crisis. We use futures contracts on short term interest rates from the inter-bank market and find that monetary policy predictability improves in the period following the publication of this rule. We argue that policymakers in Israel were able to conduct monetary policy consistent with their main long-term objectives while maintain a high degree of transparency on assessments behind interest rate decisions.

Inside Outsiders: Comparing State Policies Towards Citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish Descent in Israel and Turkey

ABSTRACT This study compares state policies of Israel and Turkey regarding their citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish descent, respectively. It then explores the reasons for the differences and points at the consequences for Israel’s and Turkey’s democracy. Israel’s citizens of Palestinian descent and Turkey’s citizens of Kurdish descent have faced systematic discrimination. While Israel never considered assimilating its Palestinian citizens into mainstream Israeli national identity, considering Jewishness as its essential and indispensable element, Turkey engaged in assimilation policies vis-à-vis its Kurdish citizens, which met with limited success. While applying different methods in defining the boundaries of Israeli and Turkish ethnicity, both Israel and Turkey have refused to view members of these groups as equal citizens. Awarding full citizenship rights has been questioned on accounts of Jewish sovereignty-dilution fears in Israel and of Kurdish self-determination and partition in Turkey. Failing to distinguish their citizens from their trans-border ethnic kin groups and viewing them as part of a transnational community threatening Israeli and Turkish sovereignty, Israel’s citizens of Palestinian descent and Turkey’s citizens of Kurdish descent have been turned into ‘inside outsiders’. This has deprived them of fundamental constitutional rights and limited the prospects of democratic consolidation in both states.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

The Abraham Accords and Pakistan

AbstractIn a major diplomatic realignment, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized their relations with Israel in September 2020 by signing the Abraham Peace Accords in Washington. However, this normalization has created a noticeable divide; other majority‐Muslim states, including Morocco and Sudan, have also accepted incentives to normalize relations with Israel, while pressure is mounting on Pakistan from its close allies in the Gulf region to recognize Israel. Pakistan, which enjoys multifaceted cooperative relations with all states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), now faces a dilemma, as it has a longstanding position on the Palestine issue through which it views its policy on Israel. Considering the dilemma, this article focuses on the impact the Abraham Peace Accords have had on Pakistan's relations with the GCC states and its own Israel policy. Based on the examination of various ideational and geopolitical factors, it is argued that Pakistan has more to lose than gain by changing its historical position and recognizing the state of Israel.

Jerusalem 1948–1952 as a ‘no man’s land’: the Israeli policy in Jerusalem as an arena of the Cold War

This article will address Israel’s ambiguous policy regarding Jerusalem in the context of the activity of the foreign consulates in the city as it emerges from the Israeli documents in the 1950s. Divided Jerusalem in the 1950s was the focus of widespread international activity. This situation was created in the wake of UN Resolution 181 and the inability of the international community to implement the resolution. That the city was divided between two countries engaged in a violent confrontation enabled international parties to exploit the situation for their own interests in the inter-block conflict. The consular activities of the Americans and the French in Jerusalem will be investigated in the context of Israeli policy and the Cold War. The case of the Czechoslovakian consul illustrates this reality.

The Anti-Israel Movement in Québec in the 1970s: At the Ideological Crossroads of the New Left and Liberation-Nationalism

Since the late 1950s, Third World nationalism in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Middle East had fascinated radical Quebec nationalists. Quebec nationalism’s militant arm, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), styled itself as a national-liberation movement fighting against Anglo-Canadian exploitation and oppression. After the Six-Day-War, the PLO became a significant source of inspiration for these elements. Quebec was their Palestine, as one prominent Quebec Nationalist asserted. This militant Quebec nationalism coincided and often overlapped with the rise of the New Left at Quebec’s universities and in its unions. Like its European and American counterparts, the Quebec New Left adopted the ideologies of anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, and in 1972, the Quebec-Palestine Association was established in this milieu. Anti-imperialism combined the Marxist analysis of class struggle with a nationalistic worldview, which saw the world divided between oppressor and oppressed nations. For the New Left, Israel became the epitome of an oppressor nation. It was associated with all the supposed vices of the West: Racism, capitalism, inauthenticity, and militarism. This paper sheds light on the founding years of the Quebec anti-Zionist movement in the early 1970 and discusses the themes and images it used to describe Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Furthermore, the paper investigates whether these articulations a genuine critique of Zionism and Israeli policies or whether they were, instead, a reflection of antisemitic stereotypes. Moreover, the paper compares Quebec anti-Zionism to parallel manifestations of New Left anti-Zionism in Germany, asking whether the cultural context in Quebec affected the message of anti-Zionism.

Populism, religion and family values policies in Israel, Italy and Turkey

ABSTRACT There is a growing focus in political science on right-wing populist parties. But few comparative studies address their discourses and politics relating to family values, especially when involved with policy-making. Moreover, many comparative works about populism focus on a single region – often Western and Eastern Europe. This paper adopts a definition of populism with two different dimensions: the vertical (inclusive), which regards elites, and the horizontal (exclusive), which addresses ‘foreigners’. The use of family values in political discourse and policy pertains to the two axes of populism. On the one hand are elites who are accused of being uncommitted to traditional values and morally corrupt. On the other hand are demographic concerns regarding declining birth rates among native populations and immigrants with large families. The stress on family values can also originate from a value orientation – or merely a tactical move – engendered by political competition. This paper specifically examines the politics of family values in the context of policies concerning gender equality, family planning and LGBT rights in three countries: Israel, Italy and Turkey.

Gaza and the Limits of Metropolitan Solidarity: Affiliation under Duress

This article explores what Gaza reveals about the extent, depth, and limits of contemporary metropolitan solidarity with Palestine. Focusing on Israel's recent wars on Gaza, I assess how these most explicit and spectacular manifestations of Israel's long-term policies there have been addressed in solidarity discourses and practices. Despite their apparent galvanizing powers, do such discourses and practices also act as sites of marginalization or occlusion? Where do we locate a Palestinian voice within them? My overarching objective in this inquiry is to reconsider solidarity from the standpoint of its beneficiaries, and to question the political, ethical, and cultural ramifications of such in context of the deep time of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In so doing, I freshly illuminate the limitations of solidarity in attending to Zionism as a schema of enforced ethno-nationalist differentiation that has undergirded and legitimated not just the Gaza wars but also the history of the conflict itself.

Lliberal Democracy: the Case of Democratic Erosion

This paper uses Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law, which guarantees the “ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish,” as a lens to reveal the ongoing socio-political change in Israel and processes of democratic erosion. In addition to having immediate relevance for contemporary Israeli policy, especially concerning the status of Arab Israelis and the likely annexation of the West Bank, the law poses a profound, existential challenge for the maintenance of Israel as a democratic state. Drawing on Fareed Zakaria’s theory of “illiberal democracy,” this paper analyses the implications of this law for Israel, for the linked concepts of liberalism and democracy, and for the future of the democratic state in an increasingly illiberal world. The law is a culmination of other basic laws and political thresholds, and accelerates settler colonialism. Gaining more international attention than previous basic laws, the political thresholds prior to the Nation-State Law and cumulative legislation building up to the debate have been ignored. Analysing these thresholds will reveal the efficacy of supporting such a law and using nationhood provisions in other Western democratic constitutions as justification. This paper is a warning: to act upon seemingly insignificant anti-democratic legislation before political actions become irreparable. The law is a culmination of other basic laws, political thresholds, and accelerates settler colonialism. Gaining more international attention than previous basic laws, direct discriminatory implications on Arab minorities as well as powerful legal consequences, the political thresholds prior to the Nation-State Law and cumulative legislation building up to the debate have been ignored. This paper will hopefully reveal the efficacy of supporting such a law and using the nationhood provisions in other constitutions in Western democracies as justification. This paper is a warning: to act upon seemingly insignificant anti-democratic legislation before political actions become irreparable.

The effect of LTV-based risk weights on house prices: Evidence from an Israeli macroprudential policy

This paper studies the link between macroprudential regulation and house prices by asking whether policies that impose higher risk weights on high-LTV mortgages can slow house price growth. Studying a 2010 Israeli policy, we find that the prices on housing units likely to be purchased using mortgages subject to higher risk weights are reduced by about 2 1/2 percent. We find that the policy has larger effects in more expensive areas of the country and, in particular, in lower quality neighborhoods within these more expensive areas. Combining our results with estimates of the effect of this policy on mortgage interest rates, we derive an estimate for the semi-elasticity of house prices with respect to mortgage rates that is consistent with the upper range of estimates reported in the literature.

Mediterraneanism in conflict: development and settlement of Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants in Gaza and Yamit

ABSTRACT This article examines Israeli development in the Gaza Strip and Northern Sinai from 1972 to 1982 from the perspective of architectural history. We argue that the prime objective of the Israeli occupation in this decade was economic development, not elimination; its guiding logic saw humanitarian aid as the preferred way to “resolve” the Palestinian refugee crisis. We follow how the pro-development, humanist “know how” of the architects and urban planners wrote themselves onto Gaza’s politics of space. Their scientific approach embodied in Mediterranean architecture was the solution of choice to hit two birds with one stone: end the refugee crisis by assimilating them into the Gaza strip cities, and ensure dependence on Israel by a new development plan with Yamit city at its epicentre. Mediterranean architecture expressed the gradations of vernacularity in the Israeli policy, and helped fashion a unique ideology of development based on exclusion and ethnic separation.

Formation of Policy towards the USSR in 1954—1955 in the Materials of the State Archives of Israel

In this article, the authors, based on materials from the State Archives of Israel, examine the formation of Israel's policy towards the USSR in the first years after the restoration of diplomatic relations, the main factors that influenced regional and international security, which Israel had to reckon with. The authors analyze the influence of these factors on the process of making foreign policy decisions in Israel. The Cold War, which took the form of inter-bloc confrontation in the struggle for economic, political and ideological leadership in the world, the accelerated militarization of some Arab states, the growth of military threats to Israel's national security, the expansion of the USSR's influence in the Arab world as a result of a broad propaganda campaign did not leave Israel a chance to remain neutral. He had to choose between West and East. The documents of the State Archives of Israel, to which the authors of the work got access, allow us to look at the development of the situation in the Middle East through the eyes of Israeli diplomacy. Extensive, previously unpublished material helps to understand the reasoning behind the adoption of certain foreign policy decisions in Israel. Having studied the documents available to them, the authors of the article came to the conclusion that by the beginning of 1956 Israel had not yet finally decided on the choice of a patron, although certain tendencies in its policy were already visible. Relations with the USSR remained in the stage of tense waiting and diplomatic maneuvering. Israel wanted the USSR to influence its Arab neighbors, allow Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, expand trade and cultural ties with it, but refused to follow in the wake of Soviet policy, while sending signals to the West that it was ready to move closer to it.

Israel-Egypt Agreements of 1974–1975 in the Context of Regional and International Relations: A New Perspective

After the October 1973 War president Sadat had come to realize the United States alone could lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupying during the June 1967 War. For although the Soviet Union supplied Egypt with the desirable types and amounts of weapons, Moscow had no impact on Israeli policy. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw the United States gaining clout in the Middle East while pushing the Soviet Union out of the region. Kissinger succeeded to bring about the signing of two separation of forces agreements between Israel and Egypt, in January 1974 and in September 1975; the second Disengagement Agreement even placed American troops in the Sinai Peninsula to monitor the demilitarized zones established between the two countries. In both cases the United States had resorted to exerting pressure on the Israeli government lead by Golda Meir (in 1974) and Yitzhak Rabin (in 1975) by denying financial aid and holding no discussions on weapon transactions. Neither in 1974 nor in 1975 president Sadat was willing to recognize Israel or to sign a peace agreement with the Jewish state. In fact, he was involved in a “step-by-step peace process” with the United States rather than with Israel. American administration had no doubt that Israel would have no choice but “to pay the bills”, whatever they would be.

Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and State Building by Daniel Marwecki

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 46, 2, 2021 © The Maghreb Review 2021 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources DANIEL MARWECKI, GERMANY AND ISRAEL: WHITEWASHING AND STATE BUILDING. LONDON, HURST & COMPANY, 2020 Marwecki’s book is a fascinating, well-documented account of the great contribution the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR) has made to the consolidation of the state of Israel and the maintenance of its security. His conclusions about the aims that informed its Israeli policy are not altogether flattering. For he maintains that “German politics towards Israel served not to confront the past but to whitewash its continuities, a rationale accepted in Israel in return for the means to build a state (p.99), and that the measures the FRG undertook to support Israel were not “one sided transactions undertaken out of guilt”, but ones informed by Germany’s interests. (p. 105). However, his account shows that these conclusions are not valid for the entire period covered in his book. This is especially true of the aim of whitewashing. It is unquestionable that whitewashing was the aim pursued by Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor of the FDR, when he initiated the process of reconciliation with Israel which led in 1952 to the conclusion of an agreement over the payment of reparations to it. Adenauer considered reconciliation with Israel a means of promoting Germany’s international standing and its integration in the community of the Western states. Intertwined with this aim was his belief in the great power the Jews had, especially in the USA. (Pp. 15 ff. & 32). Adenauer himself was at no time a Nazi, but the FDR’s bureaucracy was still manned predominantly by former Nazis and many of its prominent politicians had a Nazi past. The Reparations Agreement was ratified by the Bundestag (parliament) on 18 March 1953, and the parliamentarians who spoke in its favour argued exclusively in terms of its positive impact on clearing Germany’s name and promoting its international standing. (pp. 32-3). Israel’s prime minister Ben-Gurion demanded of Chancellor Adenauer to make a public affirmation of the whole German nation’s guilt for the crimes committed against the Jews, but in the end came to terms with an evasive statement Adenauer made in the Bundestag on 27 September 1951 in which he said that the majority of Germans were aware “of the immeasurable suffering that was brought upon the Jews …during the time of National Socialism” and that the Nazis’ crimes called “for moral and material indemnity”. (p. 27). In Israel, a large proportion of whose population consisted at the time of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Europe who escaped Nazi persecution, opposition to reconciliation with Germany was strong; but Ben-Gurion and his Labour Party went ahead with it out of pragmatic considerations. Israel’s state budget was in deficit, and its economy was overburdened by the cost of integrating the large number of Jewish immigrants from Europe and Arab countries. (Pp. 37-43). The Reparations Agreement enabled Israel to override BOOK REVIEWS 223 its budget deficit, carry out a wide-scale industrialisation programme and, with German help, develop its military power. (Pp. 41-9). German weapons had reached the Zionist forces in Palestine already in 1947. (p. 47). After 1957 the FDR delivered Israel with light weapons and motor patrol boats and provided military training. After 1962 the FDR delivered Israel also with heavy artillery, helicopters, planes, boats and submarines, and upon the request of the American administration provided Israel in 1964 also with 150 M48 Paton tanks. (pp.6061 ). Marwecki says that “the military force displayed by Israel in the decisive war of 1967 could not have been developed to this level without the FRG’s prior support.” (p.61). Marwecki’s account shows that a shift occurred in the FDR’s relations with Israel after its astounding victory against its Arab foes in 1967 and the defeat of Egypt’s president Abdel-Nasser who personified the threat of Arab nationalism to it. (p.115). With diplomatic relations having been established in 1965 and the taking over by the USA of Germany’s role as Israel’s main backer and provider of weapons, the...

Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance by Amy Kaplan

Reviewed by: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance by Amy Kaplan Miriam Eve Mora Amy Kaplan. Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. 368, 19 photos. Hardcover $29.95, ebook. ISBN 9780674737624, ASIN B07DGK4FX5. Amy Kaplan's book begins by quoting a 2009 speech by Barack Obama, in which he referred to America's "unbreakable bond" with Israel, a bond that Kaplan characterizes as both unique and dangerously under examined. Our American Israel explores this bond that has long defined the relationship between the two nations, and identifies its roots in shared mythology, international threats, political ideology, military power, and righteous purpose. Kaplan focuses on popular perceptions rather than political or military history. She has managed a difficult balancing act in this endeavor, writing a history of this relationship that shows how popular media (films, novels, bestselling nonfiction, and public history) influenced historical change in American perceptions of Israel, while avoiding the pitfall of presenting media as flimsy evidence of historical change. The book's seven chapters frame a pivotal change in the American–Israeli dynamic. The first three chapters focus on efforts in the American cultural landscape to Americanize Israel, to see the fledgling state through a lens of American exceptionalism and similarity. These chapters cover the first two decades of Israeli statehood, in which a favorable American liberal consensus formed, focusing on internationalism, antifascism, and modernization. Kaplan introduces the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, an oft-neglected initiator of the relationship between the two nations, and shows how this committee and American journalists abroad played pivotal [End Page 117] roles in conceiving American support for Israel. She then devotes a chapter to Leon Uris as the creative force behind the new American perception of Israel as made in the American image (through his novel Exodus and its film adaptation). The swift Israeli victory in the Six-Day War reaffirmed the liberal consensus and helped form a paradoxical image of Israelis that Kaplan has dubbed the "invincible victim," the subject and title of her third chapter. The victory in the war also brought more of the American right into the American love affair with Israel, as it drew a stark contrast to the failures of America's simultaneous quagmire in Vietnam. The consensus was shaken, however, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which drew tremendous criticism from the American left. Kaplan shows the tremendous impact of American journalism on the ground in Beirut during this conflict (unlike in the Six-Day War), which introduced the notion of a Palestinian homeland into American discussions of the Middle East. This event—the subject of Kaplan's fourth chapter—provides the turning point, at which the liberal consensus that Kaplan has defined is replaced by a conservative one, a backlash to liberal criticism of Israeli military power. The last three chapters flip the narrative, and focus on the Israelization of America, in which America stops projecting its values onto Israel and begins to emulate Israeli policy and strategy. In these chapters, Kaplan examines the shift in use of the Holocaust from historical justification to potential prophecy, the rise of evangelical power in the United States and its support for Israel, and the successful Israelization of American policy during the War on Terror. Though the first half of the book is more historically rigorous, the second half is innovative and exciting in its claims and connections. Kaplan introduces her readers to a number of cultural sources not traditionally associated with the relationship between America and Israel, and makes compelling arguments about their influence on current events. As the subject of the book is the perception of Israel maintained in the United States, Kaplan devotes very little time to Palestinian experiences, motives, or agency in their struggle against Israel and their own statelessness. This is understandable, given her stated subject, but still feels like an omission. Kaplan does not read as unsympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, however, making clear her dismay and horror at the Sabra and Shatila massacres, her anger at the conservative consensus that has (since 9/11) painted Palestinians as terrorist enemies aligned with Al Qaeda, and...

A Study on the Development of Korea’s Defense Industry: Comparative Analysis with Israel

본 논문은 우리나라 방위산업의 발전방안을 도출하기 위하여 기존 국내 방위산업의 발전과정 및 주요 정책을 살펴봄으로써, 기존 방위산업정책의 문제점과 개선 필요성을 파악하였다. 그 결과, 현재의 국내 방위산업의 문제점을 내수시장에 의존한 비경쟁적인 산업구조와 오랜 기간 지속된 정부 주도의 R&D정책의 한계, 수출산업화정책의 부재로 판단하였으며, 방산 수출 확대 및 국방 R&D 체계 개선을 위한 정책적 발전방안을 모색하였다. 이를 위해서 세계 최첨단의 무기개발능력과 방위산업 기반을 유지하고 있는 이스라엘과 우리나라의 주요 방위산업정책을 비교·분석함으로써, 우리나라 방위산업에 적용 가능한 정책적 발전방안을 도출하였다. 이에, 우리나라 방위산업 발전방안으로 방위산업 관련 전문 인력 육성, 방산 수출 및 국방 연구개발 컨트롤 타워구축, 정부 연구개발과 연계된 국방 연구개발 추진 전략 등을 제안하였다.In order to derive the development plan of Korea s defense industry, this paper first identified the problems and needs to be improved by examining the development process and major policies of Korea s defense industry. As a result, the problems of Korea s defense industry were determined by non-competitive industrial structures, long-standing government-led R&D policies, and the lack of export industrialization policies. To this end, We suggested solutions applicable to Korea s defense industry by comparing and analyzing major defense industry policies of Israel and Korea, which maintain the world s leading weapons development capabilities and defense industrial base. Thus, as a solution to develop Korea s defense industry, it proposed fostering professional personnel related to the defense industry, establishing an R&D control tower for defense exports and defense, and promoting R&D strategies linked to government R&D.

Israel’s Constitutional Order in Upheaval? Attempts of the 34th Government Coalition to Transform the Constitutional Order

Responding to the Supreme Court’s empowerment through the 1992 Constitutional. Revolution, Israeli policy- and lawmakers repeatedly challenged Israel’s constitutional order and the role of the Court within it as an unwelcomed restrain on executive and legislative powers. The 2015-elected Israeli government has been partially successful in entrenching its partisan vision of a majoritarian state serving the particular interests of the Jewish majority, rather than a state of all of its citizens following universal values. This vision has been enshrined in the Nation State Law, a new chapter of Israel’s fragmented “quasi-constitution” and complemented by the appointment of conservative judges to all levels of the Israel court system, including its Supreme Court. Threatening to change the judicial appointment process and restricting the Supreme Court’s authority to exercise judicial oversight over legislative and executive acts, the government sought to discourage the Court from exercising judicial activism. While the NSL represents a parting from a thicker, normative notion of constitutionalism, adopting the proposed Basic Law on Legislation would presumably pave the way for an executive unbound.

Regional differences in possessing medical cannabis license: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT Objective: The goal of the study was to investigate the differences in the distribution of medical cannabis licenses across different regions in Israel in order to better understand the way the policy regarding medical cannabis licensing may affect various social groups. We distinguish between various peripheral regions to test the notion of homogeneity of the periphery in the distribution of health-care services. Methods: The data were collected through an online cross-sectional survey among a convenience sample of cannabis users (N = 666). Logistic regression has been used for the multivariate analysis. Results: Residents in the northern part of Israel are less likely to obtain medical cannabis license as compared to the central region. Conclusions: The findings emphasize a geographic inequality in the implementation of the medical cannabis policy in Israel, whereas the periphery was found to be heterogeneous in regards to the outcome. More research is needed to assess the sources of the disparity and whether there is a need to intervene in order to improve access to medical cannabis treatment for residents of specific areas in the country.

Review of Uri Bialer, <em>Israeli Foreign Policy: A People Shall Not Dwell Alone</em>

Review of Uri Bialer, Israeli Foreign Policy: A People Shall Not Dwell Alone Daniel C. Kurtzer (bio) Keywords Israel, foreign policy, Zionism “Israel has no foreign policy, only a defense policy with international implications.” —Moshe Dayan “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics.” —Henry Kissinger In the relatively few studies of Israel’s foreign policy conducted to date, much has been made of the centrality of domestic politics and national security concerns as driving forces. Why this should seem strange is a mystery, for the same could be said of almost every country: the centrality of securing the state and the degree to which domestic politics have an impact on what a state does are self-evident. Why, then, do the same characteristics appear to be more important when applied to Israel? There are at least three reasons why Israel’s pursuit of its national interests abroad may seem different from that of other countries. First and foremost, Israel has since 1948, and indeed even earlier, defined itself as a state under constant threat of extinction. The Zionist struggle for legitimacy during the British Mandate was marked by periodic mini-wars with the Palestinian Arabs who sought to destroy the Zionist movement and expel those who, in their view, had dispossessed them from their land. Immediately after the United Nations decision to support the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine, the Zionists faced war, first [End Page 95] from their Palestinian neighbors and then, after Israel’s declaration of independence, from five Arab nations. Arab enmity toward the very existence of Israel has been a constant feature in Israeli thinking and policymaking. The persistent fear that the next Holocaust is just around the corner cannot be dismissed lightly. To be sure, Israel has become the dominant military power in the region, and its economic strength is unchallenged. The gap is undoubtedly growing, given Israel’s world-class high technology sector. These strengths, however, are offset by a pervasive sense of existential concern. It is therefore unsurprising that security concerns not only dominate Israeli thinking but also inform virtually all aspects of its foreign relations. A second factor explaining the dominating role of security in the formulation and execution of Israeli foreign policy is the weakness of Israel’s foreign ministry and the degree to which Israel’s intelligence agencies have played an outsized role in conducting Israeli relations abroad. Even a cursory Google search of books on the subject reveals a preponderance of titles related to the activities of the Mossad, and a paucity of titles assessing the role of the foreign ministry. Israel has had some very professional and astute diplomats, but their impact on Israeli policy formulation and implementation has been far less prominent than that of their intelligence counterparts. No single volume can address this anomaly or correct the record with regard to how Israeli foreign policy is developed and executed. A good place to start, however, is Uri Bialer’s overview of Israeli foreign policy, a single address for the student and layperson interested in the history, dynamics and challenges of Israel’s efforts to secure its place among the family of nations. Bialer, a well-respected scholar, has drawn his information primarily from secondary sources, and he has integrated a vast amount of material in a readable volume that brings the story primarily into the 1990s, that is, the latest years accessible to historians in Israel’s classified archives. In his examination of the broad sweep of Israel’s national interests and policies, Bialer addresses a number of subjects that have long deserved analysis. For example, he devotes an early chapter to the diplomacy of the Yishuv, the community of Zionist and non-Zionist Jews who populated Palestine during the British Mandate. A substantial number of scholarly and popular books and articles have been published on daily life, Jewish immigration and land purchases, Zionist efforts to organize a government-in-waiting, origins of the Israeli army, and the like. Diplomacy has been a largely neglected topic, notwithstanding the prodigious efforts of such notables as Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion to navigate the halls [End Page...