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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - July 2, 2010
The collapse of Israel's 'Periphery Doctrine'
By Leon T. Hadar
Reports that Turkey would halt military cooperation with
Israel and not send back the ambassador it withdrew after
the deadly Israeli commando operation to stop a Gaza aid
convoy make it apparent that the partnership between Ankara
and Jerusalem is coming to an end. Moreover, the rupture
in the relationship between these two governments indicates
that one of the major components in Israeli national
security--the so-called Periphery Doctrine of forming
alliance with non-Arab states in the periphery of the
Middle East with which Israel has not had direct conflict,
including Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia, as well with ethnic
and religious minorities, like the Maronites in Lebanon
and the Kurds in Iraq--has been tossed into the dustbin
of history.
The Periphery Doctrine, advanced by Israel's first Prime
Minister, David Ben-Gurion and by Eliahu Sassoon, one of
Israel's leading Middle East experts and the first Israeli
diplomatic representative in Ankara, was conceived as a
way of offsetting the diplomatic and economic boycott of
the Arab World and as a traditional balance-of-power
strategy aimed at countering pan-Arabism. The fact that
Turkey, a member of NATO, as well as the Shah of Iran and
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, maintained friendly ties
with Washington and the West and had long standing conflict
with Arab states (Turkey with Syria; Iran with Iraq;
Ethiopia with Sudan) helped strengthen Israel's partner-
ships with these pro-American and non-Arab countries.
But Ben-Gurion and other Israeli leaders regarded the
Periphery Doctrine as a temporary strategy that needed
to be sustained as long as the Arab nations refused to
recognize Israel and make peace with it. It was not seen
as a substitute for the central tenet in Israeli policy--
achieving peace with Israel's Arab neighbors. Nor could
it serve as an alternative to a strategic relationship
with a strong, external military power, such as the Soviet
Union in the 1940's, France in the 1950's, and the United
States after 1967.
Overall, the Periphery Doctrine proved to be at best a cost-
effective but short-term form of Realpolitik, and at worst
a long-term strategic illusion. Israel's close relationship
with Ethiopia and Iran foundered after the fall of their
ancien regimes and the ensuing political turmoil that
engulfed each country. And it could not sustain a long-
term and steady relationship with ethnic and religious
minorities in the region, such as the Maronites and the
Kurds.
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In fact, it was obvious to Israeli policymakers that as
long as Israel remained in a state of war with the major
Arab countries, economic considerations, military interests
and religious affinity would place clear limits on the
willingness and the ability of Turkey and other periphery
nations and minorities to expand ties with Israel. From
that perspective, the relationship between Israel and
Turkey--or for that matter, Iran or Lebanon's Maronites--
never amounted to a "strategic alliance." The Turks, like
other targets of the Periphery Doctrine, regarded their
ties with Israel as a way of hedging their bets, providing
them with additional diplomatic and military resources to
resist pressure from aggressive Arab nationalist govern-
ments and movements.
From that perspective, the notion advanced by neo-
conservative foreign policy types since the First Gulf
War, that a stronger Israel-Turkey "strategic" alliance
would transform the post-Cold War Middle East and help
form a U.S-oriented condominium in the region, forcing
pro-American Arab governments like Jordan and Egypt to
join the new bloc, while isolating more radical actors
like Saddam's Iraq and the Ayatollahs' Iran, was just
one more example of the fantasies concocted by those
who had brought us the "liberation" of Iraq.
Daniel Pipes, who was a staunch proponent of the Israel-
Turkey alliance along these lines, wrote in 1998 in
Commentary magazine that the post-Cold War 'New Middle
East' was "rapidly sorting itself into two new regional
power blocs." At the center of one bloc "stand Turkey
and Israel, two countries that in many ways are natural
partners." Both countries are non-Arab, democratic, and
Western oriented, and "each maintains a large military
and faces a major threat of terrorism." Both put great
store in their relationship with the United States, and
each "has problems with both Syria and Iran, the two
countries that happen to stand in the center of the
opposing bloc." Pipes even suggested that unlike the
"superficiality" of the relations between Syria and Iran,
which according to him, were reminiscent of those between
Germany and Japan during World War II, the relationship
between Israel and Turkey "resembles that between the
United States and Great Britain in that war."
It was the high level of expectations produced by Pipes
and other champions of the Turkish-Israeli "strategic"
alliance that may have ended up helping produce the kind
of cracks now so apparent in the imaginary "special
relationship" between the two, and the conventional wisdom
that seems to see a direct relationship between the
Islamist ideology of the current Turkish government and
the deterioration in the relationship with the Jewish
State.
But in general, the peaks and dips in the Israeli-Turkish
relationship, even during the rule of secular governments
in Ankara, were reflected inversely by developments in the
Arab-Israeli conflict and the waves of strain and rapproche-
ment in the relationship between Turkey and the Arab
states. In 1947 Turkey voted against the United Nations
partition plan and the creation of Israel; but in 1949,
after Egypt and Jordan signed armistice agreements with
Israel, Turkey became the first Muslim state to recognize
Israel. Diplomatic missions were opened in December 1950
at the legation level in Ankara and Tel Aviv, although
from 1956, following the attack by Israel against Egypt,
the legation in Tel Aviv was reduced to the lowest
diplomatic level of charge d'affaires. This lasted until
December 1991--six weeks after the start of the Arab-
Israeli peace conference in Madrid--when the Turks decided
to upgrade the diplomatic representation of Israel (and
the PLO) to the ambassadorial level. Earlier on during the
First Intifada, Turkey had signaled its support for the
Palestinian cause by becoming the fourth country--and the
only government then maintaining diplomatic relationship
with Israel--to recognize Palestine as an independent
state.
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Indeed, while much has been made of the recent Turkish
strategy of improving ties with the Arab states, Turkey's
long term interests have always been based on the
understanding that geographical proximity, economic
interests and civilizational considerations require that
it normalize the relationship with its neighbors. These
were the very same factors that were making it unlikely
that Ankara would establish a full-fledged alliance with
a Jewish state as long as Israel remained at war with the
Arab World.
Short-term political and military considerations--the two
countries' problems with Syria and tensions with Iran--as
well as the need to contain the pressure from Arab national-
ist led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and backed by the
Soviet Union--created an regional environment more
conducive to Israeli-Turkish cooperation. At the same
time, the relationship between the two countries soured
when Turkey leaders concluded that maintaining the
nation's interests in the Middle East required distancing
it from Israel.
Hence Turkey downgraded its relationship with Israeli
after forming the Baghdad Pact with Iraq in 1955 (joined
by Britain, Pakistan and Iran) and pledged to come to the
support of Jordan if attacked by Israel. Moreover, Turkey
joined most of the Arab and Muslim governments in denounc-
ing Israel in response to its invasion of Lebanon in 1982
and the Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories,
reflecting the reality in which Turkey regarded Israel
not as an ally--but as just another important regional
player with which it shares some mutual interests.
But not even the members of Turkish secular elites,
including the military, bought into the strategic fantasy
advanced by Pipes and others of joining Israel in becoming
the American hegemon's twin sheriffs in the Middle East.
Indeed, the Turkish opposition to the American invasion
of Iraq and the isolation of Iran, as well as to Israeli
policies towards the Palestinians, were opposed by the
majority of the Turks. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold
War, the downfall of the radical pan-Arabist project, as
well as the Arab peace agreements with Israel provided
new opportunities to improve their ties with the Arab
states.
Interestingly enough, some Israeli policymakers, including
former Israeli foreign minister and Labor Party leader
Shlomo Ben-Ami, were mirror-imaging this new Turkish
orientation by stressing that long-term Israeli interests
lied in improving relationship with Egypt and the rest of
the Arab World, including the Palestinians, and in abandon-
ing the illusion that an alliance with Turkey would be a
substitute for a strategy to integrate Israel into the
Middle East.
Israel's periphery alliance with Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia
"was created in the 1950s as a tool for avoiding peace
with the Arabs," explained Ben-Ami in a recent interview
with the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. "A return to this alliance
goes through reconciliation with the Arab world," he
stressed, concluding that "Turkey is telling us in effect:
In order to reach us, the second circle, you have to make
peace in the first circle, and we want to be the mediator."
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