Israel’s ‘periphery doctrine’ of non-Arab friends is in tatters Boulos on June 30, 2010 65 After reading Glenn Greenwald’s scathing rebuke several days ago, Jeffrey Goldberg composed himself enough to respond by inviting Greenwald to visit Iraqi Kurdistan, and let the rest of us know who is in his rolodex: As it happens, I was e-mailing yesterday with the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barham Salih, and I mentioned Greenwald’s critique. Goldberg’s contact with Barham Salih represents what is now one of the few tattered survivals of Israel’s ‘Periphery Doctrine,’ in which the Jewish state sought to offset the rejection it experienced from neighboring Arab regimes through alliances with the non-Arab states ringing the Arab world–Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran–and with minorities inside the Arab world like the Kurds and the Maronites. This policy hasn’t had a very good run. It was only a few days ago at Foreign Policy that Leon Hadar actually wrote its obituary. Israel has systematically lost its friends at the periphery–Iran, Ethiopia and now Turkey. Its adventures and attempts at kingmaking in Lebanon ended with tens of thousands of civilians killed, the Maronites politically emasculated, a decades-long occupation and war which traumatized its army, the politicization and militarization of the Lebanese Shi’ite community and the emergence of Hizbullah. Very recent history has shown Israel’s supporters in the US reacting against Turkey with the hurt and anger of a scorned lover: Goldberg himself stated with perverse glee mondoweiss.net/2010/06/israels-periphery-doctrine-of-non-arab-friends-is-in-tatters.html
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:18:47 +0000
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