The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation

Extract

The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation. By Dov Waxman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 264p. $69.95.

Studies of Israel's foreign policy have been dominated by realist perspectives, emphasizing a hostile and anarchic international environment as the key determinant of its policies. Even perceptual and psychological interpretations of its policies—relying principally on the perceptions of decision makers—emphasized how these factors shaped their worldviews and affected policy choices. A growing number of studies, however, offer new interpretations of the factors and processes that shaped Israeli security and foreign policy over time, focusing on the social structure of its society or on the use of a foreign and security siege mentality as an instrument of political control and socialization.