Contemporary Israel: Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Security Challenges by Robert O Freedman (Routledge)

This is the latest in Robert Freedman's series of books on the Middle East begun in the early 1980s following the Camp David accords and then the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This is divided into three sections: politics and economics, foreign affairs, and security. The first section has individual submitted chapters on the various sections of the Israeli party system (the Left, the Right, the religious parties, the Arabs), as well as a chapter on the high tech Israeli economy and the activist Israeli Supreme Court. Freedman starts the book off with an historical introduction and overview. He also contributes a chapter on relations between Israel and the United States. This book, written in 2008, covers the post-Oslo period of Israeli politics in which Labor was collapsing, the Right was resurgent, and Kadima led a Center-Left government. The security section consists of two chapters: one examining the long-term existential threats to Israel, which are quite manageable in the short to medium term, and a superior chapter on the failure of Israeli conventional deterrence vis a vis Hezbollah that resulted in the Second Lebanon War in June 2006. This is recommended as a companion text for college courses on Israeli politics along with a more conventional text dealing with the electoral system and coalition politics.

Since its formation in 1948, and particularly since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin in 1995, Israel has experienced turbulent political change and numerous ongoing security challenges, including major party splits, collapsed peace talks with the Palestinians and Syria, nuclear threats from Iran, and even the specter of civil war as Israel withdrew from Gaza. This essential survey brings together Israeli and American scholars to provide a much-needed balanced introduction to Israel's domestic politics and foreign policy. Experts tackle this difficult subject in three parts: domestic politics, foreign policy challenges, and strategic challenges. Domestic topics include the Israeli Right and Left; religious, Russian, and Arab parties; the Supreme Court; and the economy. Part two discusses Israel's complicated and often fractious relationships with the Palestinians and the Arab world, as well as its improved relations with Turkey and India and continuing close relationship with the United States. The Israel-Hizbollah War of 2006 and existential threats to Israel, including the threat from Iran, are detailed in part three. This compelling and authoritative coverage provides students with the necessary framework to understand Israel's political past and present, as well as the direction Israel is likely to take in the future.