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Book Review: Behind the Top-Secret Curtain

(Ynet News) Ronen Bergman - Yossi Alpher, a former military intelligence officer, is a long-serving Mossad official who went on to head the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. In his new book, Periphery: Israel's Search for Middle East Allies, Alpher divides the periphery into three categories. Included in the first were the non-Arab and/or non-Muslim states that bordered on the Arab conflict states - Iran, Ethiopia, Turkey, Eritrea, and Kenya and Uganda at the rear. The second comprised non-Arab and non-Muslim ethnic groups and peoples living in the Arab conflict states - the Christians in southern Sudan and in Lebanon, and the Kurds in Iraq. The third category was made up of Arab countries on the margins of the Middle East that felt that militant Arab nationalism was a threat to them or wanted ties with Israel in light of local or regional circumstances - Morocco, some of the Gulf States, and, for a short time, Yemen. The highpoint of the "Periphery doctrine" was the tripartite intelligence pact involving Israel, Turkey and Iran. The Turkish-Israeli part of the pact was sealed during a secret agreement in Ankara on August 20, 1958, between David Ben-Gurion and the Turkish prime minister, Adnan Menderes, directed against Nasser's influence and the influence of the Soviets.
2015-06-26 00:00:00
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