2017) 'Israel's relations with the Gulf states : toward the emergence of a tacit security regime?', Contemporary security policy., 38 (3). pp. 398-419.The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractBy drawing on the literature about security regimes, this article posits the idea of that a particular type of regime, what can be termed a "tacit security regime" has begun to emerge between Israel on the one hand, and several Gulf Arab states on the other. It is a regime which, unlike liberal institutional variants that attempt to privilege the promotion of collective norms, remains configured around perceptions of threats to be countered and strategic interests to be realized. By examining the development, scope and scale of this nascent tacit security regime, this article explores the extent to which Israel, mindful of Washington, DC's regional retrenchment, sees the emergence of such a regime as redefining the political and strategic contours of Israel's relations with much of the Middle East.

Most analyses and commentary surrounding the construction of Israel's security barrier or fence have focused on the adverse impact this has had on bilateral relations with the Palestinian Authority, its institutions and people. For most Israelis, such concerns voiced by the Palestinians themselves as well as the wider international community denies agency to their physical security in the face of an Islamist nemesis that apparently brooks no compromise. But while the perceived role of the barrier in reducing terrorist attacks inside Israel has enjoyed widespread approbation among Israelis, less attention has been devoted to the impact that the barrier has had upon competing ideas and identities over the very nature of Zionism itself. As such, this paper argues that the true impact of the barrier is as much about ensuring the coherence of Israel's ideological boundaries as it is about enhancing the physical protection of the state.

The assassination of Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin provided the most vivid demonstration to date of religious-nationalist opposition inside Israel to the principle of exchanging land for peace. This article sets out to explore this world view and its intellectual origins, exploring in the process how the use of sacred Judaic texts have become both the monopoly of religiousnationalism and the template for politically inspired violence against those in Israel suspected of condoning territorial compromise. This article concludes that if the ideotheology of religiousnationalists is to be assuaged, a religious discourse supporting territorial retrenchment has to become part of the political fabric of the centre-left in Israel.

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