Strategic Assessment

• Book: A Villa in the Jungle? Israel in the Middle East (Hebrew)
• By: Eli Podeh
• Publisher: Carmel Publishing House, Yedioth Books Group
• Year: 2025
• pp: 466

Prof. Eli Podeh is among the most prominent and significant scholars of the Middle East in Israel. His contribution to this field is broad and evident in his academic publications in Israel and abroad, in his insightful columns in the print and electronic media, and in his extensive involvement over the years in various research institutes, particularly at Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies.

His book A Villa in the Jungle? Israel in the Middle East is a substantial volume (466 pages) that includes a foreword and an introduction (addressing the nature of the book and the rationale for writing and compiling it at this particular time), 12 chapters, a short epilogue, appendices, and an important bibliography that will be of use to researchers in this field. The 12 chapters compiled in the book are previously published works by Eli Podeh that he has updated and expanded, with the aim of presenting a broad and in-depth analysis regarding Israel in the Middle East.

The book was originally intended to be published before the outbreak of the Swords of Iron War in October 2023, but it was delayed because of the war. In the foreword, Eli Podeh emphasizes that “the book stands on its own and is not related to the war,” but that “the gradual process of Israel’s integration into the Middle East […] is being put to the test as a result of the war” (p. 9). In his view, the war highlighted two contradictory trends: The first is that, alongside many states in the Middle East and around the world that continued to condemn and boycott Israel and demanded an end to the war and a resolution of the Palestinian issue, most Arab and Muslim states that had maintained relations with Israel prior to the war did not sever those ties (p. 9).

The second trend Podeh identifies relates to the continuation of Israel’s integration into the Middle East, a process that aligns with his research perspective, which he elaborates on in the introduction (pp. 11–17). In this chapter, he explains how, already at the beginning of his academic career, his conceptual distinction between Israel and the Middle East and Israel in the Middle East took shape. Podeh formed this distinction when he was asked to prepare a syllabus for an introductory course on the modern Middle East at Cornell University in the United States.

Contrary to the prevailing approach in his academic training in Israel, which separated Israel and Jewish studies from Middle East studies, at Cornell Israel was included within the Middle East studies curriculum. The dilemma he faced regarding how to address Israel in the syllabus largely shaped his scholarly outlook in this field and strongly influenced his approach and writing throughout his subsequent career. Podeh ultimately concluded that it is more appropriate to address the theme of Israel in the Middle East rather than Israel and the Middle East. The third chapter of the book (pp. 58–91) is devoted to an analysis of the dilemma he confronted from a broad historical perspective. This book can thus be understood as an intellectual and scholarly effort to substantiate his chosen thematic framework.

Podeh’s writing is fluent, coherent, and above all well-grounded. He consistently provides a broad empirical basis in each article alongside conceptualizations informed by research literature across a wide range of fields: the Middle East, political science, international relations, and conflict resolution. In some articles, he expands the conceptual chapter and enriches it—beyond the concepts themselves—with a review of relevant theoretical literature. His writing does not strictly adhere to the historical discipline, and in some articles he also presents theoretical models that he uses to analyze the research questions and phenomena addressed in those works.

The book compiles decades of writing covering a relatively wide range of topics, and despite an initial impression of eclecticism, connecting threads can be found between the chapters, creating a coherent whole in relation to the book’s title and the rationale behind its composition. The chapters—whether considered individually or as a unit—address a chronological span of roughly 100 years. In some articles, Podeh begins the research journey as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, during the era of the Zionist movement and political Zionism. Through the chapters, the reader can trace the timeline and political history of the Yishuv and the State of Israel, with the historical depth both evident and impressive.

The first chapter of the book serves as a highly appropriate and important introduction to the work as a whole, in which Podeh presents theoretical and historical aspects concerning Israel in the Middle East. The second chapter offers Podeh’s critical engagement with a perspective that prevailed in Israeli academia for many decades since the state’s founding, which distinguished and separated Middle East studies from Israel and Jewish studies. This is the framework that Podeh terms Israel and the Middle East, as opposed to the more accurate conception in his view: Israel in the Middle East, the essence of which he develops in the book’s third chapter.

The fourth chapter of the book addresses Israel’s foreign policy in the Middle East, with its core theme being the “Concubine Syndrome.” The chapter is based on the first chapter of his earlier work From Concubine to Common Law Spouse: Israel’s Secret Relations with States and Minorities in the Middle East, 1948–2020 (Podeh, 2022). Chapter twelve also deals with Israel’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Although it focuses on the years 2010–2020, its subject is foreign policy in the region, which most naturally aligns it with chapter four and also chapter seven, which examines Israel’s missed political opportunities.

In the seventh chapter, in which Podeh reviews a series of Israel’s missed political opportunities over the years, he also considers the Rogers Plan and President Sadat’s proposals prior to the Yom Kippur War as examples of such missed opportunities. Some scholars disagree with this approach, and in recent years the literature on this period and topic has expanded significantly. Researchers such as Hagai Zoref and Meir Boimfeld (Zoref & Boimfeld, 2022), Boaz Ventik and Zaki Shalom (Ventik & Shalom, 2012), and Dan Shiftan (Shiftan, 2024) have presented a completely different picture. It would have been appropriate to engage with their interpretations, or at least to mention them, even in a footnote, as competing interpretations to his own.

Chapters five and eight of the book focus on the figure of the “other” as perceived by Israel and Israelis. While chapter five examines the figure of the other in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through an analysis of Israeli textbooks across three different periods of the Israeli education system (from the state’s founding to the present), chapter eight addresses the demonization of the enemy with reference to Nasser and Nasserism. Since both chapters deal with similar phenomena, it would have made sense, in my view, to present them together as two illustrations of perceptions of the other in a conflict context. These chapters also connect to chapter eleven, which emphasizes the importance of understanding the culture of the other in the Middle East. Therefore, it seems appropriate to pair this chapter with the preceding two. While chapters five and eight focus on the phenomenon itself, chapter eleven addresses a response to it, even as it also includes broader reflections on his research approach.

The chapters of the book primarily present the Israeli perspective on events, wars, initiatives, and processes over the course of 100 years, with particular emphasis on the most recent decades. Podeh seeks to convince the reader that Israel is not a villa, and the Middle East is not a jungle (p. 419), and there is no doubt that his book provides a comprehensive and scholarly foundation for supporting this argument. The perspective and analysis are from the “villa”—Israel—yet, in my view, what is largely missing is the perspective of the “jungle”: How have past and present regional leaders and peoples viewed the “villa,” Israel’s place in the region, and the future of its relations? An example of a comprehensive, comparative review in this context can be found in the work of Uria Shavit and Ofir Winter (Shavit & Winter, 2016). While references of this kind appear in Podeh’s chapters, they are limited and occur only in very specific contexts. What is missing are wider, in-depth, systematic, and analytical perspectives that could exemplify the Israeli viewpoint that Podeh presents in such a talented and thorough manner throughout his book.

In conclusion, this is a wide-ranging and important book suitable for a variety of readers, corresponding to the four categories Podeh identifies in chapter eleven: scholars from academia, the defense establishment and the Foreign Ministry; journalists and diplomats; policymakers; and the curious and engaged general reader. It deserves a prominent place on their bookshelves.

References

Podeh, E. (2022). From Concubine to Common Law Spouse: Israel’s Secret Relations with States and Minorities in the Middle East, 1948–2020. Am Oved.

Shavit, U., & Winter, O. (2016). Zionism in Arab Discourses. Manchester University Press.

Shiftan, D. (2024). The Momentum and Collapse of the Pan-Arab Struggle in Israel. Institute for National Security Studies. https://tinyurl.com/3k3p2bnc

Ventik, B., & Shalom, Z. (2012). The Yom Kippur War: The War That Could Have Been Prevented. Resling.

Zoref, H., & Boimfeld, M. (2022). The Day Will Come and the Archives Will Open: Golda Meir’s Government and the Yom Kippur War. Carmel.