Valerie Yorke Domestic Politics & Regional Security: Jordan, Syria, & Israel:The End of An Era.
Gower Publishing Company. Aldershot 1988.

(Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, No.23. 1989)

In discussing three of the main actors in the Middle East conflict, Jordan, Syria, and Israel, Ms.Yorke attempts to establish the primacy of domestic factors in the shaping of their foreign policies. In the case of Jordan and Syria, the actual personae, Assad and Hussein, with their personal appetite for power, seem to hold in the author's view the key to an understanding of how and why these states have pursue their particular policies. Israel, with its parliamentary regime and varied political spectrum is given much more traditional treatment, though even here the author seems to be in favour of the journalistically popular Ashkanazi Sephardi division, deemed to be of paramount importance in understanding the ascendancy of Revisionist Zionism, exemplified by the Likud's accession to power since 1977. What is missing in this lengthy study is the Palestinians, though, to be fair, they are present throughout the book, but never as independent actors or as the central focus of the conflict. They enter the picture only in so far as they help explain the policy preferences of Hussein, Assad, or Israeli policy makers.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first and lengthier part we are presented with country studies of the three states. Rather laborious and over-repetitious, the studies are uneven, with only Jordan (read Hussein) portrayed sympathetically. No new ground is broken, however, and the discussion remains rather general, with Hussein seen as driven by the central aim of preserving the Hashemite dynasty and little else. Politics in Jordan appears to consist of a balancing act carried out by the King between his Transjordanian and Palestinian subjects. In this he is aided by Jordan's economic prosperity, though the author never spells out what the mainstay of this prosperity is.

The remaining case studies dealing with Syria and Israel, are even less satisfactory. The author seems to find herself more comfortable dealing with regimes where power is concentrated in the hands of one individual, rather than an established political order made up of a variety of openly competing interests and loyalties. The totally differing natures of the Jordanian and Syrian regimes on the one hand, and the Israeli political order on the other, compound the difficulties of any comparative study such as the one attempted her.

The second part of the book deals with the implications of the domestic policies on the three states for regional security. Here, it is not clear what the author means by "security". Is the internal security of Syria, for example, synonymous with the existence of the Assad regime? Perhaps regional security has meaning vis-a-vis a perceived threat from the United States, or even the Soviet Union ? If security is meant to imply the absence of war and the arrival at an accommodation guaranteeing peace, the author's discussion of the policies pursued by the various states does not indicate that any of the states places a high premium on the realisation of peace. In this sense, her argument that the Middle East has reached "an end of an era" seems rather unjustified. Political entities are not always dependent for their existence on individual whims and the capacity of particular groups or individuals to cling to power thanks to their control of the repressive apparatus of the state. None of the evidence she produces seems to indicate that present political borders are not durable ( with the exception of the occupation of the west Bank & Gaza) or that the future political orientation of the states concerned is in question.