An israeli perspective on the popular uprisings in the Arab middle east

The recent Arab uprisings constitute a formative event in the history of the modern Arab world. The popular uprisings that broke out in Tunisia and Egypt surprised political, military and academic institutions in Israel. The latter’s reaction to the popular uprisings examines the Arab Islamic milieu from a single, unchanging perspective, Israeli security interests constituting the value standard for the determination of moral judgment and political standing vis-à-vis the Arab world. While Islamists’ rise to power in Egypt was regarded as a serious threat in light of Egypt’s ideological and political affinities with the Gaza-based Hamas, the outbreak of the Syrian uprising marked a paradigmatic shift in the Israeli perspective of the “Arab Spring,” providing a real glimpse of hope that the Tehran-led “axis of evil” might be about to fall.