A New Middle East? Globalization, Peace and the ‘Double Movement’

The ‘rise and fall’ of the New Middle East (NME) cannot be separated from wider global developments and must therefore be studied in relation to them, in both their ideational and material aspects. The ideological background of the NME has drawn upon the ideology of globalization and shares its underlying tenets of rationality, professionalism and virtues of market economy. In the early 1990s a discourse of globalization was set in motion, highlighting economic and technological development that supposedly rendered territory and territorial disputes marginal or irrelevant. The NME, supported by Israel’s business, political and academic elites, advocated liberal economics and peace as a solution to the region’s problems. But Israeli elites have failed to turn the idea of the NME into a hegemonic concept, as this attempted liberal hegemony invoked a Polanyian ‘double movement’ that undermined the peace process. The scenario of the NME and the trade-off between territorial integrity and promised regional prosperity not only met fierce ideological rejection, but, perhaps more importantly, failed to persuade the many more skeptics. Limited in its appeal and lacking sufficient legitimacy, the peace process was exposed to derailment by extremists, locking the region into cycles of violence.