The project "Israel in the Middle East" is a research group that started functioning at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in March 2019. Its members, Jewish and Arab-Palestinian scholars in various disciplines, are examining issues related to the existence and place of Israel in the Middle East. The questions discussed include the following: Is the State of Israel a foreign element in the Middle East or an inseparable part of it? Is its connection to the region only geographical and is it cut off from it in other respects, or do ties bind it to the region, making it a Middle Eastern state like all its neighbors? The group’s aim is to address these issues from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, on the premise that Israel and its neighbors have a political and ideological proximity that is no less, and perhaps even greater, than that between Israel and liberal-democratic states.

Link to the group’s launch event.