Is it possible to render the Middle East less unpredictable? How could one apprehend its different actors in order to identify the factors that preoccupy them or even understand the nature of their ambitions when public discourse is often in contradiction to the behavior on the field and when political systems only rarely offer the possibility of analyzing a process which is clearly articulated around decision-making? What logic underlies their external policy in general and their security policy in particular?

Within the context of an official or real state of war in which they found themselves, a large majority of countries in the region (Arab States against Israel) justify maintaining a climate of general suspicion together with their policies of massive armament. Within the context of a diplomatic resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict with the declared objective of establishing a regional security system, a thorough understanding on how each State perceives its own security problems as well as the place it intends to occupy within the new configuration seems to be a prerequisite in ensuring the stability of this new configuration.

Having voluntarily chosen the subjective approach, the analyses developed within this book aim at identifying the nature and the importance of the factors that shape such perceptions of security. These factors are wide-ranging and vary from the simplest of considerations such as the geographic situation, resources and the real weight of each actor to more complex elements such as history and the conditions in which the relevant States and their frontiers were born, their political culture, the nature of the regimes that govern them and the behavior of neighboring States and the interaction with the strategies of foreign powers in the region.

The resulting disparity of experiences and perceptions of security have until today prevented the creation of a viable regional system. At the eve of the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the contours of alliances and the bases for future partnerships have never been more unclear.