Does Likud have a ‘look East’ option

The purpose of this chapter is threefold. First, it argues that viewing Israel's relations with China, Japan, or India mainly through the prism of ISIS is simplistic and short-sighted. So is the presumption that East and South Asia, or China more specifically, can serve as a rough-and ready substitute market in place of the EU and US. Secondly, this chapter offers an analysis of the rationale that underlies Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party's Look East pitch as a hedging strategy versus the Obama administration, starting with Netanyahu's former party patron and defense minister Moshe Arens. Lastly, this chapter will consider the current pulses shaping the Sino-Israeli relationship against the backdrop of the great civil unrest sweeping across the Arab world. Several historic policy narratives have carried over from the Cold War era and continue to impact political mind-sets in Jerusalem and Beijing. The main argument put forward in the following passages is that, while historic factors might help explain elements of tactical continuity in Chinese rhetoric vis-a-vis the Middle East across different periods, Chinese approaches to Israel have been re-configured since the early 1990s by virtue of external factors. These factors include the end of the Cold War and China's increasingly acute energy dependency in the 21st century- Chinese rapprochement with the US in the early 1970s took two more decades to translate into major Middle East policy shifts. The chapter concludes with a look into the next decade and Israel's strategic choices with regard to a globally resurgent China. Particular focus is placed on how China's rise is seen by Israelis, and the ways and means by which China might wish to position itself vis-a-vis Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other.