Although the Arab uprisings that have engulfed much of the Middle East since December 2010 have attracted a great deal of scholarly writing, somewhat surprisingly, the foreign policy of Israel, a key power in the region, has received less attention. The handful of articles on Israel all assume that somehow the regional flux inevitably led to Israel's adopting a defensive realist foreign policy stance. However, they do not explain the choice of this rather than some other policy position, and this is problematic. In previous periods of regional “flux,” Israel adopted radically different foreign policy stances. For instance, in the wake of the end of the Cold War and the 1990-91 Gulf War, Israel responded by seeking to expand its political engagement with the Arab world. Also, unprompted by the United States (US), Israel initiated the Oslo peace process and concluded the 1994 peace accord with Jordan. Therefore, it seems clear that regional flux in and of itself, can lead to different foreign policy responses, and it is the task of scholars to explain why among a number of possible alternatives, one option rather than another is adopted. This is what the current literature on Israel and the Arab uprisings fails to do.

Against this backdrop, this chapter rejects the contention that Israel was compelled by the regional flux to adopt a defensive realist foreign policy stance. Instead, it will demonstrate that agency was central to developing Israel's foreign policy response to the Arab uprisings. Specifically, I argue that Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, developed and operationalized a “grand strategy” of entrenchment. In using the term grand strategy, I draw on Paul Kennedy and use it to refer to the relationship between problems (or opportunities), goals and means. This refutes the claim that Israel adopted a defensive realist foreign policy stance and was compelled to do so by the regional flux caused by the Arab uprisings.