The Indians are happy. They may not have enough food, no flowing water, no electricity and no work -- but they now have a nuclear bomb. And they have tested it with great fanfare.

Undoubtedly, Mahatma Ghandi would have turned in his grave, had he not been cremated. His country is now ruled by an Indian Netanyahu, a nationalist zealot supported by religious zealots. And what would better fortify the rule of such a nationalist than to prove to the public that world opinion means nothing to him?

The result of the Indian nuclear testing was predictable. The neighboring Pakistanis, too, have no food, but they, too, have a nuclear bomb. And they, too, have now tested it with great fanfare, and everyone is happy.

But what does this have to do with us? The Israeli government does not care if a nuclear war breaks out between India and Pakistan, but it does care about another angle of the matter. Pakistan is a devout Moslem state. The science allowing it to make "the Moslem Bomb" could easily fall into the hands of Iran or Iraq, thus entirely altering Israel's national security situation.

There is another implication. The Pakistanis claim that Israel has helped India produce the bomb. They also claim that Israeli planes were poised to bomb the Pakistani nuclear reactor, a plan averted by the Americans.

Israel has already signed a strategic alliance with Turkey. If there is a similar alliance with India, then the old Israeli concept of a "Peripheral Alliance" has been resurrected.

Ben-Gurion was the father of this concept. He determined that peace between Israel and the Arab world was impossible because we had settled on Arab land and expelled most of its native population during the war of 1948. (Ben-Gurion rejected the notion of attaining post-war peace because it would necessarily require Israel to allow some of the refugees to return and to pay reparations to the rest.)

To be able to remain in a perpetual state of war with the Arab world, Ben-Gurion needed allies. Those he sought out on three levels: The international, the regional and the local.

At the time, on the international level, the concept of a "Western Alliance" was predominant. Ben-Gurion was determined to maintain an alliance with at least one Western power. First it was Great Britain and France which had not yet relinquished their colonial claims within the Arab world. Following the failure of the Sinai campaign, during which the two colonizers were expelled from the Arab world, Ben-Gurion made a pact with the United States which is still in effect to this day.

On the local level, Ben-Gurion sought the "Minority Alliance," a collaboration with all the minorities in the region against the Suni-Arab majority. Already in 1955, he strove to turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate, under the rule of a Christian-Maronite officer appointed by Israel. Later on, there was a collaboration with the rebelling Kurds in Iraq. Efforts were made to reach the Lebanese and Iraqi Shi'ites. The Christian Copts of Egypt and the south-Sudanese Christians were also brought into consideration. The entire scheme ended in abysmal failure.

On the regional level, the idea was of a "Peripheral Alliance" -- a giant encircling ring of countries bordering the Arab world. Through painstaking efforts, alliances were made with Turkey, Shah-ruled Iran, Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad, with the support of racist South Africa. The Hummeini revolution threw a monkey wrench into the theory, but did not altogether unravel it: As evidenced in the Irangate affair, Israel continued to supply arms to the Ayatollahs in Iran even throughout their war with Iraq. Geography wins out over ideology.

It appears that the idea has now been rejuvenated. A large new peripheral circle is beginning to materialize: An alliance with Turkey, India, Ethiopia, etc.

The trouble is that in the present situation, the concept has become obsolete. At its core lies Ben-Gurion's anachronistic assumption that peace with the Arab world will not and cannot happen. When I wrote fifty years ago that the Arab world is our natural ally, it sounded crazy. But following Oslo, almost all of the gates of this world opened up for us. Shimom Peres speaks of "The New Middle East," with words I used half a century ago. Signing of pacts with the enemies of the Arabs will lead to a renewed closure of these gates.

There is a method to this madness. The alliance with Turkey serves to threaten Syria, to prevent it from pursuing action toward taking back the Golan Heights. The alliance with India serves to pressure Pakistan and Iran, thus reducing the nuclear threat to ourselves. In the long run, we are risking nuclear war in order to hold on to Katzrin in the Golan Heights and Ariel in the West Bank. If Haifa and the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area are wiped off the face of the earth as a result of such a war, the settlers of Hebron and Beit-El would likely remain unscathed.

Eighteen years ago, Ariel Sharon said that the security region of Israel covers the area from Pakistan to Central Africa. When I related this to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, he laughed. Today it is no longer funny.