Since the mid-1960s, Israel has received significant military and diplomatic support from successive administrations in the United States. But he has never received as unconditional support as it has done in the past eight years – under the first and second administrations of President Donald Trump and the administration of President Joe Biden. Consequently, Israel began to openly pursue its greatest Zionist dream: to expand the borders of the state to reach the great Israel and to accelerate the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people of their homeland.
Although the Israeli State may seem more powerful than ever and too confident than it will reach regional domination, its current position paradoxically reflects a strategic failure.
The reality is that after almost eight decades of existence, Israel failed to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the peoples of the region and its sustainable security. Its current resurgence will neither provide each other. And it is because its foreign, domestic and military policies are based on a colonial logic of the colonists that makes them long -term.
Colonial colonial mentality
Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has sought to convince the world and its Jewish citizens that it was created “on a land without people”. Although this story has succeeded – in particular among the young generations of Israelis – the ancestors of the Israeli State openly spoke of “colonization” and to settle land with a hostile native population.
Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern Zionism, planned to reach out to the well -known British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, who led British colonization of southern Africa, to obtain advice on and approval of his Palestine colonization plan.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Zionist revisionist who founded the Zionist group of far right Betar in Latvia, has developed a strategy in his writings on the means of fighting against indigenous resistance. In his 1923 essay The Iron Wall, he wrote:
“Each native population of the world resists the settlers as long as they have the slightest hope of being able to get rid of the danger of being colonized. This is what the Arabs of Palestine do. ”
This colonial colonial mentality played a central role in the development of the newly founded national, foreign and military policies. Today, almost 80 years after the creation of the Israeli State, expansionism and aggressive military posture continue to define the Israeli regional strategy.
Despite the official rhetoric of the search for peace and the normalization of relations in the region, the Israeli aspiration to reach great Israel – which includes not only Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but also parts of modern Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan – persists.
This was obvious in the public speech and the actions of the government. Activists of the settlers have openly spoke of an Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates river. Government advisers have written articles on “reconquering Sinai”, “dismembering Egypt” and precipitating the “dissolution of Jordan”. The Prime Ministers stood before the United Nations General Assembly, holding maps of Greater Israel.
The idea of the great Israel has been widely accepted through the Zionist political spectrum, right and left. The main differences were on how and the moment to advance this vision, and if it requires the expulsion of the Palestinians or their segregation.
Expansionist policies have been applied in all Israeli governments – those led by the work of the Mapai left to those led by the right Likoud. Since the 1949 armistice, Israel has occupied the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem-Est, the Golan Heights, Sinai (twice), southern Lebanon (twice) and now later, more parts of southern Syria.
Meanwhile, his colonization of occupied Palestinian territories proceeded at an accelerated pace. The number of Jewish colonial settlers in the West Bank, including Jerusalem-Est, was around 250,000 in 1993; On October 7, 2023, this number had increased to 503,732 in the West Bank and 233,600 in East Jerusalem.
The colonies in Gaza were dismantled in 2005, but plans are made for recolonization, because the current Israeli government is looking at the full ethnic cleaning of the band.
Today, there is no major political force in Israel which goes beyond the direct application of naked military power to maintain and protect colonization activities. This state of mind is not limited to politicians but is also a generalized conviction among the Israeli public.
A June 2024 survey revealed that 70% of Jewish Israelis think that the colonies help national security or do not interfere with it; A March 2025 survey showed that 82% of Jewish Israelis support the Ethnic Cleaning of the Palestinians in Gaza.
No real peace camp
The colonial state of mind of the colonists at the heart of the Israeli state prevented the emergence of a true will of peace. Consequently, successive Israeli governments continued to continue the war, colonization and expansion, even when they apparently adopt peace talks.
In the 1990s, Israel had the opportunity to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict by withdrawing from the territories occupied in 1967 and accepting the creation of an independent Palestinian State. Instead, he used negotiations as a smoke screen to advance the policies of the colonial colonists.
Even leaders like Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was greeted as a peacemaker and murdered for a Jewish extremist, did not really consider the Israelis and the Palestinians living side by side. Under his government and during the peace negotiations, the expansion of the Jewish colonies continued at a regular rate, while the plans for a segregation wall on the occupied Palestinian land was pushed forward.
Meanwhile, Rabin and other Israeli leaders involved in peace negotiations were mainly concentrated on the normalization of the existence of Israel as it was, without approaching the deep causes of the conflict. They sought to pacify the Palestinian resistance, rather than establishing lasting peace.
The absence of a peace camp is not only in terms of leadership but also to society. While Israeli society has active movements for the social causes, the coalitions of the colonists and now a movement pushing to continue the exchanges of prisoners with Hamas, it lacks a real movement of peace of the base which recognizes the Palestinian rights.
This contrasts strongly with other colonial societies of colonials, in which there has been a push from the inside to end colonialism. During the French colonization of Algeria, for example, an anti -colonial movement in France openly supported the Algerian armed resistance. During the apartheid era in South Africa, white activists joined the anti-apartheid fight and helped influence domestic attitudes.
In Israel, Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights are so rare that they are easily ostracized and marginalized, confronted with death threats and often feeling obliged to leave the country.
The absence of a real peace camp reflects the inherent defect of Israel of the colonial colonists. He has no coherent political strategy to resolve wider questions, such as coexistence in the region, which requires recognizing the interests of others, in particular the national rights of the Palestinian people. This makes the colony of the settlers incapable of peace.
Fill in Western support
Historically, colonies of settlers have always had to count on external support to maintain themselves. Israel is no different. For decades, he benefited from large-scale support from Western Europe and the United States, which provided him with an important strategic advantage.
But this Israeli dependence on Western support is also a long -term strategic threat. It makes the country dependent and unable to function as a normal sovereign nation.
Other countries in the region will continue to exist even if they lose the support of their Western allies, with only their diets that change potentially. But this is not the case for Israel.
This unlimited and extravagant support in Israel, aimed at maintaining domination as the main regional power, is likely to turn around.
The growing imbalance of power generates pressure not only on antagonistic countries such as Iran, but on other regional actors such as Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They believe more and more that the Western push to defend Israeli interests breaks alone.
This situation is likely to push them to seek more and more alliances beyond the Western block to counterbalance this influence. China offers a viable alternative, because it is not a strategic ally of Israel.
A gradual opening in China can move the political dynamics of the region in the years to come, beyond the ability of Israel and its allies to control them. This will certainly undermine the Israeli plans to establish regional hegemony.
But Israel faces not only the risk that Western domination can be questioned from the East, but also that Western societies can put pressure on their governments to stop supporting it.
Israeli genocidal policies, in particular since October 7, 2023, have stimulated a deep change in public opinion around the world, including in Europe and North America.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, its Prime Minister has an arrest warrant against the International Criminal Court and Israeli soldiers face many countries in the world.
Consequently, the Israeli state has notably lost its support among people on the left and at the center of the political spectrum in the West.
Although he always manages to maintain support in European and high -level European and American political circles, this support becomes more and more reliable in the long term. This uncertainty is still aggravated by the rise of right-wing isolationism in the United States. If these trends continue, Israel could possibly lack reliable supporters in the West and lose its financial and military advantage.
The limits of the Israeli state strategy of colonial colonists are becoming clearer. The continuous use of colonial policies of the colonists, characterized by excessive violence, as well as the pursuit of regional hegemony, push Israel to an untenable position.
Israeli leaders perhaps live in a fantastic world, thinking that it can achieve a “new world” model on Palestine and exterminate its population to colonize it fully; Or to officially declare itself an apartheid state, seeking to make Palestinian subjugation legal.
But in the historical and geopolitical context of the Middle East, none of these fantasies is viable. Global pressure can wear. The expulsion of the people of Gaza was downright rejected.
The Palestinian people, like any other nation that has survived brutal colonization, will not leave their country and will not disappear, and will not accept life under a colonial regime of apartheid.
Israeli leaders may well start to imagine the very real possibility of sharing land and accepting equal rights, and starting to prepare Israeli society for it.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.