The American website “Mondoweiss” published an article by Palestinian journalist and writer Qassam Maadi, in which he traces the term “Greater Israel” among extremist Jews and “religious Zionism” over the centuries, and what it reached during the past decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict until the occupation army finally entered Syria.
He said that the broad regional ambitions to create a “Greater Israel” once seemed merely a right-wing Zionist fantasy, and that the maps used to describe the vision often reflect biblical stories that many Zionists consider mere history. Today, events in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria show that this vision may be closer to being realized than many thought.
He continued to say that while Israel pushed its forces deep into sovereign Syrian territory after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the term “Greater Israel” reappeared in media coverage.
The term has been used in recent days to describe Israeli military expansion beyond Israel’s currently recognized borders, an ever-expanding definition of what Israel can include.
The term “Greater Israel”?
This term refers to the idea of a Jewish state expanding across large parts of the Middle East as a supposed reincarnation of what the Bible describes as the lands of the ancient Israelite tribes, the Israelite Kingdom, or the land that God promised to Abraham – peace be upon him – and his descendants. In the Book of Genesis, God promises Abraham the land “from the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates” for himself and his descendants.
In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised to establish “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,” and the name “Palestine” essentially described the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with varying borders, but since the borders had not yet been defined in the then-Ottoman Levant The eastern bank of the Jordan River was widely viewed as an extension of Palestine.
Greater Israel in Israeli politics
After the creation of Israel in 1948, theoretical discussions gave way to political pragmatism. Israel has never included “Greater Israel” in its official speech, and has never officially claimed the right to make Arab lands outside the 1948 borders part of its private ownership, even after its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Desert and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, as this speech considered this The lands are under administration for security reasons, until Israel annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Golan in early 1980.
However, since Israel never defined its borders, the idea of a “Greater Israel” remained in the imagination of right-wing religious Israelis and was taken more seriously by some extremists.
The Religious Right began to grow stronger after 1967, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the beliefs that gained momentum in this period was the messianic trend, which saw the expansion of Israel beyond its borders as part of achieving the end of times and the coming of the Jewish Messiah. This movement led settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and often drew up plans that were later adopted by the state.
The term and its practical synonyms
With religious Zionists’ increasingly explicit calls recently to annex the West Bank, the term began to be used as shorthand for the vision of Israel extending over all of historic Palestine and became synonymous with the rejection of a Palestinian state.
This version of Greater Israel was reinforced by Israel’s nation-state law passed in 2018 and a Knesset resolution last February that rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state anywhere between the river and the sea.
The current genocide in Gaza, and events across the region, have given new life to the idea of “Greater Israel.”
Since the beginning of this genocide, calls have increased by right-wing religious extremists, most of them from the settler movement in the West Bank, to establish Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. These calls received the support of ministers and members of the Knesset.
The project and existing policies
In fact, it seemed that between calls for a settlement in Gaza and efforts to annex the West Bank and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, the practical implementation of “Greater Israel” was on its way to being achieved.
But the rapidly developing events in Lebanon and Syria in recent months have revived illusions about an extreme version of “Greater Israel” in Israeli discourse.
Israel’s demands to create a buffer zone inside Lebanon, coupled with its invasion of Syrian territory after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, have expanded the imagined map of Greater Israel.
With reports of Israeli forces reaching approximately 23 kilometers from Damascus, Israeli religious extremists began bringing back biblical rhetoric to describe their territorial ambitions.
Last Thursday, a group of religious Orthodox Israelis went to the top of Mount Hermon in Syria, which was recently occupied by the Israeli army, and held a religious ceremony there, under the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers.
A recurring argument
Israel currently insists that its actions in Syria are temporary, just as it previously insisted that its occupation of the West Bank and the Golan is temporary, and is supported in repeating this argument by the United States.
The writer concluded his article by saying that with such a record, with the rise of religious nationalism in Israel, with Israel’s unchecked actions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria over the past year, and its current incursion into Syria, no one can guarantee that the fantasy of “Greater Israel” is Just a fantasy in the minds of Israeli leaders.
It seems that the fanatical expansionist ideology of these Israeli leaders, fueled by religious fanaticism, which is currently making its way over the corpses and ruins of entire cities, is not just a bad memory of the colonial past.
