Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).

The concept of “Eretz Israel” (Hebrew “Land of Israel”, with the connotation of expansionism that “Greater Israel” implies in English) is based on a merger of religious fundamentalism and modern political ethno-nationalism, whereby ancient texts are used to justify a modern military expansionist state.

Military invasion attempts into South Lebanon since October 2024, along with recurrent calls for expanding the entity’s border by occupation leaders, have revived contention over long-entrenched Zionist territorial ambitions in the region. The shameless display of a map that engulfs Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spotted on the sleeves of occupation soldiers is hardly symbolic, nor exclusive to fringe elements of settler society. The concept of ‘Greater Israel’, long dismissed by “Israelis” and their supporters as a conspiracy theory promoted by paranoid Arabs and anti-Semites, verily captures the essence of Zionism as an expansionist settler-colonial movement with biblical, territorial claims that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.

LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDE

There is a common misconception that attributes the expansionist behavior of the Israeli entity to the most extreme factions of its society, represented by ultranationalist settlers. These are the ones who hold beliefs from biblical scriptures, whom are often caught on camera harassing and killing Palestinians, stealing their homes, burning their olive trees, and destroying crops and killing herds, all under the full protection of the Occupation Army (IOF) of course. However, to limit the occupation’s aggressive aspirations to conspicuous right-wing extremists is a misreading that leads to the prevailing tendency to appeal to left-right, or religious-secular, nuances within the Zionist entity. This deceptive framing is especially popular among Western liberals.

The public “Israeli” attitude towards its internal affairs does, however, reflect a polarity. The culture is characterized by a religious-secular divide, which involves ongoing debates over the status of religion, the character of the entity as a “Jewish state”, and its territorial borders. This left-right dichotomy exists over a range of internal issues concerned with political and socio-economic questions. However, when it comes to the colonial-expansionist identity of the entity, that dispute most certainly dissolves, and makes no difference to those on the receiving end of its terror.

“Israeli” leaders from across the political spectrum have collectively and directly contributed to the military occupation of Palestine, creeping into more territory by the day, in a steady, consistent and systematic manner since the very establishment of the entity. To clarify, it is not only the likes of Daniela Weiss, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose aspirations are problematic, and dangerous, and “extreme”. To name just a few, the first Prime Minister of the occupation state, the ‘secular’ David Ben Gurion, who led the largest socialist- Zionist party, was also a chief architect of the 1948 Nakba¹. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the founder of the Labor Party, who occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War. The most ‘moderate’ of them all, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as ‘a peacemaker,’ actually accelerated land theft in the West Bank, and when asked, “what is to be done with the Palestinian population?” he responded with a hand gesture motioning to ‘drive them out!’²

Most importantly, these leaders did not emerge from a vacuum; they were brought to power by “Israeli” voters, who also showed overwhelming support for the ongoing genocide against Gaza. Back in November 2023, only 3% of Israelis were in favor of a permanent, “unconditional” ceasefire³. The annihilation of Gaza unifies the settler state left and right alike.

FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATES

The possibility of establishing a Zionist entity in Uganda, Argentina or the Sinai Peninsula⁴ was initially considered towards the end of the 19th century by Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. However, the idea that a Jewish entity must spread across the so-called ‘historic biblical land of the Jews’ in Palestine took precedence.

In his 1898 diaries, Herzl mentions a discussion with Max Bodenheimer, another notable figure of the Zionist movement and his close associate, who suggests that a ‘Jewish State’ should extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”⁵, an idea which Herzl approved to be ‘in part excellent’. In his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, Herzl envisions an Israeli entity that would set out as follows: “the northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia in Turkiye; the southern, the Suez Canal’⁶. He also points out that it would serve as a “wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”⁷.

It’s worth mentioning that Herzl’s legacy still reverberates powerfully across the entity today, to the extent that the Knesset passed the Herzl Law⁸ as recently as 2004. The Herzl Law makes it mandatory for all Israelis to study his work in order to “structure the state of Israel, its goal and image in accordance with his Zionist vision’’.

Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine who assisted in drafting “Israel’s” Declaration of Independence, explained at the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 9, 1947 that “the Promised Land was quite a large one:, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates”, and that “the promise was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about 4000 years ago and it was reaffirmed to Moses”⁹.

There is no shortage of examples of Zionist leaders expressing their ambition of establishing a “Greater Israel”, but it is important to keep one thing in mind: The Zionist movement underwent many phases, and Zionist ideologues’ opinions about the exact definition of ‘a greater Israel’ and the ideal delineation of its borders fluctuated throughout the years.

ONGOING COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE

Given the constraining circumstances surrounding Zionist colonization in its early days¹⁰, Zionist expediency understood that to gain leverage, a temporary compromise between its grandiose territorial ambitions, and its immediate instrumental needs, was required.

The Zionist movement was willing to come to terms with less territory at first, in exchange for a ‘state’ with political sovereignty¹¹. However, its determination to seize more when a ripe opportunity came along was never abandoned, as a comparison of historic and present-day maps reveals.

In 1948, the Zionist state stole 78% of Palestine. Ever since, new rounds of aggression and expansion have been implemented in an unfettered manner¹². Since 1967, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands have been stolen¹³. In the first months of the genocide in Gaza alone, Israel stole 1,270 hectares of Palestinian land¹⁴.

In fact, records of evidence show that through exercising patience, the colonial occupation has patiently been playing the long game, gradually bringing more Palestinian land under its control by the day. To claim otherwise – that Israel will remain indefinitely satisfied with dominating only a fragment of the land that it maintains belongs to the Jewish people – would be absurd¹⁵. In fact, this was accurately expressed in 1937 by Ben Gurion, a central figure in the founding phase of the colonial entity, who also served as its first Prime Minister for almost 15 years “a partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning…¹⁶’’, and “we shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them”¹⁷, implying that Israel should never settle for any limitations concerning its borders. This is precisely why, up until the present day, Israel has failed to define its borders.

THE LITANI RIVER

If we consider our current situation, one year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in South Lebanon, something it has incessantly attempted to do since its inception: in 1948, as well as 1978, 1982-2000 and 2006. Amid its current inability to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against it in support of Gaza, Israel has been seeking to change the status quo by pushing the resistance away from Lebanon’s southern border, and beyond the Litani specifically. Historically, the Litani River has always held strategic importance for Zionist ambitions.

The Litani, the longest river in Lebanon, stretches 170 kilometers southward from the Beqaa Valley, flows along the eastern front of Lebanon’s mountain range, and diverts sharply westward towards the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tyre. Historical documents revealing Zionist plans to take control of it date back as far as prior to the establishment of the entity. Its importance is due to it being a vital water source, along with the fact that its surroundings are of military-strategic value.

The head of the World Zionist Organization, who would later become the occupation state’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put forward a map for a proposed Jewish colony at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The map he presented fell short of the land guaranteed in accordance with ‘God’s Promise’, from the Nile to the Euphrates¹⁸. Rather, the proposed borders were drawn according to geopolitical calculations to dominate water resources in the region, incorporating:

“First the whole of Mandated Palestine … secondly, southern Lebanon, including the towns of Tyre and Sidon, the headwaters of the River Jordan on Mount Hermon and the southern portion of the Litani River… thirdly, on the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, including the town of Quneitra, the River Yarmuk and El-Himmeh Hot Springs … fourthly, on the Jordan front, the whole of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Eastern Highlands up to the outskirts of Amman, running southwards along the Hejaz Railway to the Gulf of Aqaba, leaving Jordan with no access to the sea; fifthly, on the Egyptian front, from EI-Arish on the Mediterranean in a straight southerly direction to the Gulf of Aqaba”.¹⁹

The priority of accessing water resources was also articulated in a 1919 letter Weizmann sent to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister and head of the British delegation, in which he wrote:

“The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon [Golan Heights], from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River in Lebanon”

It wasn’t until 1967 that Israel would partially fulfill its aspiration of controlling more territory and dominating water resources by occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, East of the Jordan River, as well as the Sea of Galilee, also known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ —but not the Litani River. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was quoted saying that “Israel had achieved provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon.” The idea of occupying South Lebanon was enthusiastically adopted by Moshe Dayan as well as Ben Gurion²⁰, and was also referred to in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett²¹.

Ben Gurion’s conviction of an Israel with the Litani as its northern border was noted in a book he published in 1918²². This idea would remain an essential part of his vision for the entity for years to come²³, as would the idea of redrawing the borders by fragmenting Lebanon to allow for the establishment of a Christian state with with the Litani as its southern border managed by ‘Israel’.

Zionist plans to annex the region or expand its control over it are not a thing of the past – on the contrary, they always tend to resurface. Established in 2024, a group called “The South Lebanon Movement’’ has been advocating for the colonization of South Lebanon²⁴.

HEGEMONY THROUGH DISRUPTION

Zionist expansionism does not only manifest as direct occupation and control of territory. When the entity abstains from or is unable to claim land, it makes use of other cost- effective tools to spread its hegemony.

This was best articulated in a notorious article that recently resurfaced²⁵ entitled “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties” published in 1982 in the quarterly Kivunim – a journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization that encapsulates the Zionist ideology. The piece was written by journalist and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who precisely advocated for a strategic divide-and-rule plan to fragment the region in Israel’s favor:

“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today”²⁶.

This describes, in great detail, the current track on which the Levant is heading, confirming the premise of this strategy which was laid out forty years ago. More recently in 2002, then- former president Netanyahu testified before US Congress in fervent favor of “taking out Saddam” by invading and destroying Iraq. This was not about regional peace — remember that a large part of Iraq is contained in “Greater Israel” — the goal was fragmenting and weakening all nations contained within the land of “God’s promise”. Therefore rather than being cohesive nations, the fragmentation of these historically diverse states into sectarian and ethnic groupings, where sub- state identities are exacerbated and mired in conflict, makes them more vulnerable to “Israeli” hegemony, and less capable of projecting power and coordinating action against it. This creates the ideal grounds for submission to the entity’s greater plans. In that case, even if a “Greater Israel” isn’t physically achieved, it will at the very least still be capable of imposing its supremacy over the region.

CONCLUSION

It requires no extensive amount of research to identify from “Israel’s” behavioral pattern, along with statements issued by its officials, that its appetite for expansion is far from quenched. We are witnessing this appetite in real-time. The trajectory of this entity, since its illegitimate establishment in 1948, is self-evident to those of us who have been experiencing its brutality daily. It makes no difference whether it is driven by biblical scriptures associated with the return of “God’s chosen people to the promised land” and the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, or rooted in pragmatic secularism, linked its current territorial occupation, conspires to annex more land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or conquer the entire area, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the supremacy engrained in its very foundation makes it a danger that cannot be overstated. Equally dangerous are the misleading attempts to dismiss awareness of its territorial ambitions and muddy its imperialistic nature.

Failure to address the extent to which these expansionist ideas are inscribed indelibly in their settler-colonial project will have detrimental implications. Even the so-called “two- state solution”, always a distraction from recognizing the fundamental illegality of the occupation, is an illusionary mantra that has been rejected by the “Israeli” regime itself, which is colonizing more land by the day with full support from the West. This support for “Israel’s” manifest destiny is echoed in the shocking 2019 presidential declaration that the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded by Israel in 1967, were to be recognized as part of the Zionist state. As sitting senior ministers within the occupation government openly declare their intent to invade and colonize Lebanon and Syria, what is to stop their US-backed armies from furthering their goals of occupying the entire region from Jordan to Iraq?

When IOF soldiers wear a “Greater Israel” badge on their uniform, signaling their aggressive intentions towards the whole region, we must believe them.

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