By Robert Inlakesh
If the resistance is Kurdish, Sunni, Shia, Communist, Socialist, Nationalist, Liberal, Christian, or Druze, the Israelis will demonize and murder them all the same.
In an interview with I24 News earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his first public admission that he seeks to impose “Greater Israel” on the surrounding region. A plan long labeled as an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory” by pro-Israeli propagandists, it involves taking all of Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, while seizing most of Syria, parts of Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even Türkiye.
The idea of a “Greater Israel” has for some time been the ultimate goal of many Israeli politicians, political parties, and religious nationalist citizens. The idea itself actually predates the Israeli state and can be linked back to the early Revisionist Zionist movement.
In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, was part of the infamous Irgun terrorist organization and was active in ideologically influencing the movement. The Irgun played a role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (1947-49) and had waged a terrorist campaign against both Palestinians and the British Mandate authorities in Palestine prior to this. The Irgun’s symbol is of a “Greater Israel” map that includes all of Jordan.
Theodore Herzl, the founding figure of Zionism, also once stated that the “Jewish State” should have boundaries, “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” Then there’s the infamous “Yinon Plan,” written by Oded Yinon, an advisor to former Likud Party Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The article written by Yinon laid out a strategy for Israel’s survival, arguing that to survive, it must become a regional empire and collapse all the surrounding Arab states, dividing them along ethnic and religious lines to achieve this goal and secure Greater Israel.
Fast forward to March of 2023, before the genocide in Gaza began. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sparked outrage from neighboring Arab countries after he spoke at a podium that featured a “Greater Israel” map, which included all of Jordan in addition to parts of Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. This map is very similar to the one on the Irgun emblem from the 1930s and ’40s.
Even earlier this year, in January, the official social media handles of “Israel” published a map that represented what they called “historic Israel,” which expanded into neighboring Arab countries. Now, we no longer have to turn to the voices that are often shrugged off as “fringe” and “extremist,” as Benjamin Netanyahu is himself admitting to seeking a “Greater Israel.”
No Longer Just a Plan
On Wednesday morning, Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir paid a visit to occupied southern Lebanon, where Israel’s army has set up six bases and outposts, commenting that he had visited the area due to a changed reality on the “northern front.”
Israel now speaks of fully occupying Gaza, even approving a plan to do so, while the Israeli Knesset even voted on a bill last month that called for the annexation of the West Bank. Occupied East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights were formally annexed in 1980 and 1981. Settlement expansion in the West Bank has never ended, yet it is accelerating now at a rate not seen in decades. Tel Aviv even has a project to “Judaize” the occupied Naqab (Negev) region, taking over the heavily Bedouin-populated area.
Yet this was never good enough. Post-October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has clearly pursued an expansionist plan that has threatened every neighboring nation. Israel has even threatened to invade the Egyptian Sinai and violated the so-called “Camp David Peace Agreement” by taking over the Philadelphi corridor and Rafah border crossing.
As for Syria, Israel has played an insidious role there for some time and only capitalized on this after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December of 2024. Now, the normalizing regime in Damascus openly sends its government representatives to meet Israeli officials and coordinates on “security issues.” Even without signing an official normalization agreement, it has already normalized ties and given up any leverage it could have had.
Still, regardless of how controlled the regime of Ahmed al-Shara’a in Syria is, this isn’t enough; the plan has always been balkanization. Whether Oded Yinon’s blueprint is in fact being followed or not, the effect is exactly the same.
Israel backed a dozen Syrian militant groups back in 2013, providing medical, military, and financial aid to them. It did this at the same time it was working alongside the Jordanian and US governments on a plan to expand its so-called buffer zone, proposing also that a Druze State be formed in southern Syria, which would be aligned with Israel.
One of the groups that Israel had begun backing was the Nusra Front, commanded by none other than Ahmed al-Shara’a (now Syrian President). Nusra, which later rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), committed massacres against Syrian minority communities, including the Druze, and had allied itself with ISIS at a time when the terrorist group was committing large-scale massacres of the Druze.
At first, Israel’s attempts to co-opt the Syrian Druze community largely failed. Instead, the Druze decided to side with the Syrian Arab Army after having remained neutral up until that point in the war that began back in 2011.
In 2020, the Israelis and Americans had coordinated a greater effort to co-opt Druze militia forces in Sweida (southern Syria), including through the Syrian al-Liwa Party. It was at the time attempting to pressure Russia to permit the creation of a separate Druze State.
With the collapse of the Syrian government and the subsequent dissolving of its army by the new pro-US leadership in Damascus, Israel has had a free hand to ethnically cleanse villages, occupy as much territory as it chooses, and position its forces deep into Syrian lands.
Another project the Israelis long worked on was co-opting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and have been building relations in this regard since 2015. Israel supports the emergence of Kurdish and Druze states, which will be landlocked and dependent on foreign support. They will also facilitate what is being branded “David’s Corridor,” which will give Israel direct access to Iraqi Kurdistan and put them in place to directly threaten Iran’s borders.
In Lebanon and Iraq, meanwhile, the US is working on Israel’s behalf to force the governments in Baghdad and Beirut to disarm their domestic resistance forces. In Lebanon, the current government is following orders and seeks to disarm Hezbollah at all costs, even if that means a civil war that will further divide the nation.
Israeli, Western, and pro-US Arab media have long used their influence, both through religious and secular news programs, to divide the entire region along ethnic and religious lines. It has largely worked.
It is not uncommon today to hear Arab Sunnis refer to secular leaders like Saddam Hussein or Yasser Arafat as “great Sunni leaders.” Anyone who understands the history on even a basic level knows that Arafat and Saddam Hussein never spoke as Sunni leaders, did not use religious language, and referring to them this way would have made no sense during their era. Yet, the divisive media has made the Arab public believe in ideas of a sectarian past that never was.
The US and Israel destroyed Iraq and Syria, creating sectarian hatred that has never fully left. Although different sides have played into this trap, sometimes unwillingly, it has worked exactly the way the Israelis sought it to. Divide and rule, the oldest and most obvious tactic in the book.
All of this should have been obvious from the outset, as Israel is simply too small to rule the entire region alone. That is why it backed al-Qaeda in Syria, even doing so openly. This is also why it is backing ISIS-linked gangsters in Gaza today.
And how could we forget its backing of the Fascist Lebanese Maronite militia known as Kataeb, in addition to its continuing support for the Lebanese Forces today. It doesn’t matter how extreme the ideology is; the Israelis will back all sides to fight each other to the death.
The ultimate goal has always been clear: Israel’s enemies are every non-Jewish group in the entire region, not just the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance. Yet, today, it is only Iran and its allies that stand in the way of Tel Aviv implementing its Greater Israel plot, which is why Benjamin Netanyahu is adamant on “total victory” in his “seven-front war.”
Although the war hasn’t yet reached them, Egypt and Jordan are also on this hit list. Both are facing instability, economic decline, and verge on mass civil unrest. Both are also, like the Syrian and Lebanese governments, totally under the thumb of the US and Israelis.
It was once considered a conspiracy theory. Today, it is the undeniable reality on the ground. The only thing standing in the way of Greater Israel are the Palestinian resistance groups, Hezbollah, Iraq’s PMU, Yemen’s Ansarallah, and Iran. These are the only ones left standing that can pose a challenge to this malicious agenda.
Without them, the entire region will be run by pro-Israel oppressive dictatorships, and we are already almost there. Unfortunately, in places like Syria, people still can’t see what is happening, many blinded by the hatred that the media has fed to them and too egotistical to admit that they were fooled.
Many forget that Saddam Hussein was put in power by the CIA, then used US backing to attack Iran, until they decided his subservience was no longer needed and that Iraq’s independence needed to be crushed, at which point they decided to destroy him. They also forget that NATO launched its regime change war, also backing al-Qaeda linked groups to achieve their aims, after Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi had given up his nuclear program and attempted to forge better relations with the West.
There will only be two ways forward: a life of hate that will lead the entire region into a hellish sectarian nightmare of continuous bloodshed, or resistance against the region’s one true enemy. It has never been about Sunni, Shia, Druze, Christians, or Kurds. Israel doesn’t care about any of these groups and never has, yet it will fuel hatred amongst them to destroy all of them.
If the resistance is Kurdish, Sunni, Shia, Communist, Socialist, Nationalist, Liberal, Christian, or Druze, the Israelis will demonize and murder them all the same. Greater Israel is the vision, domination is the vision, and only a unified resistance front can stop it. Collaboration gets you nowhere, and the idea that any group will be free if it only bends to US demands has been tried and tested. In the end, Israel views everyone in the region the same way it views a two-year-old child in Gaza: “there are no innocents.”
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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