Much of the world is focused on a two-state solution in resolving the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears devoted to realizing his vision of a “Greater Israel” instead.
Netanyahu appears to be halfway through achieving this goal, despite all the international condemnation of his war in Gaza and the increasing isolation of Israel.
The two-state solution now seems to be no more than a catchword for governments around the world that want to show their solidarity with the Palestinian cause at a time when Israel is hard at work to ensure the concept becomes totally defunct.
The prospects for creating an independent Palestinian state out of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip to live side-by-side with Israel in peace and security have never been dimmer.
Israel maintains Trump’s unwavering support
In the wake of Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month, an emergency Arab-Muslim summit was convened by Qatar to provide a collective response.
The meeting proved to be very ineffective. The leaders issued a strong condemnation of the strike on Qatar, but no plan for how to prevent Israel from attacking its neighbours or halt what a United Nations commission has now called a “genocide” in Gaza.
Instead, the leaders offered a tepid statement, saying they would:
take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people.
Middle East leaders know the only power that can rein in Israel is its committed strategic partner, the United States.
Washington does not appear prepared to do that. While President Donald Trump has assured the region that Israel will not repeat its attack on Qatar, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, urgently flew to Israel to reconfirm America’s unshakeable alliance with the Jewish state.
In praying together with Netanyahu at the Western Wall with a kippah on his head, Rubio demonstrated the Trump administration would stand by the prime minister all the way.
And Netanyahu was quick to declare that Israel reserves the right to hit the “Hamas terrorists” anywhere. He has demanded Qatar expel Hamas officials or face Israel’s wrath again.
Vision for a ‘Greater Israel’
Based on the language used by the Israeli leader and his extremist ministers, the creation of “Greater Israel” appears to be a priority.
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has publicly alluded to this, saying he was “very” connected to the idea.
The “Greater Israel” phrase was used after the Six-Day War in 1967 to refer to the lands Israel had conquered: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula (which has since been returned to Egypt).
This concept was enshrined in 1977 in the founding charter of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, which said “between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
Last year, Netanyahu affirmed that Israel must have “security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River”. He added, “That collides with the idea of [Palestinian] sovereignty. What can we do?”
Netanyahu is now firmly in a position to annex the Gaza Strip, followed by formally extending Israeli jurisdiction over all the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where more than 700,000 settlers live under the protection of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and potentially annex the entire area.
In addition, Israel has made extraterritorial gains in both Lebanon and Syria after degrading Hezbollah and striking both southern Syria and Iran. He has said the IDF’s footprint in both countries will not be pulled back any time soon.
Arab and Muslim leaders have strongly condemned Netanyahu’s references to a “Greater Israel”. The US also has not publicly endorsed it, though the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has been a supporter of the idea.
What can the world do?
Netanyahu and his colleagues have weathered the international criticism over their catastrophic Gaza operations for nearly two years, with unwavering US security, economic and financial backing.
Equally, Netanyahu’s critics say he has shown little concern about the safety and freedom of the remaining Israeli hostages still in Hamas’s custody. He has brushed off the desires of a majority of Israelis for a ceasefire and release of the hostages.
For Netanyahu and his ruling clique, the end justifies the means. Given this, the expected recognition of the state of Palestine by many Western countries at the UN General Assembly this week will have little or no bearing on Israel or, for that matter, the US. They have both already rejected it as a meaningless and unworthy symbolic exercise.
This begs the question of what needs to be done to divert Israel from its path. The only means that could possibly work would be sanctioning Netanyahu and his government and severing all military, economic and trade ties with Israel.
Anything short of this will allow the Israeli leadership to continue its pursuit of a “Greater Israel”, if this is indeed their ultimate plan.
This would come at a terrible cost not only for the Palestinians and the region, but also for Israel’s global reputation. When Netanyahu eventually leaves office, he will leave behind a state in international disrepute. And it may not recover from this for a very long time.
Amin Saikal is adjunct professor of social sciences, The University of Western Australia, Victoria University, Australian National University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Israel is a state built on stolen lands and the blood of those who once rightfully owned/inhabited those lands. It is a state long guilty of ethnic cleansing, wrongful coercion, and state/military terrorism. And now it commits genocide and forcibly imposed starvation of those people they have victimized, the Palestinians… including their children. Israel is a monster. A greater Israel would be even more monstrous. The only reasonable/just solution is a one state solution: A New Republic of Palestine that covers all historic Palestine… and allows no Zionists therein.
This is not new. Greater Israel, what the Zionists call “Eretz Yisrael,” has ALWAYS been hard-wired into Zionist ideology. They have decided that the current situation presents an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot.
Zionism is elemental to Judaism. See Abraham, Moses, and Joshua; see Solomon, David, the Hasmoneans, and Josephus. See Theodore Herzl, Ben-Gurion and see the young rising lions of today’s Medinot Yisrael. By the way, “Eretz Yisrael” means the Land of Israel, the territory, distinct from Medinot Yisrael, the State of Israel.
UN’s a joke, so are the European leaders’ mini-threats at the moment, they are too engulfed in prying Ukraine away from Rus. With Trump backing Netanyahu’s got a year or two to finish his annexation business, which would be more logical as the fallout of mutual hatred will last for decades/centuries in either case.
I sure hope so. Bibi-dono is my hero. Am Israel Chai!
Gotta get that Lebensraum!
This article just states what the majority of ppl with even mediocre IQs have known for over a year or more now. Its anachronistic and far behind the current times. The entire point of ethnic cleansing is to acquire more territory. Why is this suddenly regarded as new information?
Just ask the Tiddly Winks who live in Tibet
Three toxic legacy projects of the perfidious British in the region have been Sykes-Picot/Lawrence of Arabia, British Petroleum and the Balfour Declaration. When they handed the mandate of Palestine to the UN, the UN Resolution 181 split into Arab and Jewish parts. Initially Arabs were against, for obvious reasons, the Jewish claim of “a land without a people for a people without a land” was a lie. Ove time, the Arabs accepted the newly created crusader settler presence. Nowadays it is the Jews who cannot accept Palestinians. Most Israeli Arabs and Muslim Arabs support the 2 state solution. Most Israeli Jews do not. This is supported by many survey results. In fact, over 90% of Israeli Jews think the IDF does not go far enough in Gaza. That is where the problem is. The religious Zionist Jews became the Nazis now and Netanyahu and fellow end times lunatics with their Christian Zionist end timers in the evil empire, want a Greater Israel. This project is doomed to fail. These people do not build civilization and certainly do not offer any civilized behavior. There will be a reverse Aliyah back to the USA when the project dies on its own sword, the only place on Earth willing to take them back given their trail of wreckage. Israel was founded on violence and it will die with violence. It is unworkable. Apartheid Fascist states implode.
At which point exactly did the Muslim arabs “accept” the Jews? A neighbor who’ll cut your throat the moment you turn away is not really accepting you. Israel has played this card pretty well at the beginning of recent conflict.
The Mo hamm edans need no excuse to kill each other.
How goes things in Syria ?