The Arab world seemed surprised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks about Greater Israel, even though the project predates the establishment of the Jewish state. Moreover, early maps of the Zionist settler-colonial project depicted an entity that spanned both banks of the Jordan River and incorporated large chunks of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
This vision has appeared in all major Zionist references, from the writings of Leon Pinsker, the Polish founder of the Lovers of Zion movement in the late 19th century (my copy of the English edition of his book, The Road to Freedom, contains a foreword by Benjamin Netanyahu) and Herzl’s The Jewish State (1896), through the various foundational texts, protocols, and other outputs of Zionist congresses. It is also reflected in the maximalist approach to Zionist ideology and “security” negotiations in Netanyahu’s own book, A Place Among Nations, published in 1993, before he became prime minister. The map of a Greater Israel that he displayed during the UN inaugural session, in full view of the international community, confirms his determination to realise this plan. His recent statements are merely a reiteration of ideas that have been in circulation for 129 years.
Were we unaware or wilfully ignorant?
More crucially, what are we going to do now?
Netanyahu’s overt promotion of this expansionist Zionist plan requires, at the very least, an alternative Arab proposal. What might that look like?
Even Israel’s current borders — let alone those envisioned by Greater Israel — are illegitimate. They violate the November 1947 UN Partition Resolution, which offered the legal basis for the establishment of Israel. Israel now occupies several times the area allocated to it under that resolution, having seized land designated for the Palestinian state during the 1948 War and afterwards. International recognition of Israel was strictly based on the borders outlined in the partition resolution. The international community does not recognise the territories it has occupied and annexed by force.
Do we have the courage to demand that Israel withdraw from lands originally designated for the Palestinian state under the partition resolution? Can we demand of the UN, as the body that permitted the creation of the Jewish state, to assume its responsibility to enforce the borders stipulated in its own resolutions?
Such a counterproposal to the Greater Israel project would place the international community before a stark choice. Either it could uphold the legitimacy derived from its own laws or bow to the expansionist Zionist project’s violations of international legitimacy.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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