Stop ‘Greater Israel’ to make peace

Expansionist Israel will not stop dragging the US to war in the Middle East.Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Advisor on the Middle East and Africa for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.Published On 21 Jun 2026Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks in front of a map of the Middle East during a press conference at the Government Press Office (GPO) in Jerusalem on September 4, 2024 [File: Abir Sultan/AFP]On June 14, the United States and Iran agreed to a framework to end their war. The Strait of Hormuz is to reopen, the bombing of Lebanon is to end and – most importantly – the killing is to stop. After more than 100 days of war that killed thousands, including Iran’s most senior leaders, and pushed the world economy to the brink, even a fragile truce feels like first light.Let us welcome it, but also let us understand it. To grasp why this war happened, and the string of wars before it, we must name their common cause. That cause is “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” – not the country of Israel but an idea of it – a terrible one. The idea of “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” has been the cause of wars in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.It holds that Israel should stretch over all of historic Palestine – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – and to parts of neighbouring countries as well. According to United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a fundamentalist Protestant whose geopolitical compass is set by biblical texts from 500 BC, “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Last summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu professed to be “very” attached to a vision of “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” that, he said, takes in the Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab lands.This absurd and dangerous doctrine has two parents. The first are secular hardliners like Netanyahu who say that Israel must control all the land from the river to the sea to be safe, and damn the eight million Palestinians in the way.The second is the Jewish supremacist creed of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that God gave the land to the Jews alone: There is, in Smotrich’s words, “no such thing as a Palestinian”. Asked recently how Israel should answer its collapsing global standing, Smotrich vowed Israel would not relinquish military control of the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanese or Syrian territory: “We won’t commit suicide to make them happy.”“Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” is paranoia, megalomania and religious zeal braided into a single programme. The doctrine should have been repudiated on its first airing decades ago. Instead, it has driven Israel’s foreign and military doctrine for three decades – and has survived until today because Netanyahu has taken the US for a ride.He has done it with two American constituencies: Jewish Zionists who love Israel and will forgive it anything and Christian Zionists who love the prophecy of the End Times and the Second Coming of Christ more than they love any living Palestinian or, for that matter, any living Israeli.Delusion has led on to delusion, and the road has run from one war to the next. We are 30 years into this fiasco now.The war on Iran was simply the latest “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” fantasy. The government of 90 million people was to be toppled in a single, glorious day. Of course, it did not happen. Israeli and American bombs killed Iran’s leaders on February 28, but that did not deliver the promised collapse. It resulted instead in thousands of dead, a choked Strait of Hormuz and a global oil shock.We have seen this film before. The Israel-US plan to bring down President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was also meant to be quick, one or two years at the most. Instead came a dozen years of carnage, fed by a covert war armed and financed by the CIA with Israel’s ardent backing. The result was an ancient country reduced to rubble. The promised one-day victories always become decade-long graveyards.US President Donald Trump has been battered by joining the “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” delusion, and he knows it. The new agreement with Iran is his escape valve, a way out of a fatuous war that was never his to win.That is precisely why Israel’s “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” politicians are trying to strangle the new agreement in the cradle, for peace with Iran is a defeat for “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel”. Even after the deal was sealed, Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon, killing 47 people in a single day on Friday and another 32 on Saturday hours after a Lebanon-Israel ceasefire took effect.Here is the deeper truth: “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” is not saving Israel. It is killing it. The friction now visible between Trump and Netanyahu is only the surface. Beneath it lies the collapse of Israel’s standing throughout the world. According to a recent Pew opinion survey, the world now holds an overwhelmingly unfavourable view of Israel. In the US, Israel’s indispensable patron, six in 10 adults view it unfavourably.A state that makes itself hated by the world, and by its only protector, is not pursuing security. It is threatening its own survival to feed a delusion.So the way to peace in West Asia is to stop “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel”. End the war on Iran, stop the genocide in Gaza and halt the strangulation of the West Bank. Most importantly, do the thing the doctrine forbids, which is to create the State of Palestine as the 194th United Nations member state alongside the State of Israel on the 1967 lines with genuine security for both countries and a regional framework to guarantee it, which should include Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and Syria.The Iran ceasefire makes the case in miniature: It was won not on the battlefield but through mediation. It became possible when Washington decided it wanted peace more than it wanted “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel’s” war.Israel can survive, but not as “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel”, a disastrous idea that has marched it and the US from one war to the next.The glimmer of hope today is real. Whether it becomes a true dawn depends on whether the US finally lets Palestine be born, and thereby lets Israel live. The Arab world and Iran need to keep insisting to the US that breaking with “Israel" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="36836" data-entity-type="location">Greater Israel” is the only path to lasting peace.The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.