By Israel Shahak and Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Update and Analysis
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” which was led by its Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War.” Israel has now (October 7, 2023) officially declared an illegal war on Palestine.
The current Netanyahu government is committed to the “Greater Israel” and the “Promised Land”, namely the biblical homeland of the Jews.
Benjamin Netanyahu is pressing ahead to formalize “Israel’s colonial project”, namely the appropriation of all Palestinian Lands.
His position defined below consists in total appropriation as well as the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:
“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.”
The Nakba
With an economy in free fall, 70 per cent youth unemployment, widely contaminated drinking water and a collapsed health care system, Gaza has become “unliveable”, [in 2018] according to the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories”
The above UN assessment dates back to 2018. Under Netanyahu, Israel is currently proceeding with the plan to annex large chunks of Palestinian territory “while keeping the Palestinian inhabitants in conditions of severe deprivation and isolation.“
Creating conditions of extreme poverty and economic collapse constitute the means for triggering the expulsion and exodus of Palestinians from their homeland. It is part of the process of annexation.
“If the manoeuvre is successful, Israel will end up with all of the territories it conquered during the 1967 war, including all of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian Territories, including the best sources of water and agricultural land.
The West Bank will find itself in the same situation as the Gaza strip, cut off from the outside world and surrounded by hostile Israeli military forces and Israeli settlements.” (South Front)
Human rights ended at the Palestinian border. The bought and paid for US Congress couldn’t genuflect enough:
“On July 19, 2023 the US Congress convened a special joint session for Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Both Democrats and Republicans bobbed up and down to applaud him 29 times.”
”Watching Palestine Disappear”, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, September 12, 2023
“Greater Israel would create a number of proxy states. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.”
“Palestine Is Gone! Gone! راحت فلسطين . The Palestinian plight is savagely painful and the pain is compounded by the bafflingly off-hand dismissal and erasure by Western powers of that pain, Rima Najjar, Global Research, June, 7, 2020
Michel Chossudovsky, September 19, 2023, October 8, 2023
Introductory Text on “The Greater Israel Project”
by Michel Chossudovsky
The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government, the Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence establishment.
President Donald Trump had confirmed in January 2017 his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334, pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank). The Trump administration expressed its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And now the entire West Bank is being annexed to Israel.
Under the Biden administration, despite rhetorical shifts in the political narrative, Washington remains supportive of Israel plans to annex the entire Jordan River valley as well the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Bear in mind: The Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the Middle East.
In this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel– is accompanied by a process of political fragmentation.
Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey.
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East bears an intimate relationship to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the political crisis in Saudi Arabia.
The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO and Saudi Arabia. In this regard, the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is from Netanyahu’s viewpoint a means to expanding Israel’s spheres of influence in the Middle East as well as confronting Iran. Needless to day, the “Greater Israel” project is consistent with America’s imperial design.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.
“A near-century ago, the World Zionist Organization’s plan for a Jewish state included:
• historic Palestine;
• South Lebanon up to Sidon and the Litani River;
• Syria’s Golan Heights, Hauran Plain and Deraa; and
• control of the Hijaz Railway from Deraa to Amman, Jordan as well as the Gulf of Aqaba.
Some Zionists wanted more – land from the Nile in the West to the Euphrates in the East, comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Western Syria and Southern Turkey.”
The Zionist project has supported the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.
The Project of “Greater Israel” is to create a number of proxy States, which could include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map)
According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article, The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:
“[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.
The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.
“Greater Israel” would require the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.
“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must
1) become an imperial regional power, and
2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.
Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)
Viewed in this context, the US-NATO led wars on Syria and Iraq are part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion.
In this regard, the defeat of US sponsored terrorists (ISIS, Al Nusra) by Syrian Forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah constitute a significant setback for Israel.
-Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 06, 2015, updated September 13, 2019
The Israel of Theodore Herzl (1904) and of Rabbi Fischmann (1947)
In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
Translated and edited by
Israel Shahak
In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”
Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.
Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982
Special Document No. 1 (ISBN 0-937694-56-8)
21 March 2024
Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com