Politics

Time to worry? Netanyahu says he ‘connects’ to a Greater Israel

Those watching the Israeli prime minister over the years will not be surprised to hear of his affiliation with the idea of a much larger State of Israel. Now he is acting on it.

ABIR SULTAN / AFP

Israel'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.

Time to worry? Netanyahu says he ‘connects’ to a Greater Israel

Amr Emam

last update on 20 Aug 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attachment to a vision of a ‘Greater Israel,’ as evidenced in a recent interview, should be a wake-up call to hundreds of millions of Arabs who thought such ideas were fanciful.

Netanyahu gave his thoughts away when speaking to Israeli TV channel i24News last week. The right-wing interviewer, a former parliamentarian, gave Netanyahu an amulet that featured a map of ‘Greater Israel’ and asked the PM if he related to that vision. “Very much,” said Netanyahu. “Very much.”

The Israeli leader described his as a “historic” and “spiritual” mission before changing tack. By then, though, he had said enough. While he did not refer to any specific territories he hopes to annexe, the ‘Greater Israel’ vision is well-known to include the West Bank and Gaza, territories east of the Jordan River, the Sinai Peninsula, and the eastern banks of the Nile River.

Unsurprisingly, it kicked up angry reactions in Egypt and Jordan. Cairo demanded clarification, while Amman denounced the remarks. Yet observers of Netanyahu will not be surprised. The comments are fully consistent with everything he has said or done for decades.

In Netanyahu’s 1993 book A Place among the Nations: Israel and the World, he extols a vision for the Jewish homeland that now appears to be more in line with the ‘Greater Israel’ concept referenced in his TV interview.

In his book, he blames the West for failing the Jewish people and reneging on its pledge—including through the 1917 Balfour Declaration—to give Jews a homeland, one that he thinks was meant to include the whole of Palestine and territories east and west of the Jordan River (this is not what was promised).

Back in 1993, the Palestinians and Israelis had just hammered out the Oslo Accords, recognising each other’s legitimacy for the first time and establishing a framework for resolving their conflict through negotiation, the end goal being a two-state solution. For Netanyahu, this was a horror show and a sell-out.

For him, the problem of occupying the West Bank and Gaza—home to millions of Palestinians—could be solved by massive Jewish immigration, allowing the Palestinians to live as foreigners under Israeli rule, and later being allowed to become Israeli citizens if they showed good behaviour.

Netanyahu’s book shows his lack of trust in Arabs and his conviction that peace can only be achieved through an overwhelming display of Israeli power and a radical transformation of the Arab world.

Netanyahu's remarks are consistent with everything he has said or done for decades.

More than 30 years later, the book can be seen as laying out how he would act in Israel's immediate vicinity, given the chance. Today, armed to the teeth with US weapons, supported by the most pro-Israel White House in history, and with Iran and its proxies on the back foot, he has the chance.

It is in this context that the world should see Israel's recently-approved plan to conquer Gaza wholesale, together with its ongoing occupation of southern Syria and southern Lebanon. Some Israeli politicians even call for reoccupying the Sinai, where Israel would ideally displace Gaza's entire population.

Plans in action

When he visited Qatar on 14 August, Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly told the Qatari emir that conquering Gaza was not a pressure tactic for Hamas but an actual plan to initiate a permanent Israeli presence in the Palestinian territory.

Resettling Gaza has support among Israel's sizeable religious-Zionist bloc, whose adherents have spent 30 years establishing settlements in the West Bank. For many, the goal is to fully redeem what Israelis call 'Eretz Israel' (the Land of Israel), an area of the southern Levant, described in the Bible as land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.

AFP — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a map of the Gaza Strip, telling viewers that Israel must retain control over the "Philadelphi corridor," a strategic area along Gaza's border with Egypt, on September 2, 2024.

New plans announced last week for the construction of thousands of Jewish settlements in a key area of the occupied West Bank would cut off East Jerusalem and essentially end any hopes of a viable Palestinian state once and for all. That state—increasingly a hypothetical proposition—would no longer be viable because the West Bank has been splintered into cantons.

Yet on a broader level, this is not about Gaza or the West Bank but the wider region, where Netanyahu's confessed connection to a vision of a 'Greater Israel' should ring alarm bells. In the Arab world, many have long buried their heads in the sand over the idea of Israeli territorial ambitions. This is the moment, perhaps, when they need to stop doing so.

Knowing Netanyahu's connection to this vision, can Israel still be taken seriously when discussing peace with its neighbours? If so, what kind of peace does it pursue, given that Netanyahu believes that peace can be achieved only through the overwhelming display of Israeli power and radical regional change? Is this not wholly at odds with the vision of Arab capitals?

Egypt plays safe

The 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and others gave Netanyahu and his settler cabinet colleagues the chance to demonstrate Israeli power and change the region, from Gaza and Lebanon to Syria and Iran. Israel wants this change to be permanent, too, as evidenced by statements that the Israeli military has no intention of leaving Syrian soil.

Bakr Alkasem / AFP — An Israeli soldier takes a position in the Syrian town of Jubata al-Khashab, in the UN-patrolled buffer zone in the annexed Golan Heights, on 20 December 2024.

Israeli eyes now scan the near-abroad in a way they have not done before. This has not been lost on Cairo. Israeli politicians enquire about Egypt's military spending ($5.2bn last year), when it is not at war. From 1948 to 1979, Israel and Egypt fought no fewer than four wars. The peace treaty was designed to turn a page. Yet doubts have been exacerbated since 2023.

Egypt has continued to build up its military capabilities from various states, to avoid its past dependence on one arms supplier. Its arsenal now includes American, European, Russian, and Chinese weapons. To some, Egypt's decision to purchase a variety of expensive weaponry may show that Cairo increasingly sees the 1979 treaty as more of a truce than a peace.

In Egypt, Netanyahu's recently-espoused connection to the 'Greater Israel' concept will likely justify military planners' arguments, but that will be of no solace to others in Israel's near-abroad who will have been surprised to hear him declare as much.

If ever anything should inspire deep and urgent thinking in Arab states as to how to deal with an expansionist and ideological Israel, it is likely to be something like this. A religious state that craves the land of others for both security and biblical reasons should give pause to all. When those with power seek to make colonialist dreams a reality, it is time for others to wake up.

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