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An Israeli Colonel's Warning: "A Messianic Agenda of Greater Israel"

Udi Evental is a colonel in the Israeli army reserves who works on strategy and policy. In April 2026, in the middle of the second war with Iran, he published an essay titled "Prevention, with a Catch." It is not written by a critic of Israel from outside. It is written by an Israeli security professional, for Israelis, about what their own army's new doctrine has become. His conclusion is the strongest Israeli confirmation of this section's thesis: that the "security zones" Israel has carved out in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon are being used to advance Greater Israel.

Two terms first. Prevention is the doctrine of striking enemies before they can attack. Forward defense means holding ground beyond your borders so the fighting happens there. After 7 October 2023, Israel adopted both.

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that a senior Israeli reserve officer wrote these words (Udi Evental on X, 25 April 2026).

From prevention to occupation​

Evental writes that "the doctrine of prevention quickly moved up a level and became 'forward defense' - a euphemism for territorial occupation - through the creation of 'security zones' in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon."

Those zones are real and large. Israel's army holds a buffer strip inside Syria including the summit of Mount Hermon, a "security zone" in southern Lebanon toward the Litani River, and, by mid-2026, most of the Gaza Strip behind the "Yellow Line." Israeli officials say they will stay (see 1,000 Square Kilometers Since October 2023 and Lebanon and Syria Since 2024).

The zones invite expansion​

The essay's key passage explains how a military buffer becomes a claim on land:

"Security zones, in the south and the north, not only create threats to the forces and draw them inward amid friction that will intensify over time; they also create a reality of occupation, in which various actors in Israel, especially on the extreme right, identify available territories for expansion, annexation, and Jewish settlement."

That is exactly what happened. Settler groups such as Uri Tzafon have campaigned to settle southern Lebanon, and settlers have crossed from the Golan into southern Syria "in an effort to advance a 'Greater Israel' project" (Truthout on X, 28 April 2026). See Settlers Look North.

"A hidden current"​

Evental then names the idea behind it:

"Moreover, within Israeli security thought, there has always been a hidden current that sought to expand Israel's security borders. To a significant extent, the preventive approach is the operational expression of this idea. Thus a security-ideological coalition has now emerged in Israel, using a defensive-preventive narrative to advance a messianic agenda of 'Greater Israel.'"

Read that sentence again. An Israeli colonel says the language of defense ("security zones," "prevention") is being used as cover for a religious-nationalist territorial project. That is the gap this investigation keeps finding between what Israeli officials say to the world and what their own ministers and army do (see The Denials Against the Record).

The Golan and the Hermon​

On Syria specifically, Evental writes that the army "entered the buffer zone in the Golan Heights and the Syrian Hermon crown - an Israeli presence that does not serve an essential defensive security need," and notes that the 1974 disengagement line negotiated by Henry Kissinger "served Israel well" for fifty years. The defense minister, Israel Katz, says the opposite: that Israel "will not withdraw from Mount Hermon & the security zone" and that the Golan "is part of Israel forever" (Zeina Khodr on X, 23 September 2026). When a reserve colonel says the ground is not needed for defense and the defense minister says it will be held forever, the reason for holding it is not defense.

How the region, and America, see it​

Evental warns that "in the Middle East... Israel is perceived as a wild and unrestrained state... that seeks to expand northward into Lebanon and Syria, eastward into the West Bank, and southward into Gaza." And he warns about the United States: support for Israel in American public opinion is "at an all-time low," and "as alienation from Israel continues to grow among younger Americans, the special relationship with the United States... is in real danger."

He also notes the strain on Israel's own army: "an era of acute manpower crisis in the IDF, amid continued draft evasion and the difficulty of legally extending compulsory and reserve service." An army short of soldiers, holding new ground on three fronts, is an army that needs someone else's soldiers. That is the question the rest of this investigation asks about American troops: see American Soldiers on the Ground in Iran and the forced draft law.

Outside Israel, the security analyst Andreas Krieg of King's College London made the same point about the ministers who now run these areas. He wrote in October 2024, "For nearly two decades, I have been telling Arabs that their concern over the 'Greater Israel' narrative is unfounded / What are you going to tell them now when these radicals are in the government?!" (Andreas Krieg on X, 11 October 2024).

Status: Udi Evental is alive. Israel Katz is alive. Andreas Krieg is alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t22__v258.md, twitter/t22__v262.md, twitter/t29__v337.md, twitter/t18__v215.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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