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Why "Greater Israel" Is No Longer a Fantasy (AJ+)
Israeli soldiers and officials displaying Greater Israel maps and patches.
Why “Greater Israel” Is No Longer A Fantasy · AJ+ · uploaded 2025-10-30 · 5:40
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=-gDbGvK2Og0 · IPFS QmeYpJrTuyPtMY7wAiGigEQJNXgt2AZARc1SzVQ912ZSEJ
What this video is evidence for
This short AJ+ explainer (October 2025) starts with a fact most Americans have never heard: Israel has never fully defined its borders. Its borders with Egypt and Jordan were fixed by peace treaties. Those with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank remain undefined. "As long as Israel's borders are not set in stone, they can keep expanding."
It then traces the Greater Israel idea through the movement's own leaders:
- Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, who, according to the film, envisioned borders "from the Euphrates in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt."
- Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the ideological forebear of Netanyahu's Likud party, who wanted Israeli sovereignty on both banks of the Jordan River.
- David Ben-Gurion, whose acceptance of the 1947 partition plan the film describes as "a first step" toward the rest.
- The settler movement Gush Emunim, which tied settlement expansion to religious destiny, and the West Bank settler population, which grew from a few thousand in 1967 to over 800,000 today.
According to AJ+, Israeli soldiers have been seen wearing Greater Israel patches in Gaza. The explainer ties the idea to today's government: ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich make territorial expansion part of their platforms, and Netanyahu calls it "a historic and spiritual mission." Each war redraws the map, and "each new fact on the ground inches Israel closer to its ultimate goal."
Where this fits: see Greater Israel for the full explanation and sources.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer) of the full 00:05:40. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
Did you know Israel has never fully defined its borders? Most countries have maps showing exactly where their sovereignty begins and where it ends, but Israel doesn't. Israel's borders with Egypt and Jordan were first set as armistice lines after the 1948 Arab Israeli War, then formalized through peace treaties in 1979 and 1994. But its borders with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank remain undefined, and unrecognized. Even within Israel itself, no official map shows agreed upon national boundaries.
That ambiguity isn't a mistake, because as long as Israel's borders are not set in stone, they can keep expanding. This is the story of a borderless project, the Zionist vision of greater Israel, and what it means not just for Palestinians, but for the entire region. For more than a century, Zionist leaders have pushed for the establishment of Greater Israel, a state of Israel that would stretch far beyond the territory it controls today. In the late 1800s, well before Israel was established, early Zionist leaders convened to debate their visions for a Jewish state. First, there's Theodore Herzl, a Zionist founder from Vienna who's often called the father of modern Zionism.
He envisioned the borders of this future Jewish state running all the way from the Euphrates in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt. Then, there's Russian born Zeb Jabatinski, the ideological forebear of Netanyahu's Lakud Party. He imagined Israeli's sovereignty on both sides of the Jordan River. In 1947, Zionist leaders accepted the UN partition plan that proposed dividing Palestine into two separate states, one Palestinian, and the other Jewish. But it was a tactical move.
David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, made clear that this was just a first step toward eventually gaining control of all of what he envisioned as Greater Israel. His strategy was to secure international recognition for part of the land first, then build military power to take the rest by force. And that's exactly what happened. In 1948, Israel expanded far beyond the UN partition lines during the neckbed, when Zionist militias violently expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and destroyed or depopulated over 400 Palestinian towns and villages. In 1967, Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai.
It only eventually returned the Sinai to Egypt after Egyptian forces retook the territory during the War of 1973. Ever since then, Israel has continued expanding its territory throughout the West Bank by establishing facts on the ground, settlements, outposts, and military zones that have proven impossible to reverse, despite being illegal under international law. The population of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has skyrocketed from just a couple thousand in 1967 to over 800,000 today, with the past year seeing the largest expansion of Israeli settlements to date. For a long time, despite Israel's gradual expansion, most Israeli leaders distanced themselves from greater Israel proclamations, at least publicly, as to not provoke neighboring Arab countries they sought to normalize relations with. But more radical settler groups, like Gush Emunim, a Messianic settler movement founded in the 1970s, never abandoned the greater Israel vision, and continued to tie the expansion of Israeli settlement to religious destiny.
Their efforts helped fuel the rapidly growing settler movement we see entrenching its control in the West Bank as we speak. This is the promise of God to the patriarchs of the Jewish nation. It's 3000 kilometers. It's almost as big as this Sahara, is it? So this is the biblical Israel.
Can I call it this? Yeah. So, and this is what's, and so which country are this? Which country don't mention? And today, greater Israel can no longer be disregarded as a fringe idea.
Israel's current government is considered to be the most far right in Israeli history, led by extremist ministers like Itamar Ben Gavir and Bezel El Smotrich, who are making territorial expansion, a core component in their political platforms. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has begun openly embracing it, recently calling the project a historic and spiritual mission. It's a statement with huge implications, not just for Palestinians, but for the whole region. Israeli soldiers have been spotted wearing greater Israel patches as they commit genocide in Gaza, and Israeli leaders are calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza's entire population to be replaced by Israeli settlers. Some Israelis have gone as far as openly invoking Nazi Germany's Labanstrom doctrine, land conquest for living space, to push for settlement expansion into areas Israel's occupying in southern Lebanon and Syria.
In the West Bank, Israel's government recently approved construction of new settlements that would effectively divide the West Bank in two and prevent the establishment of a contiguous, viable future Palestinian state. Because Israel has never officially defined all of its borders, each war, land grab, and bombing campaign has the potential to redraw the map of Israeli control in the long term. Each new fact on the ground, inches Israel closer to its ultimate goal of returning greater Israel into a reality, and each time the world averts its gaze and lets Israel get away with violating its neighbor's sovereignty, Israel's leaders get more emboldened. History shows us that expansionist powers won't stop unless they're forced to.
Last Updated: 2026-09-27