The idea of Israel expanding beyond its internationally recognized borders is not new. It comes from strands of Revisionist Zionism that envisioned Israeli sovereignty across the historic “Land of Israel.” For decades, settler groups and religious nationalists promoted this vision with a fanaticism that should have alarmed the world. But the world was complacent, dismissing it as fringe rhetoric while Palestinians suffered under brutal occupation.

That complacency proved catastrophic when the attacks of 7 October 2023 by Hamas provided Israeli hardliners with the casus belli they had been praying for. Taking advantage of this tragedy, following decades of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, these hardliners found their long-awaited opportunity to pursue their territorial fantasies more aggressively than ever before. Israel’s campaign in Gaza quickly expanded beyond any legitimate response to Hamas and became a genocidal assault on a trapped civilian population.

Public statements by Israeli politicians calling for the permanent annexation of Gaza and the forced relocation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were not aberrations, they were the naked revelation of Greater Israel objectives that had always lurked beneath the surface, a confirmation of what Palestinians had been warning the world about for generations. At the same time, continued settlement expansion in the West Bank heightened fears that annexation would eventually extend to that region as well. The mask was off, and the world finally saw the face of Israeli expansionism and apartheid for what it truly was.

These actions were calculated to leave Syria unable to rebuild its military strength or negotiate with........

© Pakistan Observer