Recognition of Palestinian state will ultimately mean ‘Lesser Israel’

In a television interview broadcast last week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu admitted he "feels a connection" to a "vision" of "Greater Israel," an aspiration long cherished by the Zionist movement. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia rightly protested as this could mean Israel's conquest of their territory and expulsion of their citizens.

Zionist ideologues compared Israel's borders to the skin of a deer which expanded when grazing was plentiful and shrank in times of scarcity. This means "Greater Israel" can be shrunk to "lesser Israel." Indeed, this has been the experience of Israel and the Zionist movement which created the Jewish state. The 1947 UN resolution for the partition of Palestine awarded the Jewish state 56 per cent of the country where only 55 per cent was Jewish and the Arab state 42 per cent and 1 per cent Jewish while Jerusalem was to be a separate area administered by an international body. Israel transformed the allocation of territory from an unequal split into the first of "Greater Israel" by conquering 78 per cent of Palestine and expelling half its 1.3 million Palestinians.

In 1956, Israel joined Britain and France in waging war on Egypt after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. Israel seized Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, prompting then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to proclaim the "Third Kingdom of Israel." This was short-lived as US President Dwight Eisenhower compelled Israel to withdraw from Sinai in early 1957.

After seizing East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai in 1967, messianic Israelis claimed this was a God-given conquest, turning it into a religious blessing. Israel was ordered to withdraw by the UN Security Council but ignored the demand until 1982 when it evacuated Sinai as the price of peace with Egypt. Although it pulled out of Gaza 20 years ago, Israel has stepped up illegal colonisation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since 2023, Israel has reoccupied most of Gaza and intends to complete the job before October.

Israel has resisted increasing pressure to withdraw from these territories which along with Gaza would become a Palestinian ministate. "Lesser Israel" instead of "Greater Israel" and could resolve the 77-year-old Palestine/Arab conflict.

Nevertheless, the Zionist dream remains alive in the minds of many Israelis, particularly right wingers. There are several "Greater Israel" dreams, not one. Incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had a personal connection though his father Benzion Netanyahu with Ukraine-born Vladimir Jabotinsky who founded the militant "Revisionist Movement" and espoused the creation of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River.

Jabotinsky wrote in 1923, "Zionist colonisation must... proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach." Britain protected the colonisation project from 1917 until 1948 when the United States assumed responsibility and helped build the "iron wall."

Years ago, when I was gathering material for my book on the Israeli peace movement which was given short-term impetus by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I travelled to Tel Aviv university to interview ex-General turned peacenik Matti Peled. As I arrived early, as is my wont, I spent some time at a museum near his office. There I found a map showing a maximalist Isarael stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq. This map was derived from the Biblical Old Testament Book of Genesis which defined the territory claimed by Israel as extending "from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates." Elsewhere the land of Israel is defined as “from Dan [in the north] to Beersheba [in the south."

Israel lays claim to West Bank lands it calls "Judea" and "Samaria" which were held by separate, sometimes squabbling Jewish kingdoms. They ended in 70 AD with the destruction by Rome of the Second Jewish Temple and the dispersion of the Jews who had staged a failed revolt against their overlords. The connection of Jews to Palestine was sustained by their faith, the 19th century revival of the Hebrew language and the emergence of Zionism which was encouraged by Britain which wanted support for a post World War I mandate to rule Palestine.

Ultra-Zionists like Netanyahu conveniently forget that there were other peoples, other communities in Palestine during the period of the three Jewish kingdoms on which Israel is trying to model itself. Among them were the Canaanites, the original inhabitants of the land, Philistines who lived along the southern coast and spoke their own language, Phoenicians along the western coast, Arabs, and others.

Until 1948, there was no Jewish government in Palestine until Israel emerged by war and expelled half the 1.3 million Palestinians from their homes and lands. Today in the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, there are 7.1 million Israeli Jews and 7.1 million Palestinians who are occupied, ruled, and subjected to apartheid, banned by the UN. This state of affairs does not affect Netanyahu's longing for an impossible "Greater Israel" even though Israel's Western friends – Britain, France, Australia – are planning to recognise a Palestinian state next month during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. If recognition leads to action, the result would be "Lesser Israel" as it would shrink once again to the territories it conquered in 1948.