Feature image by cottonbro studio
Note on “Greater Israel”: The term means different things to different people — from Chomsky’s use (Jordan to the Mediterranean), to the conspiracy version common in the region (Nile to Euphrates), which most Israelis reject. Here I use it simply to mean the future borders Israel may seek as Turkey and Iran press closer.
HOF — Debates about Israel’s war after October 7, 2023, often fall into binaries: is this about fighting terrorism, or about realizing the dream of a “Greater Israel”? Critics use the phrase as an accusation; defenders reject it as slander. Yet across the Middle East, rival powers are also reaching for “greater” versions of themselves. Iran promotes its Shiite crescent. Turkey nurtures neo-Ottoman ambitions. In the twentieth century, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq pursued Arab nationalism across the region. Why should Israel alone be denied the question: what would a Greater Israel look like—and could it succeed?
The Shadow of Iraq
Twenty-two years ago, America faced 9/11 and chose invasion as its answer. Afghanistan fell first, then Iraq. The plan was to replace authoritarian regimes with liberal democracies, echoing the post-1945 remaking of Germany and Japan. But Iraq was not Germany. The U.S. was not confronting unconditional surrender but complex, living societies. The sledgehammer of invasion cracked the region instead of building it.
I was in eighth grade then, in a conservative Shia school in Damascus, proudly wearing a USA-flag T-shirt. Even as a boy, I sensed the contradiction: you cannot force democracy at gunpoint. Democracy is persuasion, not punishment.
The Iraq War ended the brief optimism of the post-Cold War era. Instead of liberal democracy spreading, chaos and sectarianism did. The West weakened itself while the region sank into fragmentation.
Israel’s October 7
Fast-forward: Israel faced its own 9/11. Hamas’s October 7 assault was horrific—but it was, at root, a catastrophic security failure. The appropriate response should have been investigation, accountability, and the patient work of rebuilding trust between state and citizen.
Instead, Prime Minister Netanyahu chose all-out war. Within one week, at least 724 Palestinian children were killed in Gaza—nearly equal to the number of Israeli civilians murdered on October 7. The disproportion was stark. What should have been a moment of moral clarity turned into a regional firestorm. Jerusalem marched into Gaza as Rome once marched into Teutoburg: confident, unprepared, and about to bleed.
The Fall of Damascus
Then came another turning point. Damascus—long the symbolic fortress of Arab nationalism—finally collapsed, not in a blaze of glory but in starvation and decay. With Assad’s fall, the last Arab nationalist regime vanished. Arab nationalism itself is dead. The lands that once claimed to speak for “the Arab Nation” are now prizes in a contest among Turks, Iranians, and Israelis.
Netanyahu, who once imagined a Greater Israel stretching from the river to the sea, suddenly faced an open map. Yet he squandered the opportunity. By responding to October 7 with vengeance rather than vision, he forfeited the chance to fill the Syrian vacuum with something credible. He proved reckless when the region required strategic patience.
What Greater Israel Would Require
The idea of Greater Israel need not be dismissed out of hand. For me—a Syrian from a country that no longer truly exists—the prospect of Israel’s expansion is not much different from the alternative of falling under Turkish neo-Ottomanism or an Iranian crescent. But for any of these projects to endure, they must understand that the future of the Middle East will not belong to those who can bomb the hardest, but to those who can build the most inclusive and comprehensive political framework for the region’s many peoples.
Israelis, Turks, and Iranians will not “win” the region through military force; they will only succeed if they can imagine and implement political systems that accommodate Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shi‘a, Christians and Jews, urban liberals and rural conservatives alike.
Each of these powers must confront a hard truth: the collapse of Arab nationalism did not create a vacuum—it created a wound. Any new project that repeats its errors will inherit its failure. The old nationalism promised unity by erasing difference; the new politics must promise stability by recognizing and integrating it.
Yet Israel is not alone in misunderstanding this. Turkey continues to pursue aggressive political centralization, suffocating its own diversity and projecting that same impulse onto its neighbors. It seeks to dominate rather than connect—intervening militarily and politically in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and the Caucasus—mistaking control for influence. Iran, on the other hand, extends its reach through allies and militias that bleed on its behalf. Its regional strategy depends on sacrifice—of its proxies, not itself—and though it gains ideological depth, it loses the moral authority and trust that could have made it a unifying power.
Victory in the twenty-first-century Middle East will be measured not by territory but by legitimacy—by whose institutions protect rights, permit movement, guarantee dignity, and give political voice to the full mosaic of the region.
If Israel, Turkey, or Iran hope to shape the region’s future, their challenge is imaginative and institutional, not tactical. It requires frameworks that bind minorities into durable political bargains, offering genuine economic and legal inclusion instead of exclusionary citizenship, and recognizing that soft power—law, trust, and good governance—outlasts firepower. Only political imagination grounded in inclusivity can turn rivalry into sustainable order.
A Fork in the Road
Israel may have the military power to seize territory, but only political imagination can secure it. If it chooses vengeance and ethnonationalism, it will fail—and the vacuum will again be filled by Turkey and Iran. Yet if Ankara and Tehran fail to elevate their visions beyond imperial nostalgia and sectarian control, the Middle East will remain trapped within the containment strategies of greater powers—the United States, Russia, and perhaps China in the future.
If, however, Israel chooses democratic renewal and genuine inclusivity, it could build a regional order more stable and enduring than any dream once promised by Arab nationalism.
As someone who has watched one country die, I know what is at stake: the Levant will not remain empty. Someone will fill it.
Is Jerusalem ready for a Greater Israel? Not under Netanyahu. His government has already missed its moment. But a different Israel—one that rises above pain and extends democracy outward rather than shrinking it inward—could yet succeed where all others have failed.
If it doesn’t, the Levant will not wait. Other powers—heirs to old empires and new ambitions—are already at the gates.
Relevant links
When God Plays Dice with the Universe
The Thin Line Between Us And The Enemy
What War and Terror Do to Principles
Feature image:
Close Up of the Flag of Israel
Israel
by cottonbro studio
Roumani Line 