After more than a hundred days of war between Israel and Iran, which ended with the framework agreement reached on June 14 to cease hostilities, the famous American economist and political analyst Jeffrey Sachs offers a different reading of the conflict. In a published commentary, he claims that behind the series of wars in the Middle East in recent decades lies the ideology of the so-called "Greater Israel", and not only immediate security issues. According to Sachs, lasting peace in the region is possible only by abandoning this concept, creating an independent Palestinian state, and returning to diplomacy as the main tool for resolving conflicts.
On June 14, the United States and Iran agreed on a framework for ending their war. The Strait of Hormuz would be reopened, the bombing of Lebanon would end, and — most importantly — the killing would stop. After more than 100 days of war that has claimed thousands of lives, including those of top Iranian leaders, and pushed the global economy to the brink, even a fragile truce feels like the first rays of dawn.
Let us welcome it, but let us also understand it. To understand why this war and the series of wars that preceded it happened, we must name their common cause. That cause is "Greater Israel" —not the state of Israel itself, but an idea about it, and a dangerous one at that. The idea of "Greater Israel" is behind the wars in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
According to it, Israel should extend over all of historic Palestine — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — and even parts of neighboring countries. According to the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a fundamentalist Protestant whose geopolitical compass is determined by biblical texts dating back thousands of years, "Greater Israel" extends from the Nile to the Euphrates. Last summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was "very" committed to the vision of "Greater Israel", which, he said, includes the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab lands.
This absurd and dangerous doctrine has two sources. The first is secular hardliners like Netanyahu, who argue that Israel must control all the land from the river to the sea to be safe — without regard for the eight million Palestinians on the way.
The second is the ideology of Jewish supremacy, espoused by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, according to which God gave the land to the Jews alone. In Smotrich’s words, “there is no such thing as a Palestinian.” Asked recently how Israel should respond to its deteriorating international image, he said that the country would not give up military control of the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon or Syrian territories: “We will not kill ourselves to make them happy.”
"Greater Israel" is a mixture of paranoia, megalomania and religious fanaticism woven into a political agenda. This doctrine should have been rejected when it first emerged decades ago. Instead, it became the driving force of Israeli foreign and military policy for three decades — and it survives to this day because Netanyahu has skillfully led the United States by the nose.
He has achieved this through two American groups: Jewish Zionists, who support Israel unconditionally, and Christian Zionists, who place the prophecy of the end times and the second coming above the life of every living Palestinian — and often above that of every living Israeli.
Delusion breeds delusion, and the path leads from one war to the next. We have been involved in this fiasco for thirty years now.
The war against Iran was yet another manifestation of the fantasy of "Greater Israel". The ruling regime of a country with a population of about 90 million was supposed to be overthrown in a single "glorious day". This, of course, did not happen. Israeli and American strikes killed Iranian leaders on February 28, but they did not bring the promised collapse. Instead, the result was thousands of casualties, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and a global oil shock.
We have seen this scenario before. The Israeli-American plan to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was also supposed to be quick — a year or two at most. Instead, twelve years of bloodshed followed, fueled by a covert war armed and financed by the CIA with active Israeli support. The result was an ancient state reduced to ruins. Promised "quick victories" invariably turn into decades of catastrophe.
US President Donald Trump has been seriously weakened politically after falling into the "Greater Israel" delusion, and he knows it. The new agreement with Iran is his way out — a way to withdraw from a reckless war that is not his.
That is precisely why Israeli politicians, supporters of "Greater Israel", are trying to sabotage the agreement in its infancy — because peace with Iran means defeat for their doctrine. Even after it was signed, Israel continued bombing Lebanon, killing dozens of people just days, hours after the ceasefire came into effect.
The truth is deeper: "Greater Israel" is not saving Israel — it is destroying it. The tension between Trump and Netanyahu is only superficial. Beneath it lies the erosion of Israel's international standing. According to the latest Pew research, public opinion around the world is strongly unfavorable towards the country. Even in the United States — its most important ally — about six in ten people have a negative opinion.
A country that becomes an object of hatred both from the world and from its main patron does not strengthen its security — it endangers its own future by following a delusion.
The path to peace in West Asia lies in ending the "Greater Israel" project: ending the war on Iran, stopping the violence in Gaza, and ending the pressure on the West Bank. Most importantly, do what the doctrine itself denies — the creation of the State of Palestine as the 194th member of the United Nations, alongside the State of Israel on the 1967 borders, with real security guarantees for both countries and a regional framework for stability, including withdrawal from Lebanon and Syria.
The truce with Iran shows this on a miniature scale: it was achieved not on the battlefield, but through diplomacy. It became possible when Washington decided that it wanted peace more than it wanted the war of "Greater Israel".
Israel can survive — but not as "Greater Israel", a disastrous idea that drags it and the United States from one war to another.
Today's hope is real. Whether it becomes a real dawn depends on whether the United States will allow the birth of a Palestinian state and thus give Israel a chance to exist sustainably. The Arab world and Iran must continue to insist to Washington that breaking with the "Greater Israel" project is the only path to lasting peace.