In 1916, as the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the British and French foreign ministers secretly sat down with pencil and ruler and drew lines on a map of the Middle East, dividing Ottoman territories into British and French spheres of influence. This is what Yaron Schwartz, head of the US office of Acumen Risk Ltd., a risk management company, wrote for the "Jerusalem Post".
They ignored natural borders, tribal ties, ethnic communities and religious divisions. Thus was born the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which created Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other modern states in the Middle East. The region has been bleeding ever since.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was forged by the dominant powers of its time. Today, it must be replaced by a framework built by the leading powers of our era—let’s call it the Trump-Netanyahu Agreement—based on four pillars: security, geography, history, and justice.
Security
For decades, Israel has taken blows, fought back, and then returned to the same vulnerable position, waiting for the next inevitable conflict.
October 7 ended this vicious cycle. The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust made it clear that deterring genocidal regimes and containing threats is no longer enough.
Since then, Israel's actions have been systematic: the top leadership of Hamas has been eliminated, and the Israel Defense Forces now control more than half of the Gaza Strip. The Assad regime in Syria has collapsed after Israel destroyed its air force, navy, and strategic sites.
"Hezbollah" was severely weakened and pushed north of the Litani River. The Iranian regime itself has also suffered heavy blows, as has its nuclear weapons program.
These were not just military operations - they became the real foundations of a new strategic reality.
Geography
Terrain is not ideology - it is physics. Israel is about the size of New Jersey. Before the Six-Day War in 1967, its narrowest point was barely nine miles wide. As former Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it, these were "Auschwitz borders" - so narrow that any serious military attack could cut the country in two. October 7 proved this in the clearest and bloodiest way possible.
In 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon. After the 2006 war, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 ordered Hezbollah to disarm and withdraw north of the Litani River. The UN never enforced it, and for the next 18 years, Hezbollah has accumulated over 150,000 rockets aimed at Israeli cities.
The bottom line for Israel is this: paper guarantees and blue helmets cannot replace defensible borders. The argument that the Litani is Israel's northern border is not expansionism - it is a hard-won and repeatedly proven necessity.
History
Israel's claims to southern Lebanon go deeper than "Sykes-Picot". King Solomon's kingdom encompassed much of what is now southern Lebanon.
While Scripture alone cannot define modern borders, the lines drawn in London and Paris in 1916 have no greater moral basis than the millennial presence of Jewish civilization in these lands. "Sykes-Picot" has no sacred status. It is the product of colonial interests and must be replaced by contemporary realities.
Justice
For 110 years, "Sykes-Picot" produced one consistent result: a Middle East in which the right to exist of the Jewish state was constantly questioned. The borders of all other states were considered inviolable.
Yet Israel - the only democracy to emerge from this historical upheaval - was the only state that was expected to constantly negotiate its own survival. Attacked by Arab armies in 1948, 1967 and 1973; subjected to incessant terror and suicide bombing campaigns; shelled for decades with rockets from Gaza and Lebanon; and finally - on October 7 - every time Israel defended itself, the world found new reasons to question its actions and limit its response.
Trump and Netanyahu are the only leaders willing to confront the evil of the Iranian regime head-on, rather than cloak it behind diplomatic jargon. As President Trump has said: "The victor takes the trophies." This is not triumphalism. This is the oldest principle of statecraft.
The outlines of the new framework are now clear: Israel’s eastern border to be formally established along the Jordan Valley; the northern border to be moved to the Litani River; Gaza to be demilitarized in a model that excludes Iranian influence; and regional normalization—already begun with the Gulf states and potentially with Saudi Arabia—to be anchored in lasting agreements based on the Abraham Accords.
"Sykes-Picot" was never a peace agreement. It was a colonial division of territory that gave rise to all subsequent conflicts in the region. For the first time since 1916, a new order can be established—not by European empires or Cold War proxies, but by a state rooted in this land and the global superpower that stands behind it.
It’s "Trump-Netanyahu" time to replace "Sykes-Picot".