Dahlia Scheindlin
Haaretz / December 19, 2024
As the Israel Defense Forces prepares to spend an undesignated amount of time in the Syrian Golan Heights, and settlers line up to get into Gaza and Lebanon, it’s getting harder to push back against talk of Israeli empire-building.
In the early months of 2024, an Arab colleague from a Middle Eastern country asked what in the world Israel was trying to do. Israel seemed to be acting like the expanding Muslim empire of the early Middle Ages, the colleague said anxiously, poised to conquer the whole Middle East.
It sounded like a paranoid or at least heavily exaggerated view of Israel as a perennial evil expansionist aggressor. It’s true that Israel’s war in Gaza was already beyond brutal in early 2024, and I already fervently hoped for a cease-fire long before that. And already in late January, it was clear that radical elements in the ruling coalition had wild visions about occupying Gaza.
Nevertheless, Israel didn’t truly have a plan for territorial conquest in other countries. For one, the Palestinians alone have the misfortune to have been born on land that Jews believe to be biblically ordained. By consensus and 20th-century Realpolitik, Zionists of most stripes limited even their maximalist claim to the historic British mandate of the Cis-Jordan. (Likud’s “both banks” of the Jordan River dream lingered, but still vanished in the last century.) From the 1990s onward, Zionists of the left were content with modern-day Israel within the Green Line, give or take.
Moreover, it was Hezbollah’s own idiotic decision to join the war, inspiring the Houthis of Yemen, that internationalized the whole thing. Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s decision to leave Lebanon unilaterally in 2000 was highly popular in polls at the time, according to national security surveys and the Peace Index available at Data Israel – and Israelis were euphoric when it happened. Despite years of revisionism in Israel claiming that it was a bad idea, no one was calling to reoccupy the place.
But frankly, it’s getting harder to push back against the “empire” claim. After months of limited, if deadly, escalations with Hezbollah, Israel escalated to full-scale war in September; the pager explosions and killing Hassan Nasrallah were a prelude to a full-scale air and ground invasion, designed to remove the military threat of Hezbollah forever. But what was the added security value of calling Lebanon “part of the promised land,” as an esoteric new group called Wake up the North did back in June? That’s when Anshel Pfeffer warned in Haaretz against dismissing such statements from the new group’s online conference, just because settling Lebanon sounded outlandish.
In November, Ze’ev Erlich, known by his community as a “Land of Israel” researcher from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, was killed in Lebanon. He had apparently attached himself to the army and was reportedly researching an ancient fortress. The Israel Defense Forces is investigating why he was there as a civilian, not for operational needs, apparently with help from specific members of an army unit. It’s hard to imagine what the 71-year-old would have contributed in an operational capacity. It sounds more like he was there to re-historicize Lebanon’s territory as part of his “Land of Israel” research.
This week, the IDF also admitted that members of Wake up the North had gotten into Lebanon – and pitched tents. The group’s response to the report was a full-throated affirmation of their intention to settle southern Lebanon: “Soon it won’t be across the border,” the group wrote in a WhatsApp group message.
In the meantime, Syria’s wretched dictator Bashar Assad has fallen and fled, vanquished by rebels. In response, Israel moved forthwith into the Golan Heights demilitarized zone within Syria, for the first time since the 1974 armistice terms. Israel’s leadership is conveying that this is not a brief foray: Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled his court appearance Tuesday to visit the Syrian side of Mount Hermon. He stated that Israel will stay put in Syrian territory – which he called a “very important place” – for now. That’s already more open-ended than the words of Defense Minister Israel Katz last Friday, who said that IDF forces should prepare to stay for the winter.
It still seems shocking that Israel would actually conquer or occupy new sovereign territory of other countries for the first time since the invasion of Lebanon 42 years ago. But there’s no better way to make Israel’s designs on Gaza look less shocking – mass expulsion and near-total destruction of the north, settlers camped out by the borders in anticipation of the spoils are now yesterday’s news. Who even remembers the steady thrum of annexation in the West Bank? Bezalel Smotrich recently declared nearly 6,000 acres (23,000 dunams) of West Bank land to be “state land” – a fancy bureaucratic way of enabling further settlement spread.
And yet, there is another drama underway in the underground floors of Tel Aviv District Court. Speaking of Netanyahu’s testimony, another colleague from another neighbouring country marvelled: “You mean he showed up himself? You have no idea what that means.” How could the very same country suppressing and destroying the Palestinians, and invading foreign lands with impunity, simultaneously put a sitting leader on trial – seemingly the pinnacle of democratic accountability?
It’s easy to be cynical, as if it’s all a show. But watching Netanyahu in court, it’s clear that however unhappy he is, he has subjected himself to the authority of the one institution in Israel capable of restraining him: the still-independent judiciary.
The more accurate answer is that this is not an equally matched battle between the forces of imperialism and democracy, struggling for the soul of Israel. If democracy wins the battle, it cannot continue being a conquering occupier and win the war. But this is an asymmetrical conflict; if Israel doesn’t change course fast, the weaker side will lose.
Dahlia Scheindlin is a fellow at Century International, based in Tel Aviv; she is a public opinion expert and an international political and strategic
