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Professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses how the “Greater Israel Project” is defined as the desire to keep all territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and to resist any Palestinian state, with control including Gaza, the West Bank (Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River), and East Jerusalem. He traces the ideology to early Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, arguing it has long sought to maintain sovereignty over what became British Mandatory Palestine.
Sachs contrasts Israel’s original internationally recognized statehood with the post-1967 expansion of control, noting that the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt after an Israel-Egypt agreement, while Israel retained control over three areas with large Palestinian Arab populations. He characterizes the practical and legal moral problems of the ideology in terms of demographic rule, stating that there are “8 million Palestinian Arabs” and “approximately 8 million Israeli Jews,” and describing the doctrine as requiring ruling over, expelling, ethnically cleansing, or killing Palestinian Arabs. He links the current government’s approach to this broader doctrine, describing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as particularly radical and closely aligned with Greater Israel.
He explains two strands of Greater Israel thought: (1) a security argument that Israel can only be safe with control extending beyond its pre-1967 borders, including places like the Golan Heights and parts of Lebanon; and (2) a religious argument that God promised land beyond the British Mandate—from “the great river in Egypt” to the Euphrates. Sachs references US ambassador Mike Huckabee, saying Huckabee espoused the idea that Israel can take land from Egypt to the Euphrates based on Genesis, and notes theologians were scandalized by Huckabee’s remarks.
Sachs states that Netanyahu came to power in 1996 and has promoted Greater Israel for about 30 years, initially tied to Likud’s security framing while Likud’s founding charter in 1977 asserted sovereignty from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He argues that a religious impulse grew especially after 1967 as hundreds of thousands of settlers moved into Palestinian occupied lands, contributing to what he describes as a Jewish supremacist ideology in government.
He further describes Netanyahu and US neoconservative advisors as adopting a strategy for handling Palestinian resistance: not defeating militant groups directly, but “overturning the governments of those who support the militants.” He references the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestinians’ self-determination and their right to armed struggle, as well as the idea that the terminology differs depending on perspective.
Sachs connects this approach to multiple regional conflicts, including claims that US and Israeli actions—such as the 2003 Iraq war and Operation Timber Sycamore targeting Bashar al-Assad—were shaped by the goal of removing governments seen as supporting Palestinian rights. He describes Iran as a central target of Greater Israel proponents and recounts that, on February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States attacked Iran and that Netanyahu framed it as a dream lasting 40 years.
Turning to consequences, Sachs says he hopes Greater Israel is finished. He argues solutions must not involve apartheid rule, continued “reckless murder,” or ethnic cleansing, and says for many people a one-state democratic/binational solution or a two-state solution could exist. He asserts that opposition may be growing because Israel cannot impose its solution on the region and because the US can no longer be the full backstop it once was, especially given shifting American public opinion after the war in Gaza and widespread negative views of the war in Iran.
Sachs describes political changes in the United States as “anti-Greater Israel” sentiment increasing, including examples from New York City where he says Jewish voters chose candidates he describes as opposing Israel’s extremism. He concludes that Israel’s extremism is losing its only support in the US, and states that politicians “are going to have to rethink what Israel is.”
In response to a question about Naftali Bennett’s claim that Turkey is next, Sachs argues that Greater Israel advocates create opposition because their underlying project is unjust, and says they will lose support—particularly the US backstop—if they turn against it. He ends by calling for an end to “this delusion” in order to reach peace.