Greater Israel Plan Naming Lebanon, Gaza and Syria Surfaces; Backlash Blows Up

The Greater Israel plan is very much alive and kicking as Bezalel Smotrich gives one of his most insane speeches to date. Right, so Israel’s unhinged far right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has now said in public that Israel will expand its borders in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Syria, and he didn’t mutter this in some Knesset corridor while pretending later that he had been misunderstood. He said it at the inauguration of yet another illegal settlement in the West Bank, because of course he did, it is the most Smotrich thing he could do. He said there would be a political leg in Gaza that would expand Israel’s borders, a political leg in Lebanon that would take those borders to the Litani, and a political leg in Syria taking at least Mount Hermon and the also completely illegal buffer zone Israel had already carved out there. But why stop there and more to the point, why should any of us believe you would stop there? A vision entirely in keeping with the Greater Israel plan naming Lebanon, Gaza and Syria really has surfaced now, and the first consequence for the people selling this whole regional operation as mere security is that the cover story has taken a very public kicking. Once a serving finance minister is talking about border growth across three fronts, any old line that all of this is just temporary, defensive, technical, regrettable, and very definitely not about grabbing more land starts sounding like something produced by a very tired liar in a very warm room. Israel does not come out of that looking restrained, careful, or misunderstood. Israel comes out of it looking like a state whose far right has said the quiet part out loud plainly enough to make everybody still pretending not to hear it look either complicit or thick.