A Grand Europe: The Vision to Build

R.M. Westerink; September 2026 

 

1. Europe Is Discovering Its Own Strength

Europe has almost 450 million citizens, some of the world's most advanced societies, large industries, substantial armed forces and vast private savings.
It has every reason to approach the future with confidence.

And yet Europe keeps experiencing each new danger as a fresh emergency.
War has returned to the continent. Washington is less predictable. China presses its economic advantage. Migration tests borders and public services. Climate change reaches farms, cities and coastlines. Each crisis is treated as its own isolated fire to put out.

But what if these are not separate emergencies at all?
What if they are the birth pangs of a new Europe, struggling to emerge? Defense budgets are rising. Energy systems are changing. Industries are being reconsidered as strategic assets. Governments are learning how much their security depends on decisions made elsewhere. A more capable Europe is already taking shape — piece by piece, decision by decision.
What it needs now is a confident vision of where this leads.

2. More Than Quarrelling Tribes

It is easy to focus on what divides us. Europe's nations argue about sovereignty, migration, money and climate policy. North and South have different priorities; East and West remember different histories; populism rises in places once thought immune to it.
Seen from the outside, this looks like a continent pulling apart.

But it is also proof that Europeans still care deeply about who they are and how they are governed — and it is only half the story. The same countries have built an extraordinary capacity to cooperate. Former enemies share open borders. Companies trade through a continental market. Citizens study, work and settle across national frontiers.
From the coal and steel communities of the 1950s to the single market, the euro and the Schengen Area, Europe has repeatedly turned shared challenges into shared solutions.

Europe advances this way: countries keep their languages, histories and political character while building more strength together. Our tribes quarrel, but our institutions, laws and people have proven — again and again — that we are stronger together than apart.

3. The Giant Is Already Here

A Grand Europe does not need to be invented.
It needs to be assembled from what already exists.

Europe has one of the world's largest markets, universities and research centers whose discoveries are used across the globe, and firms that remain strong in aerospace, advanced machinery, medicines, energy, transport and specialized manufacturing.
European households hold immense savings.
European states field experienced armed forces, extensive infrastructure and functioning public institutions. What we lack is not the means — it is the will to see ourselves as the global power we already are.

Today, these strengths sit scattered. Savings often finance growth elsewhere. Promising companies struggle to reach the scale available in the United States or China. Defense procurement is split across national systems. Energy still meets bottlenecks at national borders.

Imagine them connected instead. European savings financing European grids, factories and technologies. Iberian solar power, North Sea wind, Nordic hydroelectricity and French nuclear energy feeding one continental grid. Shared defense orders sustaining production lines large enough to matter. Researchers and entrepreneurs building companies at continental scale — without having to leave Europe to do it.
The giant is not a future possibility. It is here, waiting to be joined up.

4. Now Is the Time

The world is not waiting for Europe to find its footing. War rages at our borders. Climate change is already reaching our farms and coastlines. Global powers are rewriting the rules of trade, technology and security. In this storm, fragmentation is a luxury Europe can no longer afford.

External pressure is not only a threat — it is a catalyst. It is forcing dispersed resources into common capacity faster than a decade of good intentions ever could. The choice is stark: unite to meet these challenges, or risk being pushed around by powers that already have.

5. A Europe Worth Becoming

Strip away the geopolitics, and people want ordinary things: a decent job, an affordable home, reliable healthcare, good schools, streets that feel safe. They want their children to find opportunity close to home, energy at a reasonable price, borders their governments can manage, and a country that can speak with confidence rather than absorb pressure from larger powers.

A Grand Europe exists to secure exactly this. In practice, it means:

•           Economic prosperity — a single market that fosters innovation, fair competition and shared wealth, with industries that provide real work and useful products.

•           Collective security — armed forces and alliances strong enough to keep war away from European homes.

•           Climate leadership — a serious industrial transition that sets global standards rather than following them.

•           Social protection and voice — social arrangements that catch people when illness, unemployment or age makes support necessary, and democratic institutions that give citizens a real say in the decisions shaping their lives.

This is not a utopian dream.
It is a practical vision, within reach if we choose to reach for it — one with a recognizably European character: strength shared across society, protection against external threats, and room for people to live different kinds of lives.

6. Grand for All

A Grand Europe belongs to every country and every democratic tradition, not to a handful of powerful states or a single ideology.

France brings nuclear power and strategic ambition. Germany brings industrial weight. Poland a strong army and the Baltic states bring urgency about security. Southern Europe brings energy potential, maritime reach and close knowledge of the MiddleEast. Smaller states bring specialization and an instinct for coalition-building.
Ukraine brings courage, war experience, technical experience and a powerful claim to support  Europe's future. The United Kingdom and Norway remain essential partners.

Political traditions contribute differently, too.
Liberals defend individual freedom and the rule of law.
Social democrats protect solidarity and opportunity.
Conservatives carry responsibility, continuity and cultural inheritance.
Greens push Europe toward cleaner energy and long-term resilience.
Sovereigntists and the democratic right give voice to demands for borders, national control and public consent.
A conservative may back European defense to protect the nation; a liberal, to defend democracy; a worker, because it means secure employment; a business owner, because of the advantage of continental scale. Different motives, reinforcing the same undertaking.

The common ground is simple: democratic government, equal citizenship, peaceful politics and respect for the law. Every movement gets a place at the table — and every movement faces the same question: what will you contribute to Europe's security, prosperity and future?

A Europe that leaves parts of itself behind will always be weaker than one that doesn't. Inclusion here isn't just a moral instinct — it's a strategic necessity.

7. Power with a European Purpose

Europe's history gives power a serious meaning.
This continent knows exactly where nationalism without restraint, imperial ambition and contempt for human life can lead. It also knows that principles need protection — international law carries little weight when those who believe in it lack the strength to defend it.

European power should protect sovereignty, democratic choice and human dignity.
It should help Ukraine survive as a free country. It should let Europe work with the United States as a capable partner, and choose its own course when interests diverge. It should support firm relations with China, Africa and the Middle East, grounded in mutual interest and respect.

What sets this apart from other kinds of power is the purpose behind it.
Europe has not always applied its principles consistently, and that history calls for more honesty and stronger institutions going forward. But at its best, this is a different model of power:
A Grand Power where cooperation outperforms domination, solidarity outweighs division, and the rule of law counts for more than the law of the jungle.

8. All Hands on Deck

A Grand Europe will not arrive through a single treaty or summit.
It will grow through thousands of practical decisions. Governments investing for the long term. Industries expanding production and training people. Universities connecting research more effectively with European enterprise. Political parties explaining the common effort in language that reaches beyond their own supporters.

It also depends on everyone else:

•           Every voice — speak up for the Europe you believe in, engage in the debate, demand better from your leaders.

•           Every vote — elections are not only about national issues; they decide the kind of Europe we build together.

•           Every policy — from local initiatives to EU-wide legislation, each one is a chance to build toward this, or drift away from it.

France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and Europe's smaller countries each hold part of what the continent needs. The left, centre and right each represent people whose support matters. Europe has the people, the knowledge, the capital and the experience. Its challenges are large, but manageable. Its countries already know how to cooperate while remaining themselves.

The resources are there. The vision is clear. The time is now.

A Grand Europe is coming into view. All hands on deck.

 

 

A European Security Council:
Building the Power to Decide and Act

Europe may finally be constructing the missing link between shared danger, political decision and coordinated response.

 

Europe has spent years discussing the forces, weapons and industrial capacity it needs to defend itself. It may now be preparing something just as important: the political machinery needed to decide and act together.

In her State of the Union address on 16 September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the Commission would present ideas for making a European Security Council a reality. The envisaged leaders' format would reach beyond the European Union, involving partners such as Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Norway and Canada. It would sit alongside proposals for an emergency security protocol against hybrid threats and a new European instrument for strategic enablers.

None of this is settled. Membership, authority, leadership and decision rules remain to be designed. Yet the direction deserves enthusiasm. Europe is no longer thinking only about what it must possess. It is beginning to consider how it can recognise danger, decide and organise a response as a security power.

The missing power to decide

Europe does not lack forums for consultation.
EU leaders meet in the European Council. Ministers coordinate through the Council of the EU. NATO provides collective defence and military planning. The European Political Community brings almost the whole continent together.

What Europe still lacks is a permanent, focused link between these worlds: a place where the most relevant leaders can develop a shared assessment, decide what should happen next and connect that decision to the institutions and countries capable of carrying it out.

That is the difference a European Security Council could bring us now. Its purpose to shorten the distance between warning and decision. When sabotage, cyberattacks, drone incursions or military escalation occur, ofcourse Europe needs to do better than twenty-seven parallel national conversations followed by a carefully negotiated statement. It needs a trusted mechanism able to establish political direction quickly.

From decision to action

And then, decision-making alone is not enough. Europe must also be able to translate a political decision into an organised response.

That response can be military, but not always.
It may involve sanctions, cyber defence, the protection of critical infrastructure, coordinated attribution of an attack, restrictions on hostile networks, the mobilisation of strategic reserves or accelerated defence production. And, in more serious circumstances, it may require air and missile defence, military transport, intelligence support or action by a coalition of willing countries.

The wider package announced by the Commission’s President von der Leyen is therefore crucially important. The proposed counter-hybrid playbook could provide procedures for threats that remain below the threshold of open war. The new instrument for strategic enablers could support assets such as air and missile defence, space systems, cyber capabilities, transport and air-to-air refuelling. A Security Council could supply the political decision at the top of this chain.

The emerging logic is simple: shared assessment, rapid decision, agreed response and identifiable responsibility for implementation. If Europe can connect those elements, it will have – finally - begun to build operational decision-making and response power.

With Ukraine inside the room

Ukraine's proposed inclusion is perhaps the most consequential feature.
Europe would no longer organise security only for Ukraine or provide assistance to Ukraine from outside. It would begin organising European security with Ukraine.

As we know, Ukraine possesses experience that no EU institution can reproduce: large-scale drone warfare, air defence under continuous pressure, cyber resistance, infrastructure protection, rapid military innovation and the mobilisation of society and industry during war. That makes Ukraine not simply a recipient of European security, but a producer of security knowledge and capability.

Permanent participation would also give practical meaning to the accepted principle that decisions about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine. Kyiv should therefore be involved in designing the Council, not invited only after its structure has been agreed by others.

A wider European security community

Including the United Kingdom would be equally important. Brexit removed one of Europe's strongest military and intelligence powers from EU decision-making, but it did not remove Britain from European geography or European security. A Security Council could restore permanent strategic coordination without reopening the institutional argument over EU membership.

Norway would bring Arctic, energy and NATO importance. Canada would add military, industrial and transatlantic weight while reinforcing a community of democratic partners able to take its own political initiatives.

This broader membership would define European security by strategic contribution rather than EU membership alone. The Union would remain the central organising force, but it would create a structure capable of drawing essential allied countries into continuous political coordination.

Strengthening NATO rather than duplicating it

The proposal must be designed to strengthen NATO, not compete with it. NATO remains the foundation of collective defence for its members and possesses the military command structure that the European Union does not. A European Security Council should not now attempt to become an alternative North Atlantic Council or operational headquarters.

Its contribution would be different. It should just improve Europe's needed political capacity to assess threats, mobilise EU instruments, coordinate participating governments and prepare European positions before action within NATO. A more coherent European pillar makes the alliance stronger as European countries achieve more capabilities, apply clearer priorities and develop a greater readiness to carry responsibility.

The difficult design now begins

The obstacles are still substantial.
A council containing every EU leader plus external partners will be too large for rapid crisis management. A smaller council will immediately raise questions about permanent seats, rotating representation and the voice of smaller member states. France, Germany, Poland, Italy and the Nordic and Baltic countries will not all view the ideal structure in the same way.

Leadership will also matter.
The Commission president launched the proposal, but foreign and defence policy remains largely in the hands of national governments. The European Council president and the High Representative will expect important roles. Clear arrangements will be needed to prevent institutional competition from consuming the energy created by the initiative.

Above all, the Council must be connected to implementation.
Regular meetings of national security advisers, shared threat assessments, emergency convening procedures and systematic follow-up will be necessary. Without a supporting machinery, the Council risks becoming another impressive summit followed by uncertain delivery.

These challenges show what must now be designed and agreed.
An informal, intergovernmental beginning may be more realistic and probable than immediate treaty change: a limited leaders' group, permanent participation by Ukraine and the United Kingdom, preparation by security advisers and the ability to convene rapidly.
It can develop through actual operational use before Europe formalises it further.

Europe is watching

The announcement has created a moment of expectation.
European Citizens understand that defence spending and new equipment are necessary. They also understand and worry that capabilities remain fragmented and politically weak unless Europe can decide when, why and how to employ them.

The Commission must now turn an important and attractive idea into a credible design.
Member states must decide whether they are prepared to create a mechanism that can genuinely accelerate common action. Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the other proposed partners must be treated as co-designers of a shared security structure, not as occasional guests.

Agreement will take time, and operational effectiveness will take longer. But the direction is hopeful. Europe may finally be moving from consultation as an end in itself towards consultation as the beginning of action.

All eyes should now be on the Commission's next proposal.
Europe has long known that it needs greater power. It may at last now be preparing the machinery needed to decide and act.

References

[1] European Commission, State of the Union 2026: Statement by President Ursula von der Leyen on security and defence, 16 September 2026. https://acceptance.audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/de/media/video/I-293062

[2] Reuters, 'EU's von der Leyen backs European Security Council and playbook against sabotage,' 16 September 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/eus-von-der-leyen-backs-european-security-council-playbook-against-sabotage-2026-09-16/

[3] European Council, Conclusions on Ukraine and on European defence and security, 18 June 2026. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/06/18/european-council-conclusions-on-ukraine-and-on-european-defence-and-security/

 

After Nearly Eight Decades of Conflict - A Middle East Teach-In - Seeking to Break the Cycles

 

After Nearly Eight Decades of Conflict

A Middle East Teach-In

R.M. Westerink; September 2026 

TEN READINGS. FIVE QUESTIONS. ONE PURPOSE. To replace fragments, slogans, and inherited certainties with a structured inquiry into how the conflict became locked—and what might unlock it. The cycles have continued for too long and exacted far too great a human cost to be accepted as permanent. Understanding how they sustain themselves is not merely an intellectual exercise. It is necessary if the cycles are finally to be broken — and another generation is to be spared their price.

Why a Teach-In?

Thirty-one EUROPE-IS-US essays produced, constitutes an investigation base.
Together they trace history, competing memories, failed peace efforts, maximalist strategies, Western responsibility, European choices, and possible alternatives. Yet volume can conceal the argument.
A reader who encounters one article at a time may see individual trees while missing the forest.

This Teach-In turns the collection into a guided inquiry.
It does not ask the reader to accept a finished doctrine.
It asks five questions, offers ten core readings in a deliberate order, and makes the remaining work available as evidence, challenge, and extension.
The aim is not false imbalance. The aim is disciplined moral and political clarity: the same human worth, the same rules, and the same scrutiny for every actor.

Why this matters now

The human cost is not an abstraction. Israeli fear, Palestinian dispossession, civilian death, displacement, hostage-taking, settlement expansion, dehumanizing speech, and recurring regional escalation live in different memories—but they interact in one political system.
Moral alarm is justified. It becomes useful only when joined to analysis: What mechanism is producing the next cycle? Who benefits from it? What incentives keep it alive? What could credibly replace it?

The companion alarm essay, We Promised “Never Again”, argues that a universal promise loses its meaning when it is reserved for one people. Its place here is to establish urgency—not to substitute analogy for evidence or conscience for strategy.

How to use this Teach-In

Read the five modules in order, alone or as the basis for a seminar.
Each module contains two core texts: one establishes a problem; the other complicates or redirects it. The short notes below tell you why each text is included. The further-reading section lets readers test the argument rather than merely follow it.

1. What happened—and why did the conflict become locked?

Begin by separating chronology from interpretation. A shared factual baseline is indispensable, but facts do not explain themselves. Communities organize them into stories about origin, necessity, victimhood, return, and security. Those stories then shape what each side considers possible.

1. Israel 1948–2025: Expansion, Casualties, Displacements—Timeline

Why read it. It places territorial change, war, casualties, and displacement in one chronology. Without that baseline, argument drifts toward selective memory.

Takeaway. The conflict is not a string of isolated eruptions. It is a cumulative process in which territorial change, violence, and displacement alter the starting point of every later negotiation.

2. Israel–Palestine: How Visions of the Past Shaped a Locked Conflict

Why read it. It moves from events to the rival meanings attached to them: refuge and return, liberation and catastrophe, security and dispossession.

Takeaway. Historical memory is not background material. It is an active political force. Peace cannot require either people to erase its memory, but memory cannot be allowed to dictate permanent domination or permanent war.

2. Why have negotiations and force reproduced the conflict?

After the history comes the machinery. Negotiations fail when they postpone foundational disputes, lack enforceable symmetry, or leave spoilers better rewarded than builders. Violence also has a feedback structure: each side’s maximalism supplies the other side with its strongest argument.

3. Israel–Palestine: Can the Cycles of Conflict Be Broken?

Why read it. It compares failed peace efforts and asks what structural conditions were missing.

Takeaway. An agreement is not a peace system. Durable change needs institutions, public legitimacy, mutual recognition of loss, and external powers willing to align incentives with a reciprocal settlement.

4. The Tragic Paradox of Maximalist Anti-Israel Resistance

Why read it. It examines a conclusion that criticism of Israeli policy often avoids: eliminationist resistance can strengthen the very fortress state it seeks to defeat.

Takeaway. When resistance promises Israel’s disappearance or celebrates attacks on civilians, it validates existential fear, weakens Israeli dissent, and makes territorial hardliners appear necessary. A just cause can be damaged by a self-defeating strategy.

3. What remained unresolved in 1948—and where does territorial maximalism lead?

The decisive question is not whether either people possesses a genuine history, trauma, or claim. Both do. The question is whether one people’s safety can be built through the political negation of the other. The essays in this module test two routes: a reciprocal settlement that was not built, and a territorial completion that promises security through dominance.

5. The Road Not Taken in 1948

Why read it. It uses counterfactual reasoning to clarify the principles absent from the founding settlement: reciprocal self-determination, reciprocal security, and reconciliation.

Takeaway. The value of the counterfactual is not that history could simply be replayed. It reveals the unfinished work carried into the present: neither national freedom nor lasting security can be one-sided.

6. The Greater Israel Mirage—A Hazardous Dream at Enormous Cost

Why read it. It examines the strongest version of the Greater Israel promise on its own terms: territorial permanence will eventually force acceptance and deliver a safe haven.

Takeaway. Even its most “successful” outcome would require indefinite coercive capacity, external protection, and management of accumulated resentment. Greater Israel promises permanent security. The Dream proves to be a Mirage, instead entrenching conflict, isolation and enormous costs.

4. What rules permit moral clarity without prejudice?

Criticism becomes credible when its rules survive a change of actor.
Antisemitism is real and lethal; so are anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. None can be used to immunize a state, movement, or military strategy from scrutiny. Nor may scrutiny of political power become collective blame against Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, or any diaspora.

7. Can You Question Israel Without Being Called Antisemitic?

Why read it. It provides a practical bridge between two obligations: confronting antisemitism and judging Israeli claims and conduct by ordinary political and legal standards.

Takeaway. The test is consistency. Critique evidence, policy, ideology, and power. Reject ethnic conspiracy, collective guilt, and demands uniquely applied to Jews. Equal rules protect both free inquiry and human dignity.

8. A European Declaration for Middle East Stability

Why read it. It condenses the inquiry into three reusable principles: future, security, and reconciliation.

Takeaway. A proposal should be judged by whether it offers every population a livable future, treats security as reciprocal, and incorporates—not erases—historical injury. Principles matter when they constrain allies as well as adversaries.

5. What could break the cycles?

A diagnosis that ends with condemnation leaves the political field to armed actors and territorial facts. The final module therefore asks what kind of power could make a different future credible.
The answer offered here is European civil power: coordinated diplomatic, economic, legal, and civic support for actors who can build reciprocal political agency.

9. A European Civil Power Initiative for the Middle East

Why read it. It translates the series’ principles into an institutional proposal: give nonviolent political organization more capability and credibility than armed maximalism.

Takeaway. Civil power is not passivity. It requires conditional relationships, protection of civic space, sustained resources, and clear consequences for settlement, collective punishment, hostage-taking, attacks on civilians, and incitement—whoever commits them.

10. The Middle East Still Possible

Why read it. It ends with the destination rather than the machinery: a region whose histories and identities become sources of connection instead of permanent mobilization.

Takeaway. Peace must offer more than the absence of war. It needs a compelling picture of normal life, shared prosperity, cultural encounter, and political dignity. Without such a destination, fear will continue to outperform hope.

What the ten readings reveal

·        Security without reciprocity produces insecurity.
Military superiority can suppress threats, but it cannot by itself produce legitimate acceptance. When control is experienced as permanent humiliation or dispossession, it continually regenerates resistance.

·        Maximalisms reinforce one another.
Greater-Israel territorialism and eliminationist anti-Israel resistance present themselves as enemies, yet each supplies the fear, evidence, and recruitment narrative the other needs.

·        Historical memory must be acknowledged but cannot govern the future alone.
The Holocaust, the Nakba, expulsion, persecution, terrorism, occupation, and war are not interchangeable. Each deserves precision.
Their political lesson is nevertheless universal: no people’s trauma grants a permanent exemption from another people’s humanity.

·        Outside powers are participants, not spectators.
Western military, diplomatic, and economic choices have helped shape the incentive structure. Europe and the United States cannot plausibly call for peace while underwriting strategies that make a reciprocal settlement less attainable.

·        A viable alternative must be both principled and powerful.
Equal rules are the compass; institutions, leverage, protection, and credible political agency are the vehicle.

The hard conclusion

Nearly eight decades after 1948, neither territorial expansion, overwhelming force, armed maximalism, nor externally managed negotiation has delivered the promised destination.
The Greater Israel project has advanced on the map, yet the safe, accepted, normal state it was meant to secure remains out of reach.
Palestinian strategies centered on Israel’s defeat or disappearance have likewise failed to restore rights or produce sovereignty; they have repeatedly helped Israel’s fortress logic prevail.

This is the mirage at work: every costly step appears to bring security or liberation closer, while the political conditions required for either recede.
The price has been enormous—paid first in Palestinian and Israeli lives, freedom, displacement, fear, and moral injury, and then across a region repeatedly organized around conflict.

The conclusion is not that history has made peace impossible.
It is that the strategies pursued most relentlessly have not been routes to their declared ends. Enlightenment begins by seeing that contradiction clearly.
Political responsibility begins by refusing to finance, excuse, or glorify another cycle—and by building a reciprocal alternative strong enough to compete with it.

Further reading: test and extend the argument

Methods and the 1948 claims

·        Self-Determination Statehood Evaluation Framework — the criteria behind the paired assessments.

·        Evaluating Statehood—Palestine (c. 1947–1948) — application of the framework to the Palestinian claim.

·        Evaluating Statehood—Israel (1948) — the same test applied to the Israeli claim.

History, identity, and responsibility

·        Two Histories, One Mirror — a comparative lens on dispossession; an analogy, not an equation.

·        The Achievable Road to Real Peace — a forceful argument about Western origin-of-conflict responsibility.

·        The Urgent Need to Separate Jewishness from Zionism — a distinction between a diverse identity and a political ideology.

·        We Promised “Never Again” — the moral alarm underlying the present inquiry.

Applied position statements

·        EPS-001—Iran and Middle East Stability — the regional de-escalation test.

·        EPS-002—Israeli Settlement Expansion — the territorial and international-law test.

·        EPS-003—Hamas Armed Resistance — the civilian-protection and strategy test.

·        EPS-004—Greater-Israel Zionism — the same compass applied to territorial maximalism.

Plans, leverage, and changing politics

·        Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan — a contemporary plan tested against recurring failure conditions.

·        A Western Pivot Moment — an early signal of changing conditionality.

·        Trump’s Iran Policy Reconsidered — a regional case for strategic de-escalation.

·        A New Democratic Consensus on Israel Is Emerging — a claim about changing U.S. political space.

·        Evidence Brief: From Emerging Consensus to Congressional Reality — a legislative reality check on that claim.

Europe and the regional alternative

·        Europe Needs Its Own Middle East Strategy — the case for European strategic autonomy.

·        Europe's Missing Role in the Middle East — why criticism needs a credible political road.

·        Europe's Missing Role Is Beginning to Appear — a progress check in a changing regional order.

·        Beyond Left and Right: Israel’s “Israel First” Reality — a synthesis of the durability of Israeli strategic priorities.

The Greater Israel Mirage - A Hazardous Dream at Enormous Cost

 

The Greater Israel Mirage

A vision of permanent Jewish security that may produce permanent mobilization resentment and isolation

R.M. Westerink; September 2026 

Greater Israel is usually discussed as a territorial project: settlements, annexation, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the prevention of a Palestinian state. But territory is not its ultimate promise. Its deeper promise is security.

The vision tells Jewish Israelis that completing sovereignty over the historical homeland will end strategic uncertainty. Israel will no longer depend on temporary borders, unreliable peace processes or the willingness of others to tolerate Jewish existence. Once its permanence is beyond dispute, resistance will lose its purpose and the region will eventually accept reality.

That expectation deserves to be examined on its own terms. Suppose Greater Israel succeeds. Suppose Israel establishes permanent control between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, Palestinian statehood disappears from practical diplomacy and neighboring governments accept that the result cannot be reversed. Would the vision finally deliver the secure and accepted Jewish home it promises?

The answer may reveal the project as a mirage: territorial completion comes closer while lasting security continues to recede.

The Dream

For its supporters, Greater Israel is not primarily a program of conquest. It is the completion of the Jewish return. Jerusalem, Hebron, Shiloh, Bethel and the hills of Judea and Samaria are understood not as foreign territory but as the geographical heart of Jewish history.

In this account, the establishment of Israel in 1948 began national restoration; it did not complete it. The Jewish people returned after exile, persecution and the Holocaust, but remained territorially vulnerable and politically constrained. Greater Israel promises to end that incompleteness.

Its ideal end state is one sovereign Jewish state between the sea and the Jordan, with united Jerusalem as its capital, Judea and Samaria incorporated into Israeli national life and the Jordan Valley forming the eastern security frontier. Jewish towns and infrastructure connect the entire territory. No Palestinian state divides the land or overlooks Israel's narrow coastal center. Likud's foundational platform and later sovereignty initiatives express essential parts of this claim.[1][2]

Palestinians may retain private, religious, economic and municipal rights, but not a competing national sovereignty. Harder versions encourage those unwilling to accept the order to emigrate. Bezalel Smotrich's 2017 Decisive Plan states the logic particularly clearly: sovereignty, extensive settlement and the definitive defeat of Palestinian national aspirations.[3]

The emotional conclusion is powerful: exile has ended, the homeland has been reunited, defensible borders have been secured and Jewish vulnerability has finally been overcome.

What Victory Would Look Like

To test the vision fairly, assume that this territorial project has been achieved.
Organized Palestinian resistance has been defeated or contained. Egypt and Jordan preserve their treaties. Gulf governments expand practical cooperation. Eventually, the principal Arab states acknowledge that Greater Israel cannot be reversed.

This would be an “acceptance state”, but acceptance must be defined carefully.
It would not require Palestinians or Muslim societies to regard the outcome as just.
It would mean that they ceased organizing regional politics around its reversal.

The sovereignty question would be treated as closed. Palestinians could preserve family history, religion, Arabic culture and local identity, but Palestinian nationhood would no longer create a recognized entitlement to statehood, East Jerusalem as a capital, control of borders or an unrestricted right of return.

Arab and Muslim governments could continue expressing sympathy and supporting Palestinian welfare. What they would abandon is the proposition that Palestinian suffering still generates a recoverable territorial claim.

Greater Israel would have won when Palestinian memory remained, but no longer determined borders.

Assume the Region Accepts It

What would it take to keep this acceptance state functioning?

Neighboring governments would have to do far more than sign treaties.
They would need to prevent their territory from becoming a base for renewed struggle, interrupt financing and weapons transfers, constrain armed Palestinian organizations and cooperate with Israeli intelligence.

They would also have to manage memory.
Schools, state media, mosques and cultural institutions would need to separate remembrance from territorial recovery, solidarity from resistance and attachment to Jerusalem from a demand for Palestinian sovereignty.

The religious dimension would be especially sensitive.
Jordanian or Islamic custodianship of Al-Aqsa, reliable Muslim access and Israeli restraint around the holy compound would become indispensable. A serious Al-Aqsa crisis could reconnect Palestinian grievance with a much wider Islamic public within days.

Refugee-hosting states would face another burden.
If mass return had been definitively rejected, Palestinians would need citizenship or durable status elsewhere, economic integration and some form of compensation. Otherwise, the refugee system would continue carrying the territorial claim from one generation to the next.

Finally, the order would require a material bargain: regional investment, trade, security cooperation and visible economic improvement. Arab governments would need to show that accepting an irreversible reality prevented further suffering and produced tangible benefits.

None of this would be self-sustaining.
Each new displacement, settler attack, discriminatory law or high-casualty military operation would force neighboring governments to choose again between preserving relations with Israel and responding to their own populations.

The Most Successful Realistic Outcome

The most successful plausible result is therefore not comprehensive peace.
It is a managed cold regional order.

Israel would be too powerful to defeat.
Egypt, Jordan and Gulf governments would cooperate because confrontation offered no attainable territorial gain and because Israeli technology, intelligence and trade served their interests. Conventional interstate war would become unlikely.

Yet below that stability, Palestinian resistance would remain periodically active. Arab societies would remain more hostile than their governments. Iran or another challenger could present itself as the defender of Jerusalem and use Palestine to delegitimize cooperating regimes. Israel would require continuing military dominance, internal surveillance and external diplomatic support.

Existing experience supports this distinction.
Egyptian and Jordanian peace with Israel has survived repeated crises, but it has remained cold. The Abraham Accords have also survived, while popular support for normalization has remained shallow. Following October 7 and the Gaza war, Arab Barometer found support for normalization at no more than 13 percent in any of seven surveyed Arab countries.[4]

Such an order could last for decades.
But its durability would show that the costs of challenging it remained higher than the costs of enduring it. It would not show that the underlying grievance had disappeared.

Greater Israel may be capable of making resistance unsuccessful.
It is much less capable of making resistance meaningless.

The International Mirror

Greater Israel might eventually be accommodated by neighboring governments.
That would not make it internationally legitimate.

The United Nations would probably see a state that had permanently incorporated occupied territory, prevented Palestinian self-determination and placed two populations under one sovereign authority without equal national and political standing.

This judgment would not begin from a blank page. In 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was unlawful. The UN General Assembly subsequently called for that presence to end within twelve months. A completed Greater Israel would formalize precisely the territorial order these institutions had rejected.[5][6]

Israel would remain a UN member and an important military, technological and economic power. It would retain allies and might deepen relations with governments that valued its capabilities. But it would increasingly be treated as an exceptional state: diplomatically protected by some, legally challenged by many and exposed to sanctions, boycotts and demands for non-recognition.

It might not become a complete pariah in the manner of apartheid South Africa. American protection and Israel's strategic value could prevent comprehensive isolation. A more plausible status would be that of a “protected pariah”: connected enough to prosper, protected enough to resist international pressure, but increasingly regarded as standing outside the rules applied to ordinary states. The term 'territorial pariah' has already entered prominent pro-Israel criticism.[7]

Israel would have achieved recognition of its power without achieving recognition of its right.

The Safe Haven Becomes a Fortress

That distinction returns the analysis to Zionism's original promise.

After centuries of persecution and the Holocaust, a Jewish state was intended to provide more than military refuge. It offered sovereignty, self-reliance and national normality: a place where Jews would no longer depend on the goodwill of others for their collective survival.

Greater Israel appears to complete that project.
More territory promises strategic depth. Control of the Jordan Valley promises defensible borders. Prevention of a Palestinian state promises removal of a potential military threat.

But its successful implementation could produce the opposite kind of security environment: a large Palestinian population living without national political ownership, neighboring societies carrying unresolved resentment, holy places capable of mobilizing a transnational religious response and an international legal order that rejects Israel's borders.

Israel would be territorially larger and militarily dominant, yet also permanently mobilized. It would be less vulnerable to conventional invasion but more exposed to insurgency, communal violence, sanctions, diplomatic isolation and repeated legitimacy crises. It would depend not only on its own power but on American protection and the endurance of Arab governments willing to contain opposition.

The safe haven would increasingly resemble a fortress: too powerful to be defeated, but never sufficiently accepted to relax.

The Mirage

The mirage is not that Greater Israel cannot be created.
Israel may be capable of establishing an irreversible territorial reality. Neighboring governments may eventually accept that military reversal is impossible. A managed regional order may survive for a long time.

The mirage is the belief that territorial completion will finally produce security, acceptance and normality.

The vision promises an end point.
Its implementation more plausibly creates a permanent system of maintenance: deterrence, internal control, regional bargains, religious crisis management and external diplomatic protection. Every serious shock would reveal that acceptance had remained strategic rather than legitimate.

This can also create a dangerous political dynamic.
When a project repeatedly promises final security but security remains out of reach, its supporters may conclude not that the project is defective, but that it has not yet been pursued decisively enough. Moderation becomes weakness; restraint becomes unfinished victory; each failure generates a demand for further force or expansion.

Greater Israel may radicalize over time not merely because its supporters are extreme, but because the security promised by territorial completion keeps failing to arrive.

This is no longer only a warning about a possible future.
The underlying bargain has been tested since 1948: security through sovereign strength.
Since 1967, an increasingly powerful territorial answer has been added: security through permanent control of more land. Israel has gained extraordinary military power and national endurance. It has not gained the promised release from existential fear, recurrent war, occupation, resistance or dependence on external protection.

The cost has been enormous: Palestinian dispossession, statelessness and lost lives; Israeli deaths and trauma; repeated wars and permanent mobilization; damaged institutions, moral corrosion and declining international legitimacy.
Not all these costs can be attributed to Israel, or to a single doctrine. But they are costs that the Greater Israel answer has plainly failed to end and, in important respects, has compounded.

After almost eight decades, the burden of proof has reversed.
The question is no longer whether completing territorial control might finally make the promise work.
It is why more control, more force and less Palestinian political agency should be expected to produce the security, acceptance and normality they have never yet produced.

The Great Israel project might therefore fulfill its map while defeating its purpose.
The Jewish people would possess sovereignty throughout the land, but within a state compelled to remain permanently armed, exceptional and dependent on protection.

The security mirage has shaped Israel since 1948;
Greater Israel Mirage has intensified it since 1967.
It has cost Palestinians and Israelis enormously.
Completing the Mirage is not a credible path out of the conflict, but a way of making its risks and costs permanent.

References

[1] Likud Party, Original Party Platform.

[2] Knesset, declaration supporting application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, 23 July 2025.

[3] Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's Decisive Plan, 2017, English translation.

[4] Arab Barometer, Arab Public Opinion Constrains Normalization with Israel, 23 June 2025.

[5] International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, 19 July 2024.

[6] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution ES-10/24, 18 September 2024.

[7] Associated Press, Rahm Emanuel warns that Israel has become a territorial pariah, 8 July 2026.