WEST BANK, (PIC)
As part of its provocative and extreme policies towards Middle Eastern countries, Israel published a so-called “historical” map on an official account linked to its Foreign Ministry on the platform X. The map claims to include Arab lands, including parts of the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. It also contains racist statements advocating for the annexation of the West Bank and the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.
The account accompanied the map with commentary on the Israeli narrative, lacking any data or historical evidence. The maps promoted by Israel depict areas that were once part of historical Palestine or the occupied Palestinian territories, referring to them as part of Israel.
Condemnations and warnings
This move has sparked a wave of official rejection; countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, the Arab League, the Arab Parliament, and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas condemned it, considering that Israel aims to “entrench its occupation, violate the sovereignty of states, and breach international law.”
Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, said that “everyone in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine must understand that Israel is carrying an aggressive agenda aimed at controlling all these countries.” He added in a statement, “The interim map published by the Israeli enemy is provocative. To protect their countries from American and Israeli aggression and to safeguard their land and resources, they (the Arab countries) must be in a position of strength and resilience. The policies adopted by Jordan and Syria now will not change the Israeli policy, nor will it relinquish its ambitions.”
For its part, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said that “the calls from official Zionist accounts and occupation leaders to annex Palestinian and Arab lands confirm their expansionist ambitions,” adding that the hostile statements from the occupation demand strong positions from Arab and Islamic governments to confront these ambitions and stop its crimes.
Right-Wing ambitions
The expansionist map published by Israel aligns with the general direction of the far-right government in the occupying entity, which seeks to create a reality that does not stop at drawn borders or signed agreements but transcends all geographical, political limits and international treaties to achieve expansionist goals in many Middle Eastern countries.
On November 11, the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—leader of the Religious Zionism party—said he had instructed the settlement administration and the civil administration (both under the Ministry of Defense) to begin a comprehensive professional effort to prepare the necessary infrastructure to apply sovereignty over the West Bank. Smotrich pledged that 2025 would be the year of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, according to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
The following day, Israel’s official broadcasting authority reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to include the annexation of the West Bank in his government’s agenda after U.S. President Donald Trump assumes office on January 20.
Implementation steps
Radical Jewish groups and organizations aspire to establish a Greater Israel that includes lands from sovereign Arab countries in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article discussing the expansionist plans for “the State of Israel” to include lands in the Negev Desert. The article noted that the Israeli government is seizing dunums of land belonging to the Bedouins in the Negev, and later selling them to Jewish associations and organizations, preparing for the establishment of Israeli settlements on these lands.
Simultaneously, the Israeli army has extended its influence and penetrated areas of the Syrian Golan, controlling the buffer zone along the border and invading parts of the Syrian city of Quneitra following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last month.
Preparation by eliminating resistance
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army and its settlers continue their assaults in the West Bank through incursions, arrests, and confrontations that have resulted in hundreds of martyrs and thousands of injuries since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023. These assaults have led to the martyrdom of 843 Palestinians and injuries to about 6,700 others, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The occupation government is paving the way for the implementation of its expansionist plan in the West Bank through intensified aggressive operations across its cities and regions, particularly in the northern West Bank. Its goal is to eliminate resistance, facilitating its expansionist operations by annexing land and establishing settlements.
In contrast, the Palestinian people, through their resistance factions, seek to thwart these Israeli expansionist ambitions by continuing to resist the occupation in all its plans. The “Al-Aqsa Flood,” launched by the resistance in Gaza led by the Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas), was a preemptive move to disrupt this plan and reduce its chances of success, while the resistance fighters in the West Bank continue their stand against the occupation, its army, and the incursions and assaults of its settlers in ongoing heroic battles that can only be stopped by driving the occupation out of all occupied Palestinian territories and thwarting its expansionist plans and ambitions.