The future of land Israel has seized from neighbors

0:00This message comes from Takeoff by IXL, the K-5 core math curriculum that continuously differentiates learning. Everything teachers need to personalize instruction is on Takeoff's digital platform. Learn more at takeoffbyixl.com. Today on State of the World, the future of land Israel has seized from its neighbors.

0:25You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Monday, June 1st. I'm Greg Dixon. Over the last few years of war, Israel has taken control of territory beyond its borders. It now controls big swaths of land in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. Israeli officials call them security buffer zones. But some in Israel want to permanently extend their country's borders, using the Bible as a map. From Jerusalem, NPR's Daniel Estrin reports.

1:04About 10 Israeli activists filmed themselves singing and dancing in Syria. They just walked a few hundred feet across the Israeli border, into the part of Syria the Israeli military has occupied since the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024. The Israeli activists sing a Hebrew verse from the Bible, a rallying cry to the ancient Israelites to inherit the Promised Land, despite the inhabitants already living there. One Israeli activist says, Go Syria! Without settlement, there is no security. This fringe group of ultra-nationalist Jewish activists wants to establish Israeli settlements in Syria.

1:50They say they managed to slip into Syria more than a dozen times over the past year. They were repeatedly apprehended by Israeli soldiers and taken back home. Earlier this year, an Israeli reporter filmed this scene in Lebanon. Hundreds of devout Jews escorted by the Israeli military to a holy site just across the Israeli border. It's revered in Judaism as the tomb of a 4th century rabbi. Lebanese Muslims say it's the tomb of a Shia cleric. Israeli soldiers occupied this Lebanese borderland during war with Hezbollah earlier this year, driving out most of the population. In Lebanon, in Syria, and in Gaza, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech, we have created security zones deep beyond our borders.

2:42In another speech, he said this was Israel's comeback after being attacked by Hamas and then by Hezbollah in October 2023.

2:54Instead of them surprising us, we are surprising them, Netanyahu said. We have changed our security concept. We initiate, we attack, and we have created three security zones deep within enemy territory. Some ultra-nationalist Israelis see this through the lens of the Bible. Take this Israeli TV interview. A right-wing talk show host gives Netanyahu a piece of jewelry shaped with the borders of what's called Greater Israel, land stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, the land God promised Abraham in the book of Genesis. He asks Netanyahu, Do you connect to the vision? Netanyahu replies, Very much.

3:43The topic is frequently covered on TV broadcasts in the Mideast, like on Al Jazeera in English and Arabic. Is Greater Israel already happening on the ground?

3:58The Greater Israel Project, an illusion or reality? This also came up when talk show host Tucker Carlson asked U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, if Israel had a biblical right to claim land in other Arab countries. Because you're appealing to Genesis. You're saying that's the original deed. It would be fine if they took it all. That sparked anger from Arab governments. Israeli affairs expert Shira Efron from the RAND think tank says the religious messianic vision of Israel conquering land all the way to Iraq is not representative of most Israelis or of Israeli policy.

4:39The vast majority of Israelis, and even the most religious ones, they don't have territorial claims with Lebanon and with other countries. It's more an Israeli mindset that buffers so on as sort of the new way to defend ourselves and to let our people who live in border communities have a sense of security and safety. At a right-wing Israeli demonstration in Tel Aviv, I meet activist Shai Rosengarten. We didn't start this war. It's not like that Israel wanted to expand, and then we just started a war to expand our borders. They attacked us. What we need after this brutal attack on the citizens of Israel is buffer zones.

5:23But security is not what's animating young religious Jewish Israelis who marched through East Jerusalem recently, celebrating Israel's capture of that territory nearly 60 years ago. We meet kindergarten assistant Hodaya Tam, who wears a necklace of the extended borders of Israel as outlined in the book of Genesis.

5:47All of it, according to the Torah, it's ours. she says. She's with her friend, university student Yael Bachar, who dreams of living beyond Israel's borders. Me, she says, wow, give me Gaza, a house facing the sea on the beach. But you know, she says, there's desire and then there's reality. All the people who are afraid that we will settle in Gaza or something like that, I don't think that it will really happen. The land of Israel will return to the people of Israel only when the Messiah comes.

6:25Bachar says Israel won't put its citizens on the front lines in danger. And, she says, if we settle Gaza and southern Lebanon, the world will talk.

6:39Far-right members of the Israeli government have called for Israel to annex and settle territories in Gaza and southern Lebanon, not just hold them as indefinite military zones. It's not in the really organized level right now, but it's in the fantasies. Israeli progressive activist Tomer Lev is a master's student in Jerusalem, researching what he calls political imagination and messianism among far-right leaders in Israel. I think the political work they are doing is taking this political imagination and popularizing it make the white public believe that's what they need to have in order to be secured.

7:20And I think it's a matter of time, and that's what we're fighting. He says he's patrolling the streets to stop young ultranationalist Israelis from attacking Palestinians, and to promote the reality of a land that's shared and not a dream of further conquest. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Jerusalem.

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