Vance Lands in Pakistan for Peace Talks With Iran There was uncertainty about whether a cease-fire would hold and the two sides could reach a long-term deal. Vice President JD Vance struck an optimistic but cautious tone before he left for the talks.

 

Iran War Live Updates: Vance Lands in Pakistan for Peace Talks With Iran

There was uncertainty about whether a cease-fire would hold and the two sides could reach a long-term deal. Vice President JD Vance struck an optimistic but cautious tone before he left for the talks.

 

Elian Peltier Tyler Pager and John YoonElian Peltier and Tyler Pager reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/11/world/iran-war-trump-talks-pakistan

 

Here’s the latest.

Vice President JD Vance arrived in Pakistan on Saturday for peace talks with Iranian officials, as disagreements over Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz threatened a fragile cease-fire.

 

Mr. Vance was joined in Islamabad by President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Iranian delegation, which includes Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, had arrived earlier in the Pakistani capital.

 

The stakes are high. In a Friday address to his nation, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said the planned U.S. meeting with Iran was a “make or break” moment.

 

The war, which began on Feb. 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, has killed thousands, destabilized the Middle East and damaged the world economy as global energy prices skyrocketed because of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

 

The full reopening of the strait, a vital passage for oil and gas, will be among the priorities for Mr. Vance during the negotiations in Pakistan. Iran’s military signaled on Friday that it would maintain control of the waterway, saying in a statement carried by Iranian state media that it would “not give up our legitimate rights in any way.”

 

Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, has also threatened to derail the Pakistan-brokered cease-fire. Despite Mr. Trump’s request to scale back its assault, Israel on Friday kept up its airstrikes in southern Lebanon against what it said were Hezbollah-linked targets.

 

And hours before the Iranians arrived in Pakistan, Mr. Ghalibaf, one of the key figures overseeing the war for Iran, cast doubt that the talks would even take place. He laid out a new condition for the negotiations on social media, demanding the release of unspecified “blocked assets” belonging to Iran before talks began.

 

Mr. Trump suggested on social media that Iran was overplaying its hand. “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways,” he wrote, referring to Iran’s continued control of the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Mr. Vance struck an optimistic but cautious tone as he left for the talks. “I think it’s going to be positive,” he told reporters. But he warned that if the Iranians were “going to try to play us, then they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

 

Here’s what else we’re covering:

 

Strait of Hormuz: Only two ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Friday. Hundreds more are waiting on either side because their owners are still reluctant to attempt to navigate it. U.S. officials said one reason Iran had been unable to get more ships through was that it could not locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacked the capability to remove them.

 

Shroud of Uncertainty: Israel and Lebanon’s ambassadors to the United States are expected to meet in Washington next week for direct talks, but a settlement to end the war in Lebanon is not expected imminently. In Pakistan, the authorities have disclosed almost no details about the talks scheduled for this weekend, including where they will be held.

 

Displaced in Lebanon: More than a million people — roughly a fifth of the population — have been forced from their homes since the renewed war erupted last month between Israel and Hezbollah. And many have nowhere to go. Take a closer look in photos and video here.

 

Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,701 civilians, including 254 children, had been killed in Iran as of Wednesday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Friday said that at least 1,953 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, including 357 in a wave of Israeli strikes on Wednesday. In attacks attributed to Iran, at least 32 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 20 people had been killed as of Monday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members.

VP JD Vance Heads to Pakistan For Iran Negotiations While Israel CONTINUES Lebanon Bombing

JD Vance speaks on negotiations with Iran, saying don't "play us"

 

JD Vance dispatched to negotiate Iran peace with few cards to play

 

Analysis

JD Vance dispatched to negotiate Iran peace with few cards to play

Andrew Roth

in Washington

Vice-president’s war doubts and his boss’s desperation to reopen Red Sea look like a weak deck against bolstered opponents

 

Sat 11 Apr 2026 00.05 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/11/jd-vance-dispatched-to-negotiate-iran-peace-with-few-cards-to-play

 

As JD Vance arrives in Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal with Iran, his first high-profile assignment of the war looks to be a poisoned chalice.

 

Vance, a vocal opponent of US wars in the Middle East gone quiet since the beginning of the current military campaign, will now face off with Iranian negotiators who feel emboldened by their new control of the Hormuz strait and their resilience in the face of the largest US-Israeli onslaught in history. Vance’s presence at the talks as vice-president will make it the highest-level meeting since the Iranian revolution of 1979.

 

Vance’s task is straightforward enough: to bridge the gap between a rhetorical ceasefire in serious peril and a more durable peace. But Vance will be face a difficult choice in Islamabad: to either undersign considerable US concessions to Iran in order to hold the ceasefire and negotiate the opening of the strait of Hormuz – or effectively cut off negotiations, personally backing a return to war that is unpopular with the American public.

 

The results could have a considerable impact on his expected run for the presidency in 2028, where his Maga credentials are already in question for failing to offer a more full-throated opposition to the war. Vance entered office calling for a more restrained foreign policy and an end to US forever wars in the Middle East – but the negotiations could drag him further into the largest US intervention in the region since the beginning of the Iraq war.

 

Whether the negotiations will even begin is in question. Israel’s massive strikes on Lebanon and an apparent bait-and-switch over the country’s inclusion in the ceasefire has angered the Iranian leadership. And Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and a lead negotiator, said that the US must also furnish the “release of Iran’s blocked assets”, a condition for talks that the US has not publicly agreed to.

 

“These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin,” Ghalibaf said on Friday, less than 24 hours after the negotiations in Islamabad were due to begin.

 

Those remarks may be the first salvo of what will be a grueling experience for Vance. Tehran’s negotiators are renowned for a long-winded, relentless approach to deal making that Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had once called “market style” – meaning “continuous and tireless bargaining”. This will be their first chance in history to subject a sitting US vice-president under considerable pressure to cut a deal to that treatment.

 

Before boarding Air Force Two en route to Pakistan on Friday, Vance said that his negotiating team had received “clear” instructions from Donald Trump on the negotiations, and added: “Let’s see where this goes.”

 

“As the president of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand,” Vance told reporters. “If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

 

But before the meeting, former US negotiators with Iran said that Tehran’s assumed control of the strait of Hormuz had handed that government a powerful new weapon in negotiations with Washington. And while the US could walk away from the table in Islamabad, it cannot guarantee the free flow of marine traffic from the Persian Gulf, leaving Tehran with key leverage over the White House, as fuel shortages and a supply chain crisis could rock the global economy this summer.

 

Vance’s dispatch to Islamabad follows his trip to Hungary, where he travelled to stump for the country’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán, in an election on Sunday that he looks likely to lose, ending 16 years in power and striking a blow to one of Maga’s key international outposts as part of a rightwing International that has been backed by Vance.

 

The Hungarians had lobbied for a visit by Trump, but they received Vance instead, who lacks the president’s star power and was questioned for travelling on a campaign rally to Europe even as the US administration was entrenched in the conflict in Iran.

 

From the beginning, Vance had been peripheral to the administration’s messaging about the war in Iran. As Trump’s war team gathered at a makeshift situation room in Florida (some termed it War-a-Lago), Vance called in from the situation room at the White House, joined by another key anti-war voice of Trump’s administration, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. The secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, has regularly delivered televised briefings on the conflict and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has been a more public booster for the war than Vance.

 

“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump said of Vance’s feeling about the war. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic. But I felt it was something we had to do. I didn’t feel we had a choice.”

 

Now, Vance has been tapped to end the war that he is said not to have wanted. But his reappearance in the limelight will be fraught with risk.

Interim summary

 

From 13m ago

07.59 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/11/middle-east-crisis-live-iranian-officials-arrive-in-islamabad-for-conditional-peace-talks-with-us

 

Interim summary

For those of you just joining us, welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East with talks between Iranian and US officials scheduled to begin in Islamabad. Stay tuned here for all the updates – but first, a quick recap.

 

• The US delegation has touched down ahead of high-stakes talks with the United States on Saturday, joining Iran’s delegation which had arrived earlier. The US side is led by the vice-president, JD Vance, alongside the special envoy, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
•  
• Iran’s delegation is headed by the powerful parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghaliba, reportedly accompanied by Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister; Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s defence council; Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of Iran’s central bank; and several members of the Iranian parliament. Ghalibaf said earlier on Friday that two previously agreed measures – a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets – “must be fulfilled before negotiations begin”. Israel and the US have denied that the ceasefire extends to Lebanon.
•  
• The planned talks come as Trump threatened fresh strikes if talks fail, adding that the Iranians “have no cards” and the only reason they are alive “is to negotiate”. Trump told the New York Post that the US is loading its warships with the “best weapons” in case talks with Tehran fail. “And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them and we will be using them very effectively,” he said.
•  
• Meanwhile, Lebanon and Israel have agreed to meet in Washington on Tuesday to discuss a ceasefire and to set a date to begin talks. The conversation on Tuesday will be mediated by the US and take place at the state
•  
• Lebanon’s health ministry has updated the death toll from Israel’s most brutal strikes on the country in years on Wednesday to 357 killed. It brings the total killed in Lebanon since Israel renewed its offensive on 2 March to more than 1,953 people. The number of people wounded stands at 6,303, the health ministry added.
•  
• US intelligence reports that China is preparing to send new air defence systems to Iran over the new few weeks, CNN reports, citing anonymous sources. The US state department, White House and Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

The Anatomy of Israel’s Occupation of Lebanon

 

The Anatomy of Israel’s Occupation of Lebanon

 

The ultimate goal of this campaign no longer appears to be merely a temporary ceasefire, but a long-term occupation wrapped in the term “security buffer zone.”

 

By

Dr. Jannus TH. Siahaan

April 7, 2026

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/04/07/the-anatomy-of-israels-occupation-of-lebanon/

 

Since March 2026, Israel’s military aggression into Lebanese territory has become a manifestation of a far more ambitious shift in Tel Aviv’s security doctrine. The operation, which began following the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader in “Operation Epic Fury,” has developed into a large-scale ground invasion involving the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of personnel,  a figure that reflects Israel’s absolute priority to reorganize the regional map.

 

Under the command of the most right-wing cabinet in its history, Tel Aviv no longer hides behind narrow defensive rhetoric. The deployment of ground forces that began on March 16, 2026, openly targets control of territory up to the Litani River, which covers around 10 percent of Lebanon’s total land area. With the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, including the demolition of five main bridges over the Litani River, Israel is effectively cutting off the geographic lifeline of southern Lebanon from the rest of the country.

 

The speed of Israeli troop movements on the ground in early 2026 shows highly mature logistical and intelligence preparation, far exceeding the efficiency of similar operations in previous years. The main focus of the military at present is to create new facts on the ground, or a fait accompli, that cannot be renegotiated through international diplomacy. This effort includes the mass expulsion of nearly one million Lebanese citizens, around 20 percent of the national population, who are now prohibited from returning to their villages in the south.

 

The ultimate goal of this campaign no longer appears to be merely a temporary ceasefire, but a long-term occupation wrapped in the term “security buffer zone.” However, behind the military calculation, in my view, there are shadows of old ideology that have now found renewed political momentum in the corridors of Israeli power. The big question now is no longer when this attack will end, but whether this is the initial step of the large “Greater Israel” project that has long been considered merely a fantasy of the extreme right wing.

 

Comparing the 2026 invasion with the “Operation Peace for Galilee” in 1982 shows a sharp contrast in the evolution of Israel’s strategy. In 1982, Israel’s main objective under Ariel Sharon was political in nature; Tel Aviv sought to engineer politics by installing a pro-Israel government in Beirut through an alliance with the Maronite Christian group led by Bashir Gemayel. The ambition at that time was a Lebanon that would become an official peace partner, although this strategy ultimately collapsed after Gemayel’s assassination and dragged Israel into an 18-year occupation.

 

In contrast, the 2026 war is no longer wrapped in a similar “political engineering” approach and has shifted fully to “physical and territorial domination.” Israel is no longer preoccupied with seeking local allies to manage Lebanon. Instead, Israel is applying what can be called the “Gaza Model” in southern Lebanon. This model involves the systematic destruction of all villages and infrastructure so that the area cannot be reinhabited by its original population. This is a spatial control tactic that is more brutal than what was seen in the 1980s, where the main objective is the permanent clearing of the area from potential threats.

 

This difference in methodology is also visible in the control of strategic points such as Mount Hermon and the Nabatieh area. If in the past territorial control was seen as a temporary bargaining position, now every inch of land occupied is accompanied by the construction of permanent fortifications and the destruction of civilian land registration records. Israel seems to have learned from the failure of 1982 that controlling Lebanese politics is impossible, so the choice now is to control its geography absolutely.

 

The scale of military deployment in 2026 is also much larger, with the involvement of reserve forces reaching 643,000 personnel to ensure control on multiple fronts simultaneously. Unmatched air dominance allows the Israeli military to destroy enemy communication and logistics centers with a high level of precision, minimizing risky ground contact as occurred in the past. This strategy reflects a new orientation: security is no longer achieved through peace agreements with weak neighbors, but through the creation of empty spaces under the control of weapons.

 

The core of global suspicion regarding Israel’s ambition lies in the concept of “The Greater Israel” or Eretz Yisrael HaShlema. Historically and religiously, this concept refers to the promised land in biblical texts, whose boundaries include southern Lebanon. The broad definition from Genesis 15:18, which mentions territory from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates River, automatically places all of Lebanon within the ideal map of Jewish expansionism. Even in the division of the ancient tribes of Israel, southern Lebanon was considered the inheritance of the tribes of Asher and Naphtali.

 

What was once considered a marginal aspiration of messianic groups has now transformed into a policy openly voiced by high-ranking government officials. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has definitively stated that Israel’s new international boundary must be at the Litani River. This statement is not merely rhetoric for domestic political consumption, but an operational guideline being implemented on the ground. Smotrich views this boundary change as a “new reality” that must be accepted by the international community after the conflict.

 

Civil movements such as Uri Tzafon, which emerged in 2024, provide a practical dimension to this theological ambition. This group aggressively campaigns for the settlement of Jewish civilians in Lebanese territories successfully controlled by the military. The appearance of housing advertisements with views of snow-covered mountains in areas that are legally still part of Lebanese sovereignty indicates an effort to replicate the settlement model in the West Bank in southern Lebanon. For adherents of Greater Israel, the Litani River is not merely a military defensive line, but a religious boundary that must be restored.

 

What is shown by the Israeli military on the ground further strengthens the annexation thesis. The total destruction of villages and the prohibition on the return of Lebanese civilians create a demographic vacuum that becomes a prerequisite for the entry of new settlers. The use of the term “historical correction” by settlement activists to describe the occupation in southern Lebanon indicates that the motivation for this aggression goes far beyond merely weakening Hezbollah; it is an effort to redesign Israel’s national geography in accordance with their eschatological narrative.

 

The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria at the end of 2024 has created a power vacuum that Israel has utilized to strengthen its dominance. With the existence of a new security coordination mechanism between the Syrian transitional government, the United States, and Israel through the “Joint Fusion Mechanism,” Tel Aviv now has operational freedom on the northern front without significant disturbance from Damascus. This is the foundation of what is referred to as Pax Israelica, a regional order in which security is fully defined by Israeli military power.

 

Lebanon is currently on the verge of total state failure. With the burden of one million internally displaced persons and the postponement of parliamentary elections until 2028, the central authority in Beirut is losing control over its sovereign territory. This condition is highly ideal for Israel to establish de facto annexation in the south. The most likely projection is that Israel will maintain military control over the area south of the Litani for an indefinite period, while gradually building civilian infrastructure that will permanently change the status of the territory.

 

Diplomatic efforts to achieve a permanent ceasefire appear deadlocked because Israel proposes conditions that touch the core of Lebanese sovereignty, such as control over airports and ports to prevent rearmament. Without significant international pressure, especially from the United States under the Trump administration, which tends to give full freedom to Netanyahu’s strategy, the occupation of southern Lebanon will become a permanent feature on the new map of the Middle East. Lebanon is forced to enter this new regional order as a security protectorate state, or face the risk of further internal fragmentation that could trigger civil war.

 

In short, the attack on Lebanon in 2026 is the culmination of the convergence between modern security needs and ancient expansionist ambitions. The Litani River is no longer merely a geographic name, but a monument to the collapse of Lebanese sovereignty and the rise of Greater Israel ambition. Amid the silence of the world’s response, border lines in the Levant are being redrawn with fire and concrete, creating new historical wounds that will haunt regional stability for decades to come. Southern Lebanon, in the vision of Pax Israelica, appears to have been prepared to become a “new Northern Galilee,” completing the territorial mosaic of a nation that feels it has a divine right to continue expanding.

Is Israeli invasion of Lebanon stemming from the dream of Greater Israel?

 

Is Israeli invasion of Lebanon stemming from the dream of Greater Israel?

 

Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza and its recent incursions into Lebanon have reignited a contentious debate over the concept of “Greater Israel.”

https://viimes.org/news/is-israeli-invasion-of-lebanon-stemming-from-the-dream-of-greater-israel/

 

Source: TRT, Murat Sofuoglu

 

VIIMES does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of VIIMES and Advisory Board or its staff.

 

Israeli army launched another invasion in Lebanon, which Tel Aviv’s forces previously occupied, raising concerns across the Middle East on the future of the region.

 

Recent military escalations—from Gaza to southern Lebanon—and statements from key Israeli officials and ministers have prompted speculation that the idea of “Greater Israel,” regarded as fringe, seems to have found an echo in the rhetoric of Israel’s hard-right political factions.

 

The idea of Greater Israel, which envisions an Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and beyond, has been dismissed as a conspiracy theory by proponents of the Israeli state. Historically, it has been cast as a tool of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, designed to delegitimise Israel’s presence in the Middle East.

 

Ecaterina Matoi, a scholar at the Middle East Political and Economic Institute (MEPEI), argues that Israel’s current offensives, particularly its ground incursion in Lebanon, could be seen as part of a broader strategy aligned with the “Greater Israel” concept.

 

“Given what has been going on in the West Asia region since the beginning of the 20th century, the ongoing invasion of Lebanon may be interpreted as part of the implementation of the Greater Israel plan,” Matoi tells TRT World.

 

While the Netanyahu government has not explicitly endorsed such an agenda, Matoi suggests that the increasing involvement in neighbouring territories reflects an expansionist undercurrent.

 

Expansionist Assertions

Israeli rhetoric towards Lebanon, a sovereign state, has intensified.

 

“Lebanon, even though it has a flag and even though it has political institutions does not meet the definition of a country,” wrote Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, on X last month. He even went further suggesting that Israel needs “to recalculate a course regarding the border line with the entity that calls itself a state Lebanon.”

 

Chikli’s remarks, along with references to Syria and Iraq as “entities” rather than states, hint at a potential shift in how Israel views its borders—and the borders of its neighbours.

 

Without receiving much condemnation from the Western bloc, Chikli expressed that Israel can take over parts of Lebanon.

 

“In a broader view, both Syria and Iraq do not currently meet the definitions of a state,” he added, suggesting that current post-WWI Middle Eastern borders drawn by a British-French consortium called Sykes-Picot are not relevant anymore.

 

The idea of “Greater Israel” looms large in debates. Religious Zionists, some of whom believe that Biblical texts grant Israel a divine claim to vast swathes of the Middle East, continue to exert influence within Israeli politics.

 

The Netanyahu government’s actions and the rhetoric from its ministers suggest that expansionist tendencies, once dismissed as the stuff of conspiracy, may not be entirely absent from Israeli strategic thinking.

 

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, center, flanked by his security detail, approaches the entrance to Jerusalem’s most sensitive Muslim holy site, Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City, Aug. 13, 2024. Photo:Ohad Zwigenberg

 

With ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, the notion of “Greater Israel” seems to be reemerging from the ideological periphery, raising uncomfortable questions about the future of the region’s borders.

 

This week, the Jerusalem Post, published an article titled:“Is Lebanon part of Israel’s promised territory?” The article has since been deleted.

 

What is ‘Greater Israel’ vision?

 

The idea of “Greater Israel” is rooted in ancient texts, but its modern political significance emerged with the rise of Zionism.

 

Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, envisioned a Jewish state in the Middle East, an idea that gained traction with Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917. The declaration, issued under pressure from Zionist leaders, promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Herzl himself once referenced a Biblical vision, calling for Israel’s borders to stretch from the “Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”—a vast area encompassing parts of modern-day Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.

 

Others

Three decades after the Balfour, following the Holocaust, the UN offered a partition plan between Arab and Jewish populations of Palestine, which laid the ground for Zionist leaders to declare the emergence of Israel as a state in 1948.

 

Since then, Israel has occupied additional territories such as the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, feeding into arguments that modern Israel continues to expand beyond its original borders.

 

“There are very few arguments that can be brought up to support the idea of a non-expansionist Israel,” Matoi tells TRT World, adding that “Israel actually appears to pursue a complex expansionist process.”

 

Last week, Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed a map bereft of Palestinian territories in his UN speech in which he condemned the international organisation as “a contemptuous farce”. The speech contained strong criticism of the UN; the very institution that helped establish the Israeli state.

 

In tandem, Israel’s military actions, including the announcement of “limited, localised and targeted” raids in southern Lebanon, have stirred debate over whether the country’s expansionist aspirations align with the idea of “Greater Israel.”

 

The announcement signaled an intent to get more Arab territories under the Israeli control as Tel Aviv’s armed forces have already occupied much of Gaza after October 7.

 

“I believe that both the importance of southern Lebanon to Israel as part of Greater Israel, and the weakening of Iran in the region to remove the government in Tehran from power, are behind this invasion of (southern) Lebanon,” Matoi says.

Israeli attacks have continued to destroy Lebanese territories as the West looks away on Tel Aviv’s escalations across the Middle East.

 

The growing presence of far-right, religious Zionists in Israeli politics has led to renewed scrutiny of the idea that Israel’s territorial ambitions may extend far beyond the borders established in 1948.

 

“It’s an incredibly grim picture,” says Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and author of the book: The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

 

“Palestinians are bearing the brunt of the Israeli onslaught as a far-right Israeli government takes the opportunity of expanding the country’s borders into Lebanon, Syria and beyond,” Loewenstein tells TRT World.

 

In June, Peace Now, a watchdog, released a taped recording outlining Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s speech at a conference for his Religious Zionism party of moves that the campaign group warned would irreversibly change the way West Bank was governed and lead to “de facto annexation”. The watchdog also noted that Israel has approved the largest West Bank seizure in decades.

 

Last year, during a speech in Paris, Smotrich, the leader of Religious Zionist Party, displayed a map, showing the occupied West Bank and Jordan part of Israel, which sparked a strong condemnation from Amman.

 

In June, again, an Israeli soldier with a Greater Israel badge on the uniform provoked outrage in Arab countries.

 

Jewish settler leaders such as Daniella Weiss, a leading Zionist extremist figure, have long advocated for the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank, aligning with the broader “Greater Israel” vision. “The only people of Israel can settle the Gaza Strip and rule the Gaza Strip,” Weiss said in her speech quoted in a documentary by TRT World.

 

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