Last month, the United States envoy to Syria and Lebanon, Tom Barrack, openly stated:
“In the Israeli mindset, the borders created by Sykes–Picot mean nothing… Israel will go where it wants, when it wants, to ensure that what happened on October 7 does not repeat itself.”
Stripped of its provocative wording, this statement reveals a blunt reality: in the world after 7 October 2023, the Zionist entity insists on pursuing a strategy of regional domination that transcends the colonial borders drawn more than a century ago.
Since late 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu—who remains Prime Minister of the Zionist regime despite being wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza—has entrenched what he calls the “day-after doctrine”. This doctrine demands that the genocidal war ends only with the Palestinians’ total surrender to Israeli hegemony.
The genocidal war in Gaza has already widened into broader regional conflicts. Israel has sought to destroy all resistance forces in the region and redraw the political maps of the Arab world.
Before departing to meet Donald Trump in early February 2025—his first meeting with Trump since the latter’s return to the White House—Netanyahu boasted at Ben Gurion airport:
“Our decisions have redrawn the map… and with Trump, we can redraw it even more.”
Redrawing the Map of the Region
Since early 2024, Netanyahu has promoted the first formal post-war Zionist plan. It rests on two pillars: maintaining permanent control over the West Bank, and destroying Gaza while reinstating direct occupation.
By July 2024, during another visit to Washington, Netanyahu declared:
“We must, for the foreseeable future, retain supreme security control in Gaza.”
Israel has acted accordingly ever since.
- In Gaza, the Israeli army seized the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza–Egypt border, flagrantly violating the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty. Tel Aviv aims to expand its buffer zone, while openly promoting forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s people.
- In Lebanon, after a November 2024 ceasefire agreement with Hizbullah, Israel announced it would remain in five “strategic” positions in southern Lebanon to expand its northern buffer zone. It has violated the truce thousands of times since.
- In Syria, within days of Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapse in December 2024, Israel invaded and occupied over 600 square kilometres of new Syrian territory—more than half the size of the already occupied Golan Heights. Defence Minister Yisrael Katz declared the army would remain “indefinitely”, ensuring a demilitarised zone across southern Syria. Israel quickly established at least six military bases there, while Netanyahu claimed the 1974 disengagement agreement with Damascus was no longer valid.
This pattern is not new. Israel’s ambitions to redraw borders predate Oslo and even 7 October.
From the Yinon Plan to the Doctrine of Fragmentation
In 1982, Oded Yinon published his paper “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”. It proposed an order not based on the Sykes–Picot framework but on fragmented sectarian entities surrounding the Zionist state. Yinon’s vision included:
- The complete partition of Lebanon into five mini-states as a precedent for the entire Arab world.
- The fragmentation of Egypt into separate geographic regions, making it politically weak.
- The dismemberment of Syria and Iraq into ethnic or religious cantons on Israel’s eastern front.
- The eventual collapse of Libya, Sudan, and others if Egypt fragmented.
Though not fully realised, this doctrine reveals the ideological essence of Zionism: total dominance achieved through the political disintegration—or “Balkanisation”—of the Arab world.
The Doctrine of the Periphery and Use of Minorities
Long before Yinon, Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion pursued the “Periphery Doctrine” in the 1950s, seeking alliances with non-Arab states and minority groups: pre-1979 Iran, secular Turkey, Ethiopia, certain Kurdish groups in northern Iraq, the South Sudanese People’s Army, and Maronite militias in Lebanon.
Menachem Begin, Prime Minister in 1980, summed up the “minority logic” when he declared:
“If the Christian minority in Lebanon is attacked… Israel will not stand idly by.”
Four decades later, Israel repeated this rationale in Syria under the pretext of “protecting” the Druze minority, even as it bombed Syrian infrastructure and seized more land. Netanyahu recently addressed the Druze community in Syria, claiming Israel was “saving our Druze brothers” while in reality pursuing further occupation.
This same logic has applied in Iraq, where sectarian fragmentation and autonomous Kurdish zones mirror the Yinon blueprint. In South Sudan, President Salva Kiir openly admitted in 2011:
“Without you [Israel], we would not have existed.”
Strategic Borders and the Security Logic of Expansion
Zionist leaders have long defined Israel’s borders not as fixed international lines but as “security necessities”.
- In the 1975 Sinai disengagement talks, Defence Minister Shimon Peres demanded “buffer zones and Egyptian areas under civil administration”.
- After the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Begin told the Knesset the real aim was to establish a 40-kilometre deep “security zone”.
- In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin stated in the Knesset: “Israel’s security border will be in the Jordan Valley.”
- In 2024, Netanyahu repeated this formula regarding Gaza: “We must retain supreme security control there.”
For decades, Israel has built its dominance by creating buffer zones, occupying corridors, annexing valleys, establishing security belts, and imposing early-warning systems. Barrack’s words thus echoed a long Zionist history of expansion.
7 October and the Zionist Strategic Response
Some dismiss Yinon’s blueprint as a fantasy. Yet Israel’s policies since 7 October prove otherwise: they mirror Yinon’s logic, executed under the cover of unconditional American support and total disregard for international law.
The current path is clear:
- Prioritising total military freedom of action.
- Weakening and fragmenting neighbouring states instead of allowing strong Arab or Islamic nation-states.
- Building strategic ties with minorities and peripheral actors to undermine Arab–Islamic majority power.
Netanyahu himself, in rare Hebrew remarks, described his mission as “historic and spiritual”, tied to the “vision of Greater Israel”. This expansionist spirit now manifests across Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.
The Cost of Zionist Aggression on Regional Stability
For nearly two years, Gaza has endured genocidal war, while the West Bank faces relentless settlement and annexation. These crimes complicate Washington’s efforts to normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia or other regional states.
With Israel escalating in Palestine, and continuing clashes in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and possibly Iran—alongside sporadic strikes in Tunisia and Qatar—the United States risks not only losing regional influence but also exposing its own security and economic interests to grave danger. The deeper Washington sinks resources into shielding Israel, the less able it is to contain rising global rivals like China and Russia.
Resistance as the Only Legitimate Response
Confronting Zionist hegemony requires two foundations:
- Restoring rights.
- Recognising resistance as the legitimate means of struggle.
Palestinian rights are not symbolic; they are strategic. Liberation of land, preservation of life, and full freedom—including ending occupation, apartheid, blockade, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement—are preconditions for any just regional order.
Resistance, rooted in the right to self-defence under international law, is indispensable. It redistributes costs, breaks impunity, and imposes accountability. This resistance must be Palestinian-led yet embraced by peoples and movements across the Arab and Islamic world—and by oppressed peoples globally.
It must remain independent, nationally grounded, and immune to manipulation by foreign powers that historically sacrificed justice for narrow interests.
Rethinking Borders and Building Unity Beyond Sykes–Picot
Barrack’s remark about Sykes–Picot exposes a bitter truth: today’s Israeli leadership recognises no borders except those that serve its expansionist agenda of “Greater Israel”. The Al-Aqsa Flood shattered its illusions of invincibility, yet Tel Aviv doubles down on arrogance and military dominance.
The answer is not to revive the colonial Sykes–Picot order, but to build a post-Sykes–Picot system based on unity, not fragmentation. Borders must embody sovereignty and independence—used for cooperation, trade, visits, and relief, not for tanks and checkpoints. Minorities must be part of a regional mosaic, not tools in Zionist or Western hands.
Only then will the so-called “meaninglessness” of borders become an opportunity: a chance to reclaim sovereignty, independence, and dignity—without surrendering land or redrawing maps to suit the occupier.
