Israel's attacks on Gaza, which have been ongoing since Oct. 7, 2023, entered a new phase in August 2025. On Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's orders, the Israeli army prepared and began implementing its plan to invade Gaza, announcing to the world that Gaza would be completely occupied. Indeed, Israel no longer even feels the need to hide its true intentions regarding Gaza. Moreover, the E1 project, which aims to facilitate the annexation of the West Bank, has been approved and implemented, marking a significant step toward the absorption of both Gaza and the West Bank.
In fact, with these steps, we are witnessing the gradual implementation of Israel's long-standing plan for a so-called “Greater Israel”. However, it is considered beneficial to take a closer look at what excuses are being used to implement this plan, and what the real purpose of these actions is, that is, what the plan actually entails.
As will be recalled, when Israel launched its attacks on Gaza, it stated that its aim was to eliminate Hamas and rescue the hostages. However, after 23 months and the brutal crimes of genocide committed in Gaza, resulting in the killing of more than 63,000 innocent people, neither Hamas has been eliminated nor the hostages rescued.
It is known that Netanyahu, who has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, did not care about the hostages because he gave the Hannibal Directive on Oct. 7, ordering the death of his own citizens. It is also known that he later abandoned the hostages to their fate by refusing to allow a hostage exchange agreement with Hamas.
Therefore, it is clear that Netanyahu has failed to eliminate Hamas or rescue the hostages at this point. In addition, the recent increase in global public outrage against Israel and the announcements by many Western countries that they will officially recognize Palestine have pushed Netanyahu, who is in a tight spot, to make a new move.
Netanyahu, who had set his mind on invading Gaza, found the excuse he was looking for in the videos of hostages released by Hamas in early August. In fact, when Hamas released these videos, it was hoping to increase pressure on Netanyahu and his government from the Israeli public and the families of the hostages, in order to secure a cease-fire agreement that would make a hostage exchange possible. However, Netanyahu turned this move to his advantage and, using the poor conditions in which the hostages were being held as an excuse, announced that Gaza would be completely occupied in order to rescue them.
However, the hostages held by Hamas were in better condition than the more than 10,000 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons and detention camps. Despite this, Netanyahu instrumentalized the issue and used it as a pretext for the invasion of Gaza.
It is clear from Netanyahu's statements to some media outlets that he is not interested in the cease-fire plans brokered by Egypt and Qatar, using the hostages as an excuse, and that he plans to invade Gaza in any case, even if Hamas agrees to surrender unconditionally and release the hostages. Under these circumstances, there is no acceptable justification for using the hostages as an excuse to invade Gaza.
While the eyes of the whole world are focused on Israel's massacres in Gaza, Israel's plan to annex the West Bank continues quietly. As if the bill passed by the Israeli parliament on July 23, stating that “the West Bank is Israeli territory,” were not enough, the High Planning Council in the Israeli-occupied West Bank approved 3,400 new settlements on Aug. 20 as part of the E1 project, which is seen as an important step toward the annexation of the West Bank.
Indeed, this project, which aims to sever the connection between Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, undermines the territorial integrity of the Palestinian state and aims to leave the free and independent Palestinian state that is planned to be established in the future without land.
Therefore, it can be said that Israel is trying to depopulate not only Gaza but also the West Bank, that is, to de-Palestinize it. In this way, new Jewish settlers (or thieves, should we say?) will be placed in the vacated areas, and these lands will also be accepted as Israeli territory.
As Israel's attempts to swallow up Gaza and the West Bank continue apace, Netanyahu no longer feels the need to hide his true intentions. Indeed, in an interview with Israel's I24 channel recently, Netanyahu stated that he is “committed to the Greater Israel plan” and that it is a “historic and spiritual mission” for him, thereby revealing the true intent behind the occupation and annexation plan. These statements, which amount to a confession and revelation, have undeniably shown us that Netanyahu has been lying from the very beginning of the process.
However, when Netanyahu gave the order to attack Gaza on Oct. 7, he referred to the Torah, saying that this was a holy war and trying to motivate his army. Today, he continues to claim that he is committed to the “Greater Israel” plan, imposing a spiritual mission on himself. Yet, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has stated that Netanyahu is not religious and is even an atheist.
In other words, Netanyahu and his ultra-right-wing and fundamentalist coalition partners, who had been planning this irrational plan for a long time, set their sights on Gaza and the West Bank to carry it out and manipulated the Al-Aqsa Flood attack on Oct. 7 to minimize possible reactions from the world.
As if destroying Gaza under the pretext of Hamas were not enough, they also prevented humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, condemning more than 2 million Palestinians to starvation. In doing so, they have rendered Gaza uninhabitable once again. After forcing the Palestinians they could not kill to flee their lands out of fear, they have planned to reincorporate Gaza into Israel, thereby taking the first step toward establishing the so-called Greater Israel.
To sum up, the so-called Greater Israel plan put forward by the fascist Zionists whom Netanyahu succeeded, and which he himself has reiterated, is not limited to the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank. The boundaries of this irrational plan include the territories of Israel's neighboring countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as parts of the territories of some regional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Türkiye. Therefore, it should not be forgotten that Israel's confrontational and expansionist policies pursued to date will also apply to these countries in the future.
If Israel is not stopped today, it will do even more terrible things tomorrow and turn the region into a bloodbath at the hands of fascists like Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
So the issue is not just Gaza or the West Bank; Palestine is only the beginning for Israel, whose goal is the entire Middle East.
