Reviving the Zionist Project to Fragment the Arab East

Reviving the Zionist Project to Fragment the Arab East

Gilbert Achcar

In last week’s article on the bloody clashes in the Syrian province of Suwayda, I wrote that Israel “certainly hopes for an escalation of violence in order to take advantage of it to strengthen the influence of the minority among the Syrian Druze that aspires to establish a Druze emirate under Israeli protection” (“Syria and the Dangers of Playing with Fire”, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 15 July 2025). In this regard, it is worth recalling a view long held within the Zionist movement, particularly its “hawkish” wing, according to which it is in the interest of the Zionist project to fragment the Arab East by establishing entities based on sectarian and ethnic minorities, subject to Israeli protection. This would enable the Zionist state to build a regional empire subservient to it as the greatest military power in the region.

While talk of this project seems to be derived from the imagination of “conspiracy theorists”, the most important document revealing it is far from fiction. It is constituted by the diaries of Moshe Sharett (1894–1965), one of the founders of the State of Israel and its second prime minister since late 1953, following the resignation of David Ben-Gurion from this position which he recovered two years later. The diaries of Sharett, considered as one of Israel’s “doves”, are notes that he wrote between 1953 and 1957 in a private journal (not intended for publication). They were published in Hebrew in 1979 in eight volumes. These volumes were thoroughly read by Livia Rokach, an Israeli journalist who worked as a correspondent for the Israeli radio in the 1960s before becoming a critic of Zionist rule (she committed suicide in 1984). Rokach publicised the most serious revelations of the Sharett Papers through excerpts that she translated into English and commented in a book that came out in early 1980, published by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), of which Nasir Aruri (1934-2015), a prominent Palestinian intellectual and political activist, was a co-founder and president. Aruri wrote a preface to the book, which followed a foreword by Noam Chomsky.

The Sharett diaries revealed many issues that were the subject of debate within the Zionist state’s power elite. These included, among other things, plans to occupy southern Syria, establish a Maronite state in Lebanon, seize the Gaza Strip from Egyptian control (under which it was until its occupation by Israel in 1967), and expel the Palestinian refugees originating from the land seized by the Zionist state in 1948, out of all territories between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, starting with the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip into Egyptian territory.

In 1982, the AAUG published another Zionist document, translated into English and annotated by Israel Shahak (1933–2001), a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a survivor of the Nazi genocide of European Jews, who became one of the most prominent Jewish critics of Zionism and headed the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. The document, an article published in a Zionist journal in February 1982, later became known as the “Yinon Plan” after its author, Oded Yinon, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a former advisor to Ariel Sharon, a key leader of the Zionist far right at the time. Sharon oversaw the occupation of Lebanon in 1982 as minister of war in Menachem Begin’s government, the first government led by the far-right Likud party in the history of the Israeli state.

Yinon’s article, titled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, outlined a plan that included the establishment of a Coptic state in Egypt, which would lead to the partition of Egypt, leading in turn to the partition of neighbouring Sudan and Libya. It also included the division of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq into entities based on sectarian and ethnic lines (including a Druze state in Syria, to which, according to Yinon’s vision, the Golan Heights might be annexed). It also included granting the Palestinians control over Jordan, which would pave the way for the displacement of all other Palestinians from west to east of the river.

Mention of this old Zionist project faded over the past decades, as it clashed with the United States’ decision to maintain the division of the region’s map as it resulted of European colonial domination following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. (Note, however, that the United States was not without advocates of partitioning Iraq according to the Zionist perspective during its occupation of that country.) The rightward drift of Israeli society and polity reaching its peak under the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu has revived the project, giving it a powerful boost.

This government seized the opportunity provided by Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” launched by Hamas on 7 October 2023, to attack not the Gazans alone, but all the components of the Palestinian people between the river and the sea. It also attacked Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, three countries that have witnessed or are still witnessing civil wars based on sectarian divisions. This is while Iraq, a fourth country in the same situation, has thus far been spared from direct Israeli aggression after the United States destroyed the state there in 1991 and then endeavoured to rebuild it since 2003 on the basis of “divide and rule”. This is not to mention, of course, the de facto partition of Libya, Sudan, and Yemen.

The bottom line is that conditions in the Arab East – and particularly in the three countries geographically close to the Zionist state: Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq – are now more conducive than ever to achieving a partition of these states according to the Zionist perspective. Israel’s current behaviour toward Syria and Lebanon falls squarely within this context. This Israeli ambition clashes with the interest of the Arab states with influence over Washington – namely, the wealthy Gulf states – as well as that of the Turkish state, in preventing such a partition that would be highly destabilising for the entire region. This contradiction has now reached its peak and is the reason why the Trump administration has shown displeasure with its Israeli ally’s behaviour toward Syria in particular.

Translated from the Arabic original published in Al-Quds al-Arabi on 22 July 2025. Feel free to republish or publish in other languages, with mention of the source.