Greater Israel: the plan behind the war

Greater Israel? The demographics don't back the expansionist dream
The idea of a "Greater Israel" stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates runs into an uncomfortable reality: the very demographic fragility of the Zionist project. While Israeli hawks dream of annexations and preventive wars, the numbers tell a very different story.

The demographic Achilles' heel
Israel has barely 5 million Jews – according to figures cited in the debate – a population that would fit into a single neighborhood of Tehran, as was pointed out. Against the nearly 100 million Iranians, not counting the rest of the Muslim world, the equation is brutal. But the problem is not only external: internally, the ultra-Orthodox (haredim), who make up 13% of the population and have a fertility rate of 6.6 children per woman, are growing at a pace that threatens to blur the secular character of the state. They are projected to be 32% of the population by 2065, and their way of life – exempt from military service and taxes – is generating unsustainable tensions.

Expansion or implosion
Faced with this horizon, the strategy of promoting settlements and opening "franchises" in Ukraine, Segarro or Argentina – as noted in the analysis – seems like an attempt to buy time. But the demographic fuel is running short: secular settlers are not reproducing fast enough, and the haredim, though prolific, do not share the expansionist nationalist project. The paradox is that the most aggressive Zionism feeds on a base that is either shrinking or drifting ideologically.

What about the nuclear arsenal?
In an ironic twist, some participants in the debate point out that Iran has earned the right to the atomic bomb after the aggressions it has suffered. The Samson Option – Israel's nuclear retaliation doctrine – would be the last card of a state that, numerically, cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war. The bomb, in anyone's hands, levels the playing field.

---

The Greater Israel narrative faces an unsolvable contradiction: to expand it needs people, but the people it produces – the ultra-Orthodox – do not want to expand, and those who do want to expand – secular Jews – are not reproducing. The question nobody answers is: can a state of 5 million inhabitants, divided internally, aspire to dominate the Middle East? The data suggest no, but the sabre-rattling hides it.

Related discussions in the forum

• Sánchez says he won't call an election because if he did, he'd win by a landslide. · 39 replies
• Stale, solidified gossip: NN, Farrerons and Rubén Gisbert. · 23 replies
• Is there a more despicable being than this one? Seriously!!!! · 22 replies
• Peter Turchin and the prediction of history through advanced mathematical models and AI. · 42 replies