In a first-of-its-kind public admission, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Arabic-language Israeli channel i24 that he sees himself on a “historic and spiritual mission” to fulfill the dream of “Greater Israel.” This project envisions domination over the region stretching from the Euphrates in the east to the Nile in the west, a vision that, according to Zionist claims rooted in biblical myth, poses an existential threat to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt. The idea was crystallized in 1982 by a former advisor to then-Security Minister Ariel Sharon, who drafted what became known as the Yinon Plan.

The Israeli plan to fragment Arab states

According to this plan, the Israeli regime's strategy is not to directly occupy the Arab states of the Levant, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt, but rather to redraw the region’s political map by breaking up Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon into sectarian entities. Such a move would shift the Israeli occupation's position from being a small minority in a majority-Arab environment to becoming the region’s largest minority.

To achieve this, the Zionist project also relies on enforcing the “Jewishness” of the state by displacing the Palestinian people from historic Palestine into Jordan on one side and Sinai on the other. Under this scheme, Sinai would be detached from Egypt and turned into an “independent state” that would, in effect, fall under Israeli control. Yinon went even further, envisioning the partition of Egypt itself into sectarian entities, including the creation of a Coptic state in Upper Egypt.

It is worth noting that the Israeli regime previously sought to carve out parts of Sinai during its occupation of the peninsula between 1967 and 1982, even pushing the idea of separating Sinai from Egypt under the pretext of granting the Sinai Bedouins the “right to self-determination.” Following the 1967 defeat, the Israeli Cabinet announced in June of that year that it would consider returning Sinai in exchange for a full peace treaty, but insisted on special arrangements in Sharm el-Sheikh to secure control over the Strait of Tiran.

At the time, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan openly admitted that he preferred “Sharm el-Sheikh without peace over peace without Sharm el-Sheikh,” a remark that revealed the depth of the Israeli regime's security-driven mindset.

From the very first weeks of its occupation of Sinai, Tel Aviv established a network of military outposts to cement its control, including positions in Sharm el-Sheikh and other strategic points along the peninsula’s coastline. The Israeli occupation also began setting up settlement outposts in Sinai, the most prominent of which was the planned city of Yamit. This project envisioned a population of up to 200,000 in the Rafah area of northeastern Sinai, with the goal of creating a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt while altering the demographic map of the region.

However, the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty ultimately dashed the Israeli occupation's ambitions. Under the agreements, the Zionist regime accepted a full withdrawal from Sinai, with the establishment of demilitarized zones monitored by an international observer force.

The withdrawal was completed in April 1982, including the dismantling of Yamit and the rest of the Sinai settlements, returning the peninsula in its entirety to Egyptian sovereignty. This came shortly after Oded Yinon had issued his paper, which went on to serve as a guiding framework for successive Israeli governments. Its provisions began to be put into practice by Benjamin Netanyahu following his first term as Israeli prime minister in 1996.

Parallel to Netanyahu’s rise to power in 1996, the neoconservatives in the United States issued their second confidential paper, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It called for the imposition of absolute American hegemony worldwide in the face of two emerging powers, Russia and China, while also urging the abandonment of the peace process, arguing that the region’s geopolitical map was bound to be redrawn through the partition of the Arab Levant into sectarian entities.

The same document was republished in 2007, only months after the failed Israeli war on Lebanon. In practice, it served as a blueprint that would later be translated into action during the “Arab Spring” of 2011, which unleashed a fierce Western and Israeli war on Syria. The ideas from Yinon’s article resurfaced again following the Israeli occupation's most recent assault on Lebanon, highlighting with clarity the drive to fragment Arab states into smaller entities. The project was tightly intertwined with the neoconservative agenda of transforming the Israeli regime into a global imperial power acting as a junior partner to the United States.

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The American wager on Islamists

From the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 through the upheavals of 2011 and the subsequent proxy war in Syria, a central debate in Washington’s policy circles revolved around how to deal with “political Islam”. The options included containing it, engaging it, and even integrating it into political systems that were expected to replace the collapsing Arab regimes. This thinking led Washington to open channels with the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated parties, placing a wager on them as an alternative to the decaying authoritarian order.

The invasion of Iraq destabilized the region and exposed the limits of relying exclusively on the old authoritarian regimes. Over the years of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, American diplomats and analysts increasingly explored mechanisms to systematically engage Islamist movements with mass followings and electoral appeal, especially the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its sister parties elsewhere.

Policy papers from prominent American and transatlantic think tanks called for calibrated contact, dialogue, and issue-based diplomacy with the Brotherhood, even while acknowledging the persistent illiberal tendencies in their political platforms.

When the Arab uprisings toppled some regimes and shook others in 2011, the best-organized opposition forces were often Islamist. The US quickly adjusted its position. In Egypt, the State Department announced the resumption of official contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood, recognizing their electoral centrality and aiming to manage the political transition. Nor was Egypt unique: in Tunisia, Washington engaged with the Ennahda Movement in the context of supporting democratic transition. The Obama administration sought to work with elected Islamist parties through a combination of diplomacy with their governments, programmed aid via state institutions, and ongoing dialogue.

In Syria after 2011, Washington waged a proxy war against the state, with US intelligence working alongside regional allies to channel weapons to anti-Assad factions. Though there were efforts to vet the recipients, the US never fully controlled the end use of these arms on a fragmented battlefield. Investigative reports later revealed an airlift in which the CIA facilitated the transfer of weapons, which were funded by Gulf and Turkish sources, to Islamist armed factions, a process that ultimately contributed to the regime’s collapse in 2024.

Egypt: 'Israel’s' last obstacle

Over the past decade, the United States and the Israeli regime have scored a series of strategic gains. Iraq, for example, was fractured and “Lebanonized,” effectively split into three regions: a Shiite south, a Sunni center, and a Kurdish north.

Following the collapse of the Syrian state and the rise of an extremist group in Damascus, marked by massacres against Alawites along the coast, Druze in Jabal al-Arab, and clashes with Kurds in the east, calls for a federalized Syria grew louder. The Israeli occupation, for its part, tried to position itself as a supposed protector of minorities against the Sunni majority. In this sense, much of Oded Yinon’s blueprint appeared to be materializing. What remained was the displacement of Palestinians: the vision of Jordan as the alternative homeland for West Bank Palestinians, and Sinai as the substitute Palestinian state for Gazans. This, however, brings the Israeli occupation directly into confrontation with Egypt.

For Egypt, the past decade has left it the biggest loser. Cairo has faced the erosion of its national security on multiple fronts, be it Libya, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, or the Levant, and even its water security has been placed in jeopardy by Ethiopia.

It is worth noting that Egypt, whose state system came to power at the expense of the Islamists in 2013, now finds itself encircled by Islamist groups supported by Turkey’s Islamist-led government, groups that are openly hostile to Cairo. Examples include the Islamist government in Tripoli, Libya; Sudan under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who enjoys Islamist backing; Ethiopia under Abiy Ahmed, closely aligned with both the Israeli occupation and Turkey; and Syria, now governed by an Islamist faction that rose to power with Turkish and Israeli support.

In effect, Egypt is surrounded on all sides. Looking back to the precedent of Marj Dabiq in 1516, when the Ottoman Empire seized control of the Levant, and comparing it with today’s fragile geopolitical situation, the threat to Egypt itself has become very real, foreshadowing its potential fall prey to the Israeli project, backed by the United States, Turkey, Ethiopia, and even certain Arab states that participated in the war on Syria.

Is war imminent?

Amid these circumstances, Netanyahu has openly declared his unwavering belief in realizing the dream of “Greater Israel,” including the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai. What makes matters worse, Islamist groups have staged protests outside Egyptian embassies in several countries, ostensibly demanding the lifting of the blockade on Gaza, as though Egypt, not the Israeli regime, were the occupying power. This escalated to remarks by Hamas political bureau chief Khalil al-Hayya, who called on the Egyptian people to protest and march on Rafah, a statement he later retracted.

Regardless of the Egyptian regime’s shortcomings and the complicity of Arab governments against the Palestinian cause, the calls to open the border crossings serve as little more than a pretext. In reality, they align with the Israeli occupation's plan, which, again, is facilitated by Turkey and certain Arab regimes, to secure an alternative homeland for Palestinians by seizing Sinai, while also advancing the partition of Egypt in line with the Oded Yinon plan.

Of course, the Israeli regime knows such a project cannot proceed easily. Under the pretext of preparing for an invasion of Gaza, it has mobilized 400,000 reservists and conducted maneuvers in the Negev along the Jordanian border.

Military experts argue that this unprecedented call-up reflects the Israeli anticipation of a possible Egyptian military response to the forced displacement of Palestinians into Sinai. In other words, the Israeli occupation is preparing for a potential war with Egypt. The pressing question now is whether Egypt can withstand the Israeli regime's designs.