هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Israel’s recent expansion across the region cannot be understood simply as an ad hoc response to urgent security threats or a reflection of the political outlook of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It must be understood as a strategic project deeply rooted in the structure of the Israeli state.
This project rests on an integrated system of religious, ideological, security, institutional and military foundations that together sustain expansionist policies across successive governments, regardless of their political differences. Expansion is thus a structural principle shaping how the Israeli state operates and manages its regional relations, rather than a temporary political choice.
This is the central premise of a report published on 23 October by the Turkish National Intelligence Academy, entitled “The anatomy of Israeli expansionism” (İsrail Yayılmacılığının Anatomisi). It examines the intellectual, political and security foundations of Israel’s expansionist project and the mechanisms that turn them into realities on the ground, from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to Syria, Lebanon, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.
The report also gives considerable attention to Türkiye’s strategic approach to Israeli expansion. It begins with the fundamental differences between Ankara and Tel Aviv’s visions of regional security and how to achieve it, and concludes with strategic recommendations for containing Israeli encroachment. Its premise is that competition between the two countries is no longer confined to the Palestinian issue but has become a broader struggle over the nature of the emerging regional order and the balance of power that will shape it.
The foundations of Israeli expansion
The report identifies four main foundations of Israeli expansion, both in the occupied Palestinian territories and across the region. These operate as an integrated, interconnected system, through gradual, overlapping processes that turn ideological concepts into an established reality on the ground. Religious, political and legal sanction ensure that this reality endures across successive governments.
Religious doctrine and the legitimisation of control over land: The expansion strategy draws on religious and historical foundations, using concepts such as the “Land of Israel,” the “Promised Land” and “historical return” to legitimise claims to sovereignty and territorial control.
These concepts gained increasing political momentum after the June 1967 war. Their central function is to recast the question of the occupied Palestinian territories as a matter of sacred religious rights that are difficult to relinquish, rather than political interests open to negotiation and compromise.
Expansion justified by security necessity: “Securitization” links religious ideology to state policy, recasting expansionist demands as security necessities tied to the state’s survival, rather than matters of intellectual and doctrinal conviction.
Through this process, political questions open to discussion and negotiation — above all, control over land and regional expansion — are presented as inevitable responses to existential threats requiring exceptional measures.
Israel’s withdrawals from southern Lebanon in 2000 and the Gaza Strip in 2005 have been used to reinforce this argument by presenting them as evidence that withdrawing from territory can create new security threats. In this way, “securitization” serves two parallel purposes: broadening public acceptance of policies of expansion and regional control, and presenting measures that would ordinarily remain politically and legally contentious as security necessities.
From the settlement movement to government institutions: The report argues that the most important shift in the project of settlement expansion has been the move by its associated movements and political currents from influencing and pressuring state institutions to directly participating in their administration and decision-making. Personnel whose political formation took place within settlement organisations and hardline right-wing parties have entered government and the bureaucracy, allowing ideological positions to become official policies and binding executive decisions.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is one of the clearest examples of this shift. Since February 2023, he has been given broad civilian powers within the system governing the West Bank. These powers have given the ideological currents he represents greater influence over decisions on land planning, licensing, resource allocation, road construction and infrastructure development, as well as the regularisation and legalisation of some settlement outposts.
The military as a means of imposing and consolidating control: The military is the most visible and influential means of implementing this project on the ground. It can translate the religious, political and institutional foundations outlined above into concrete realities, imposing control over land, protecting gains and extending Israeli influence beyond internationally recognised borders.
Under this approach, Israeli security extends beyond protecting the state’s geographical borders. Its security sphere is redefined to encompass neighbouring states’ territory and military capabilities, allowing Israel to restrict their armament and movements, establish buffer zones and conduct pre-emptive operations across its borders.
From Palestine to the region: The widening risks of expansion
The interlocking ideological, political and military foundations of Israel’s expansion strategy have consequences and pose risks beyond the occupied Palestinian territories, threatening the security and stability of countries across the region and perhaps further afield. The issue extends beyond Israel’s accelerating expansion in Gaza and the West Bank. It now has broader regional dimensions, aimed at reshaping the balance of power and regional arrangements for security and influence in line with Israeli interests.
According to the report, Israel’s expansionist policies undermine surrounding states’ sovereignty and reduce their ability to exercise security and military authority within their own territories. This approach spreads instability, weakens national institutions and deepens security vacuums that allow repeated external intervention. Syria and Lebanon are two of the clearest examples of this strategy in practice.
The risks also extend to the eastern Mediterranean, where considerations of influence and alliances intersect with competition over energy and gas resources and maritime security arrangements. They reach as far as the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, where the report tracks Israeli efforts to strengthen its presence and influence in strategically important areas.
These moves raise questions about the implications for Arab national security, particularly given their connection to vital shipping lanes and international trade networks, and the overlap between security and military considerations, economic interests, and regional and international alliances.
What constrains Israeli ambitions?
The report challenges the image of absolute Israeli military superiority being promoted. While Israel undeniably possesses advanced military and technological capabilities, it argues, structural and strategic constraints prevent that superiority from becoming absolute, sustainable regional hegemony.
The gap between battlefield gains and political influence: The ability to target adversaries and weaken their military capabilities, the report argues, does not necessarily confer the ability to subdue them politically or impose a stable, accepted and lasting regional order.
Military superiority allows Israel to impose facts on the ground and security restrictions on certain states or forces. Turning those gains into lasting regional dominance, however, requires political, institutional and economic arrangements that other parties recognise or accept to some degree — something military force alone cannot guarantee.
The report draws on the concept of “negative security,” which is based on achieving security by depriving surrounding actors of certain military or strategic capabilities, rather than building a system of mutual security.
The problem is that this approach may temporarily neutralise some threats while also helping to reproduce the sources of conflict and hostility. Military superiority itself thus becomes a factor in perpetuating instability rather than ending it.
US support: A pillar of superiority and a constraint on autonomy: The report regards the US as a structural pillar of Israeli military superiority, rather than simply an ally that provides political and military support when needed. Any substantial decline in that backing would affect Israel’s ability to maintain its superiority, particularly in prolonged wars on multiple fronts.
Long-term military aid, intelligence cooperation, missile defence systems and the US commitment to preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge are all essential to strengthening Tel Aviv’s operational capacity.
Yet, according to the report, this close relationship also helps define the limits of Israeli power. Prolonged, high-intensity wars require levels of US backing that Israel would struggle to replace on its own.
The report also identifies shifts in US public opinion, particularly among younger generations, that could eventually raise the political cost of continued unconditional support. These shifts are not necessarily sufficient, however, to produce a rapid change in the nature of the strategic alliance between the two countries.
The cost of war and the limits of endurance: The report notes that Israel’s extensive technological superiority has not overcome the traditional constraints on sustaining military power. These include reliance on reserve forces, attrition among personnel, repeated mobilisations, and the economic and military burdens of continued combat operations.
These challenges become more acute in prolonged conflicts or simultaneous conflicts on several fronts, putting growing pressure on personnel, finances and the ability to maintain operational readiness.
Advanced weapons systems and the capacity to conduct highly effective military operations do not necessarily confer the ability to fight long wars of attrition without costs or constraints. This places practical limits on Israeli military ambitions.
Expansion creates counterweights: The report argues that greater use of military force, repeated cross-border interventions and efforts to weaken neighbouring states’ military capabilities may produce results contrary to Israel’s declared security objectives. Rather than entrench a regional environment subject to Israeli superiority, these policies may push affected actors to reorder their security priorities, develop their defensive capabilities and expand their regional and international partnerships and alliances, creating counterweights that limit Israel’s freedom of action.
In this sense, Tel Aviv’s short-term operational gains may become long-term strategic burdens as hostility grows, the cost of maintaining military superiority rises and more forces seek to counterbalance or reduce its impact.
Control over land and the challenge of governing: Israel operates in several arenas, notably Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. Each has distinct legal, political and social conditions, actors and internal balances of power, making it extremely difficult to apply a single model of control to all of them.
The ability to intervene militarily, conduct large-scale strikes or impose zones of influence and control does not necessarily confer the ability to manage local institutions, ensure political and security stability, or maintain control over the choices of populations and neighbouring states.
The report therefore distinguishes between imposing a fait accompli by force and turning it into stable political and security arrangements. It argues that military superiority, however great, cannot by itself produce a lasting regional order subject to Israeli will. That also requires legitimacy, political acceptance and institutional stability — none of which can be secured by military force alone.
Ankara and Tel Aviv: Two visions of the regional order
Competition between Türkiye and Israel is a central strategic theme of the report. It argues that their differences now extend beyond the Palestinian issue and bilateral tensions arising from particular developments. The two countries are engaged in a deeper structural competition over what regional security means, how to achieve it and the order each seeks to establish.
Türkiye’s vision rests on the premise that security and stability depend on strong, stable states with national institutions capable of protecting their sovereignty and territorial integrity and strengthening their political, security and military capacities.
It also involves building networks of regional cooperation and a range of alliances that ensure independent decision-making and reduce the likelihood of external domination. The Israeli approach, by contrast, seeks to entrench military superiority, constrain the capabilities of adversaries and regional actors, and preserve broad freedom to act and intervene in neighbouring states whenever Tel Aviv perceives a potential threat to its security or strategic interests.
The report presents Syria as the clearest practical example of this competition, because it is where Turkish and Israeli security and strategic interests intersect most directly.
Ankara seeks to support the rebuilding of Syrian state institutions, on the premise that a stable Syrian state capable of managing its own security and military affairs is a basic guarantee for curbing armed groups’ activities and cross-border threats.
Tel Aviv’s actions, meanwhile, aim to weaken Syrian military capabilities and prevent the rebuilding of defence institutions in ways that could eventually limit Israeli freedom of action or allow Damascus to develop effective security and military partnerships with Ankara.
Competition between the two countries extends beyond Palestine, Syria and Lebanon into broader geopolitical arenas. These include the eastern Mediterranean, where Turkish interests intersect with Israel’s growing security and military relationship with Greece and Cyprus, and the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. In the latter two areas, the report tracks Israeli efforts to expand its presence and influence in strategically and logistically important locations connected to the security of maritime routes and international trade and energy networks.
Social cohesion is another important dimension of this competition and a central pillar of the Turkish approach to national security. The report stresses the importance of strengthening political, social and economic ties among Turkish, Kurdish and Arab communities, particularly in Türkiye, Syria and Iraq. Its premise is that ethnic and sectarian divisions and social fragility give external powers greater scope to intervene and exploit local conflicts in pursuit of their own interests.
By contrast, it warns against attempts to exploit these divisions for regional influence. It links this concern to Israeli efforts to benefit from internal fractures and weaken the cohesion of surrounding states, increasing the scope for external intervention and reducing their ability to build independent security and political systems.
Six paths to containing Israeli expansion
The report concludes with strategic recommendations that the Turkish National Intelligence Academy believes could provide a framework for Ankara’s response to current regional challenges. It gives particular attention to Israeli efforts to expand influence and control in sensitive strategic areas and sectors that intersect directly or indirectly with Turkish interests and national security considerations.
Foremost among these recommendations is strengthening neighbouring states’ sovereignty and national institutions by supporting their political, security and institutional capacities, particularly in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. The aim is to reduce the security and political vacuums that allow external intervention and the exploitation of internal weakness in pursuit of regional agendas.
The report also emphasises the importance of diversifying security partnerships and alliances. It recommends maintaining existing strategic relations with Western powers while developing regional cooperation that offers independent alternatives and reduces dependence on a single security system or subordination to a balance of power imposed by any one regional actor.
It also calls for flexible, multilateral partnerships in defence, technology, energy, industry and maritime security. These would give Türkiye more strategic room for manoeuvre and strengthen its ability to influence the regional balance of power without becoming involved in forming rigid blocs built around direct confrontation.
These efforts should proceed alongside measures to strengthen political and social cohesion within regional states and reduce ethnic and sectarian divisions. Such divisions can weaken states internally or give external powers opportunities to intervene and exploit local tensions to reshape patterns of influence and control.
The academy also identifies greater economic interdependence among regional countries as an important strategic response to current changes. It recommends expanding transport, energy and trade projects and developing economic corridors and regional connectivity networks. These would deepen mutual interests and economic interdependence and reduce the chances of particular actors monopolising trade routes and influence.
Finally, the report stresses the need to avoid creating a rival project of hegemony in response to Israeli influence. Instead, it advocates a more pluralistic and balanced regional order based on states’ independence, stronger domestic capacities and a wider distribution of power and influence. This would prevent one form of hegemony from simply replacing another and lay the foundations for security and political arrangements better able to deliver stability and reduce the likelihood of external intervention and recurring regional crises.