Abstract

This review examines the recurring claim that Israeli and U.S. policy, especially during confrontation with Iran and allied groups, indirectly advances a “Greater Israel” project. It separates three layers: the historical roots of maximalist territorial ideas, the actual security practice of the modern Israeli state, and the way regional audiences interpret wars across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and the Gulf through themes of dispossession and strategic redesign. While earlier Revisionist Zionist thought did include expansive ideas, these cannot be treated as identical to current official policy. Still, repeated wars, settlement expansion, U.S. Israeli alignment, and Gulf insecurity have strengthened perceptions that regional conflict often works in Israel’s strategic favor.