ACCORDING to Al-Jazeera, 73233 innocents have been martyred in Gaza with 173707 injured. Moreover, 3689 Israeli violations have been recorded during the so-called ceasefire. Situation in Lebanon is also stark. Over 4000 peoples are killed and more than a million displaced. While the world resorts to repetitive, hollow condemnations, the genocide in Gaza continues unabated and the barbarism in Lebanon goes unchecked. The military campaign in Iran has flared up once more. In the larger picture, the “Greater Israel” project is not being thwarted; it is actively adapting, thriving and inching closer towards Türkiye and the broader Levant. Israel’s hardline leadership has successfully leveraged security vacuums such as the total collapse of Syria’s state infrastructure to permanently expand its military footprint and push its borders outward.
This expansionist push is no longer a matter of geopolitical speculation; it has been explicitly validated by the political elite in Tel Aviv. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett openly declared that “Türkiye is the new Iran,” warning of its rising influence and actively framing Ankara as a critical strategic threat to be neutralized. This is further compound by the rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu himself. In an interview in2011, Netanyahu has repeatedly signaled that the long-term existential targets of the Zionist state are not merely localized factions, but the regional heavyweights: Iran, Pakistan and now Türkiye. By explicitly identifying this trio as the core pillars of resistance to the “Greater Israel” plan, the Zionist state has made its roadmap clear. It is a systematic plan to dismantle any sovereign entity capable of standing against their eschatology, leaving no doubt that if these three states do not act in unison today, they will be picked apart one by one tomorrow.
This leaves the global community facing a critical question: Will the world remain silent? Pakistan, historically a fierce defender of the Palestinian cause, successfully led the Islamabad Talks and rejected heavy pressure from Washington to normalize relations under the Abraham Accords.
Yet, Pakistan’s ability to project long-term, impactful resistance is severely constrained. Deeply entangled in the suffocating clutches of IMF structural adjustment programs and beholden to international lobbies, Islamabad’s sovereign decision-making is constantly under pressure. For Pakistan to play a genuinely transformative role, it must break free from these economic shackles and leverage its unique military strength and strategic defence relationships with both the Gulf States and Iran to form a more resilient, unified front.
Furthermore, the responsibility cannot fall on regional Muslim states alone. A true disruption of this expansionist blueprint requires decisive action from emerging global poles like Russia and China. As the Western-backed international order loses its moral authority, Moscow and Beijing have a profound strategic interest in preventing a total Middle Eastern collapse that would give Israel and its allies unchecked hegemony over global energy corridors like the Strait of Hormuz.
Until these global powers move beyond diplomatic rhetoric and implement concrete economic, technological and military deterrents, the path toward a wider, catastrophic conflict remains wide open. Peace in a world where such expansionist designs are allowed to prosper remains exceptionally fragile, demanding a radical shift from passive condemnation to active, unified resistance. There would be either Peace or Greater Israel!
—The writer is an alumnus of QAU, MPhil scholar and a freelance columnist, based in Islamabad.
