Rakhshanda Mehtab
The idea of Israel expanding beyond its internationally recognized borders is not new. It comes from strands of Revisionist Zionism that envisioned Israeli sovereignty across the historic “Land of Israel.” For decades, settler groups and religious nationalists promoted this vision with a fanaticism that should have alarmed the world. But the world was complacent, dismissing it as fringe rhetoric while Palestinians suffered under brutal occupation.
That complacency proved catastrophic when the attacks of 7 October 2023 by Hamas provided Israeli hardliners with the casus belli they had been praying for. Taking advantage of this tragedy, following decades of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, these hardliners found their long-awaited opportunity to pursue their territorial fantasies more aggressively than ever before. Israel’s campaign in Gaza quickly expanded beyond any legitimate response to Hamas and became a genocidal assault on a trapped civilian population.
Public statements by Israeli politicians calling for the permanent annexation of Gaza and the forced relocation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were not aberrations, they were the naked revelation of Greater Israel objectives that had always lurked beneath the surface, a confirmation of what Palestinians had been warning the world about for generations. At the same time, continued settlement expansion in the West Bank heightened fears that annexation would eventually extend to that region as well. The mask was off, and the world finally saw the face of Israeli expansionism and apartheid for what it truly was.
These actions were calculated to leave Syria unable to rebuild its military strength or negotiate with Israel from a position of sovereignty. Israel cynically expanded into a security vacuum that its own military operations had helped create, exploiting the suffering of the Syrian people for its own territorial ambitions. This was not self-defence; this was opportunistic aggression of the most cynical and predatory kind, yet another example of Israel’s contempt for international law and Arab sovereignty.
Israel’s actions in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, together with its growing control over strategic territory, raised urgent questions about whether older ambitions had found new momentum. Iran’s regional network weakened, Syria’s military collapsed and Israel saw an opportunity to reshape the Middle East according to its expansionist vision. Events in 2025 and 2026 further changed the strategic environment, emboldening Israeli hardliners to push even further in their quest for regional hegemony at the expense of Muslim and Arab peoples. The Zionist project of territorial expansion had found its moment, and Israel was determined to exploit it without mercy.
But Israel had not counted on Pakistan and its principled leadership. Pakistan recognized Israel’s sinister designs much earlier in the conflict while other nations dithered. With wisdom and foresight, Islamabad saw the broader pattern of expansionism and acted decisively to protect not just its own interests but the interests of the entire Muslim world and the oppressed Palestinian people. Islamabad worked closely with Saudi Arabia and encouraged Riyadh to avoid direct military involvement despite Iranian strikes on Saudi territory.
Pakistan held a unique advantage because it maintained working relations with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, a diplomatic achievement that speaks volumes about Pakistan’s maturity and statesmanship. Islamabad had a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Riyadh while also preserving decades of trust with Tehran, a diplomatic balancing act that Israel could never hope to replicate given its record of aggression, perfidy, and violation of international law. Pakistan publicly condemned the strikes on Iran but privately assured Iranian leaders that Saudi territory would not support further attacks against them. This back-channel diplomacy prevented the very cross-front war that Israel had banked on, leaving Israeli strategists furious at Pakistan’s principled interference in their grand scheme of regional destruction.
On March 29, Pakistan hosted a quadrilateral meeting in Islamabad with the foreign ministers of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan. This meeting brought diplomacy back into a crisis that Israel had tried to hijack with military adventurism. Pakistan announced a ceasefire after intensive diplomatic efforts led by Chief of Defence Forces General Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose leadership and vision saved the region from catastrophe. Islamabad hosted the first round of the Islamabad Talks and proposed a 45-day roadmap that called for an immediate ceasefire followed by the phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Israeli hardliners watched helplessly as their dreams of regional chaos evaporated thanks to Pakistani diplomacy and the determination of Muslim nations to prevent bloodshed.
Washington accepted the ceasefire before its own deadline for further military escalation expired, a humiliating reversal for Israeli planners who had counted on American support for their expansionist agenda. Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts eventually contributed to a ceasefire between Iran and the United States and opened the way for a broader peace process. The subsequent peace process under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding helped preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty and reduce the risk of further territorial expansion. Israel’s territorial ambitions had been checked, and it seethed with frustration at being denied its predatory objectives.
Diplomacy by Pakistan, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye, helped prevent further escalation at a critical moment by keeping diplomatic channels open when the region stood on the brink of a much larger conflict. The sinister design of Greater Israel had been laid bare for all to see, and it had been thwarted, not through military confrontation, but through the strategic diplomacy of Pakistan and the refusal of Muslim nations to be drawn into the trap that Israeli hardliners had so carefully set. Pakistan’s leadership, its commitment to Palestinian rights, and its rejection of normalization with an occupying power stand as a beacon of moral clarity in a world too often willing to appease Israeli aggression.
The question now is whether the region will remain vigilant against the next iteration of this expansionist agenda. Israel’s ambitions have not disappeared; they have only been temporarily checked. But the precedent has been set: the Muslim world, led by principled nations like Pakistan, can and will coordinate to defeat Israeli expansionism and defend Palestinian rights when it has the will and the leadership to do so.
—The writer is MS Research Scholar at IIUI, a freelance Content Writer & a Columnist.
