Events in the war involving Israel within Gaza and the West Bank have shocked the world for the past 22 months since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Israel’s response initially received widespread support, but its atrocities since have drawn massive and unprecedented numbers of demonstrations in major cities around the world, calling for a ceasefire and an end to genocide.

Western leaders look on while expounding strong rhetoric which turns out to be meaningless since no action is taken. However, it appears the nightmare is about to get far worse, if the statements of Israeli leaders are realised without action being taken.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office recently announced that Israel would “take control of Gaza” as the Israeli Army prepares for “a major ground offensive”. In an interview on i24 TV, Netanyahu stated he very much supports the view of a “Greater Israel”, saying he believes he is on “a historic and spiritual mission”. Greater Israel refers to an expansion of Israel beyond the borders given to them by the United Nations in 1948.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezeal Smotrich was the main speaker at a conference called ‘The Riviera in Gaza: From vision to Reality’ recently. The plan openly calls for the removal of two million Gazans and was extensively reported by the Guardian newspaper. Smotrich has even presented the plan to the Israeli Knesset. The irony is his own home is built on illegally occupied land.

The vision of a Greater Israel is the most frightening thing of all. That “dream” claims that Greater Israel is from the Nile to the Euphrates. The horrifying fact is that designated area includes all Palestinian lands, all of Jordan, parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. If this sounds crazy that’s because it is!

Consider that Israel, after over 77 years of trying to drive Palestinians off its land, has still not completed that task. In fact, the biggest atrocities seem about to start. There are over five million Palestinians still left in the West Bank and Gaza. The combined population of the countries which lands are designated to be “conquered”, or is it “cleansed”, is well over 250 million people. If this mad vision is not stopped by the world, we will be condemning the world to centuries of inhumanity and genocide and obviously a gross deterioration of humanity itself.

Israelis themselves will suffer from this. There are voices in Israel protesting their Government’s actions and there are Jews all over the world who protest that Zionism is a political movement and does not represent Judaism. If we reflect for a moment on just some of the atrocities that have been documented in Gaza, it shows you how truly frightening the prospect of a “Greater Israel” is:

1) All hospitals severely damaged or destroyed with bombs and heavy artillery and senior medical doctors killed or imprisoned

2) All universities destroyed along with hundreds of schools

3) Over 90 per cent of building and civil infrastructure destroyed or severely damaged

4) Over 1,800 health-care workers and hundreds of UN workers killed

5) Over 200 journalists murdered in Gaza alone

6) Over 1,500 civilians shot and killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) when going for food at designated food distribution sites.

7) The Lancelet estimates deaths well in excess of 200,000 and not the official count of over 60,000, which only accounts for bodies recovered and identified and not those missing or buried under the rubble.

For the purposes of this article the number of war crimes is too numerable to list.

Dozens of highly respected international organisations have called the actions of the IDF genocide, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, UN Special Committee on the war, Francesca Albanese, and the Special UN Rapporteur. Dozens of countries have also labelled Israel’s action a genocide . Indeed the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice have citied Israel’s war crimes and warrants have been issued for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Galant. These are but a few of the worldwide condemnations.

Now, in a joint press conference, the two leading Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, labelled the war a genocide and called for immediate action. In fact, many Jewish scholars have led this call on genocide. Among them are two famous Israeli professors who specialise in the Holocaust and genocide — Omar Bartov and Amos Goldberg.

Abraham “Avrum” Burg, former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, speaker of the Knesset and interim president of Israel, has reportedly urged “one million Jews” to file war crimes complaints against Israel .

The worldwide outrage is clear, Netanyahu himself, apart from the ICC warrants, faces many criminal charges in Israeli courts and is disliked by the vast majority of Israelis. So how does he continue to expand the atrocities and will the world be complacent and allow the next phase of Greater Israel? Perhaps that answer can be found in the massive profits that these wars generate and the blatant stealing of Gaza’s very rich resources of oil and gas.

The question is: Will the world allow this nightmare to unfold? The next few months will either see an increase in atrocities, opening the window to centuries of the same or hopefully the world comes to its senses and brings an end to savagery and brutality and a return to humanity.

It’s not complicated. An international peacekeeping force can protect all civilians while an international investigation and tribunal could bring war criminals on either side to justice. This should not be an idea, it is an obligation, and under the UN charter the UN has the collective power to do so.

A picture taken from a position on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing in the besieged Palestinian territory following Israeli strikes on June 10, 2025. (Photo: AFP)