Middle East observers alarmed by US claim Israel's borders are 'illusions'

US official's comments to media suggest Israel has scope to chip away at other nations' land

Israeli tanks near the Druze village of Majdal Shams on the border with Syria in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. EPA

Middle East experts say changing national borders in the region would cause chaos as US President Donald Trump and close ally Israel push policies to reshape alliances.

The warnings came after a US official, quoted anonymously in The Hill, said the region’s borders are “illusory”. The comments came during a briefing earlier in the week on the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria and push for it to establish diplomatic ties with Israel.

Praising the absence of regional borders during the Ottoman Empire, whose collapse in the early 20th century paved the way for the Middle East to be divided into nation-states, the official said: “[The] Ottoman Empire did not exist in nation-states, right?

“They had a centralised government but they allowed each of the regions to operate independently in an appellate system. So where we’re going can be something new. The nation-states haven’t worked very well.”

[Without] recognition of sovereign territory, the region is doomed to continued hostility, belligerence and war

Nimrod Novik,
former adviser to Shimon Peres

The comments raise the prospect that the Trump administration, a close partner of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, could be open to territorial changes as the US President tries to build a grand regional strategy after 21 months of destruction and chaos during the Gaza war.

Mr Trump has a history of championing controversial geopolitical moves and plans, which have been criticised as destabilising. Since coming into office for a second time, he has endorsed proposals that involve redrawing the global map, including the US annexing Canada and Greenland.

In the Middle East, Mr Trump has repeated support for a plan to empty Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and create a US-owned "Riviera".

Hazem Ayyad, a veteran Jordanian political commentator, said the remarks by the US official appear to endorse the possible desire of several countries to change the colonial-era borders of the Middle East to their advantage. Mr Ayyad mentioned Turkey, Israel and Syria.

“The ideas have not politically matured," he added.

Yet floating the idea of new borders could be a way to pressure Lebanon, particularly Hezbollah, to deal with the American and Israeli disarmament demands and ideas for a possible peace.

Mr Ayyad said such an approach would “create more chaos” in the Middle East. “If the Americans open this door, it cannot be closed,” he said. “It will have repercussions that will ultimately become dangerous to them.”

The site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people, in Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza. Reuters

The US official quoted in The Hill said borders were less important than building trust between enemies: “It’s not really the line, it’s who’s threatening each other and facing each other over that line, and that’s what the issue is – it doesn’t matter what the line is, if you don’t trust each other on the other side of the line, that’s going to continue forever.”

Boundaries of peace

Referring to Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, the official said: “How do we just get to the cessation of hostilities without reinventing these points of view that never worked for 100 years? And that starts with a kind of Sinai type of agreement that existed between Israel and Egypt in the past, and saying, like, why don’t we stop fighting about what the line is?”

Nimrod Novik, former senior adviser to the late Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, criticised the proposals of the US official, saying Israel’s decades-long peace with former enemies Egypt and Jordan underlines the importance of parties recognising each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“However artificial and externally imposed regional boundaries set over 100 years ago, the anonymous senior official has no clue about what has transpired in our region over the past century and about what it takes to expand the boundaries of peace in our region,” said Mr Novik, who is now a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin at the signing of the Camp David Accords in September 1978. Reuters

“Absent recognition of sovereign territory, the region is doomed to continued hostility, belligerence and war."

On the topic of US efforts to get Israel and Syria to establish diplomatic ties, Mr Novik said expecting the Arab state’s new leadership to sign a peace treaty “while Israel makes permanent its occupation of Syrian territory is a dangerous illusion”.

Last year Israel breached a 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries' armies, after rebel forces toppled Syrian president Bashar Al Assad in December.

Mr Trump has since moved closer towards an alliance with Syria’s new rulers, who used to belong to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which was once designated by the US as a terrorist organisation.

“Revitalising and updating security arrangements that prevent friction and misunderstandings, like those forged by Henry Kissinger in 1974, is one thing. But under these conditions, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty is not in the cards,” Mr Novik said.

The National also spoke to Rakha Ahmed Hassan, a former Egyptian deputy foreign minister and current member of the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Council, a state-run think tank.

The election of Mr Trump to the US presidency, Mr Hassan said, has tipped the balance further in Israel’s favour, which is why comments that “in the past would have been confined to private rooms between Republicans or in right-wing forums are now being discussed openly and with impunity".

He added: "They have never taken our borders, identities and territorial sovereignty seriously and now they don’t even have to pretend to."

This shift in tone, though deeply concerning, represents attitudes held by Israel and its western backers for decades, Mr Hassan said.

"Israel has for decades had plans to expand in the Middle East and now it has the international backing and regional acquiescence to effectively reshape the region. This is the execution of plans for Israel’s expansion that have been in its national conversation since 1948 and even before.

"But back then, Arab countries posed more of an obstacle and Arab nationalist governments all over the region had stood up to Israel’s ambitions, making even the prospect of outright US support for the greater Israel plan somewhat unfeasible or inconvenient.

“These governments have been replaced one after the other leading up to today, when there is such disunity between Arab states that countries neighbouring Palestine watched a genocide unfold and took no steps to interfere.

“The Arab world is now facing a more critical threat than it did in 1948 when it had robust movements that could better counteract Israel’s ambitions, which fall within the purview of settler colonialism,” Mr Hassan said.

A senior Turkish official told The National that the US under Mr Trump "is pursuing a new world order, a new Middle East order, a new trade order, a new political and geopolitical order".

"Within this framework, Israel must also redefine itself and clarify its position in the new order that will emerge," he said.

In Lebanon, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah "also believes that the borders are not real", added one politician whose interests broadly align with the US and who is opposed to Hezbollah. "It believes in a bigger nation that starts with Iran.”

“We have parties here like the Syrian Social Nationalist Party who don’t believe in the borders of Lebanon, for example, nor the borders of Syria, Jordan or Cyprus," the politician told The National.

But the politician said "it doesn’t really mean anything unless there is a plan set forward to change these borders".

"And this is only a plan that can be implemented by major powers and with the UN being present."