What’s really behind the war?

South Africa provides no strategic guide. The indigenous population is neither needed nor wanted. Zionism has two key strategic aims: ethnic cleansing and maintaining regional hegemony, Moshé Machover explains

Events are moving very fast and I assume that most people are following the news. But I want to speak about what is really behind the multi-faceted war in the Middle East (ie, several wars going on at the same time).

The short answer is the essential, all-important, long-term strategic aims of Israel, so it is not just the present Israeli government. The first of these strategic aims is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the annexation of the remaining parts of the ‘Promised Land’. The second is establishing and reinforcing Israeli regional hegemony.

When it comes to the details, it is important to remember what lies behind them. For example, most commentators look at individual episodes, such as what happened on October 7 last year, and this is where we see the effect of Israeli propaganda. For such commentators it is as though the whole conflict in the Middle East started with the Hamas attack on Israel a year ago.

The better commentators start from further back – from, let us say, the June war of 1967 – and some of the more thorough-going ones start from even further back. But this is the wrong way of looking at it – let me quote where this kind of approach leads you. I’m quoting a Guardian editorial on Israel’s war in Lebanon. This is a very good editorial actually, but it says: “Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have no long-term plan in mind, no clear strategy for an exit” (October 1).

This is a conclusion that you come to if you look at this episode individually, out of its historical context: a chain, not of ‘episode after episode’, but an evolution of events since the beginning of the Zionist project of colonisation. The commentators – even the better ones – look at each event as a separate item, a separate episode; and they ask, ‘What is the endgame of this war?’ It is as if this war has its own isolated endgame, so what is its ‘exit strategy’?

First principles

Let us get back to first principles: look at the fundamental nature of the Zionist colonisation project, and from examining these first principles we can make some important deductions, because Israel acts in each episode with a view to advancing its long-term strategic aims. And therefore we can predict quite a lot with a high probability. Of course, you cannot predict everything with certainty. There are contingencies; but the main outline of the unfolding strategy follows from the fundamental principles underlying the Zionist colonisation project right from its beginning.

So let us start with principle number one. This is something I keep repeating every time I speak about the conflict in the Middle East, because it is a fundamental key to understanding the nature of Zionist colonisation. The Zionist model of colonisation is not the same as, and not similar to, that of South Africa. A lot of people are confused by the recognition that what you have in Israel and its occupied territories is a kind of apartheid, and the colonial conflict that most people remember from their own lifetime is the one in South Africa, because this is the most recent one (older people may remember the decolonisation of Algeria). They are also, I think, led a little bit astray by the academic description of both the South African colonisation and the Zionist colonisation of Palestine as ‘settler colonialism’. This is in the academic post-colonial discourse, and they put Zionist colonisation and South Africa under a common heading, as if they were of the same kind.

In this context, I think we should apply a Marxist analysis of colonialism. Here the key to understanding the nature of a colonial conflict is the political economy of the colonial state. The mode of production, if you like: who is doing the major part of direct production? Who are the main direct producers? And if you look at South Africa, you will see that under apartheid – as now – the major direct production was being done by the indigenous people, not by the settlers. The settlers did some, but mostly they were in the position of exploiters: ie, not engaged in direct material production, which was done by the indigenous people.

This is not the same at all with the Zionist colonisation of Palestine – a more apposite comparison is not with South Africa, but with Australia or North America. Therefore what we should be looking at is the process of colonisation, as it unfolded in Australia or North America – in the United States, for example – and you will see that, since the indigenous people were not needed as exploitable labour-power, they were surplus to requirement: the colonisers, rather than exploiting their labour-power, focused on getting rid of them by various means, various forms of ethnic cleansing – and this, of course, was a very long process.

Most people who think nowadays about colonisation do not have in mind these old forms – the Zionist case is, as it were, an anachronism. It started doing in the 20th century more or less what was completed in Australia and in North America long, long ago.

The process in the United States is known as the Indian Wars, and the individual episodes of the conflict resulted in the part-extermination and other forms of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people. The Indian Wars took up the better part of three centuries. It was also a long process in Australia, but not quite so long; conditions were very different, because the indigenous people there had a mode of production that was much more ancient than in North America. In Australia it took a bit more than a hundred years, so also quite a long time.

All this was not something that was effected in a short span of time. It was a long process, composed of many individual episodes. The Indian Wars were not just one occurrence: they were a chain of events. And if you look at an individual Indian war and ask, ‘What was the end game of this war? What is the exit strategy?’, that would be a meaningless question, because you cannot look at each Indian War as a separate episode. If you look at each episode individually, you do not get a sense of where it is all leading to – you have to see it as part of a long-term process.

Jewish majority

Now, if you look at the colonisation of the so-called Promised Land, you can see that we are now in the middle of this process. The long-term aim is a well established Jewish majority in the totality of this area – which is, at the very least, the territory “between the river and the sea”, to use a convenient description. But it may actually denote a little bit more than that. People forget about the Israeli annexation of part of Syria in the Golan Heights, which was also ethnically cleansed of the majority of its Arab population and given to Israeli settlers to colonise.

So what we are looking at is a whole continuum of attempts to get rid of the Palestinian Arabs and annex the whole of Palestine. Now, of course, from the point of view of the colonisers this process requires, or is optimally done, in a situation of ‘crisis’. Typically, ethnic cleansing is something that is carried out in conditions of war.

This means that the Zionist project, and today the Israeli state, is in a situation of quasi-permanent war. Now individual episodes of war may be initiated by Israel, completely unprovoked, or can come as a response to an apparent or real provocation. They can come as a surprise.

Take the Suez war in 1956, which was initiated by Israel, France and Britain out of the blue. It was their own initiative, not a response to any warlike provocation by Egypt or anybody else. It was a premeditated plot by these countries. But such an event can come as an apparent response to a ‘threat of war’, as in June 1967, when Israel responded to what it depicted, or what appeared to be, the threat of an attack by Egypt. Israel acted – according to its own propaganda – in order to preempt a war. But the reality was, as it transpired later, that it was not in any danger of being attacked at the time.

Or, of course, an actual event can come as a real surprise, as did October 7 2023. But in every case, whether it was a premeditated, deliberate provocation by Israel or a response to an attack by others upon it, Israel made use of the conflict for furthering its fundamental strategic aims.

So I think we should look at the current war – or the bunch of wars that are going on – as part of the long chain of wars that are aimed, among other things, at achieving the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and annexing the whole of Palestine to Israel. This is the nature of the underlying strategy driving the present series of conflicts, and we can predict that this will go on – Israel will continue with its current line of action: that is to say, attempting to accomplish the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the annexation of their territory. Of course, nothing can be predicted with absolute certainty, but I think we can predict this with a high degree of probability.

What cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty is whether Israel will succeed in completing this work-in-progress of colonising Palestine and establishing a Jewish-supremacist, Jewish-majority state there. This is still an open question. The historical examples which I cited – namely, North America and Australia – point in the direction of success. Both of them were eventually successful in accomplishing the end result of ethnic cleansing and reducing the indigenous people to minorities incapable of retrieving their original homeland.

Different century

There are, however, countervailing factors. First of all, we are now in the 21st century and things are rather different. There is a much greater weight to world public opinion – not enough, but still some weight – especially outside the imperialist countries. Moreover, in both North America and Australia the colonisers faced a pre-modern, isolated society, divided into many ethnic groups, and the indigenous people were isolated. In Palestine the indigenous Palestinian Arabs are a single, modern, national formation. And, moreover, they are part of a larger national formation – that of the pan-Arab nation of the Middle East. And so far, unlike in North America and Australia, where the huge, mainly European, immigration of settlers swamped the indigenous people numerically, the Zionist project has not managed to do the same. Palestine is not an attractive destination and in any case the Zionist project was only interested in Jewish immigration. So the potential reserve of immigrants was quite small: it was only Jews who were either ideologically motivated or who had no other choice of destination when they had to flee their country of origin.

The second strategic aim that I wanted to mention follows from the unique nature of Zionist colonisation (something that, as far as I know, has no counterpart in the history of colonisation), which is that the Zionist settlers had no metropole. If you look at the cases that I have taken for comparison, in both Australia and North America the settlers were mostly citizens of the metropole – in this case, Britain – that sent them to colonise those territories and provided them with the support and military might that was required in the colonisation process.

So in that sense Zionist colonisation is unique. Having no metropole, no mother country that sent them there, Zionist colonisers needed a surrogate mother – and that was there right from the beginning, as you can see in the writings of the early leaders of the Zionist project, who envisaged the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population. They also discussed ways to compensate for the absence of a mother country. The way to obtain, as it were, a surrogate mother is to make a deal with the empire that dominated the Middle East. From the beginning the Zionists acquired a franchise from the leading empire dominating the region at any given time. In other words, the Zionist state acts under licence as a franchise of the leading hegemonic empire or imperialist power.

That is not to say that the Zionist state, or the Zionist project before the creation of Israel, is made up of mercenaries: ie, passive soldiers who do what they are told by whoever hires them. That is not quite the case with the Zionist project! It is proactive – more like a quasi-independent contractor – and in this capacity it is striving for regional monopoly, striving to be the sole contractor in the region in which it is located. Hence the second strategic aim is regional hegemony.

I am quoting here from a description on Facebook by Michael Karadjis, which, I think, is very appropriate:

Israel is the only real US ally in the region. And, the more extreme Israel is, the more it can only be a US ally. Neither Russia nor China could support Israel to such an extent without losing their alliances with the Saudis, Gulf, Egypt, etc, whereas the US, with its immensely greater military power, can. Of course, under this Israeli regime, it goes further than the US would prefer from the perspective of restoring some semblance of regional stability. But it is essentially bound to Israel. Israel also needs to show the US its power as a regional ‘deterrent’. The US may have preferred Netanyahu didn’t blow up Lebanon, because the US does not need ‘deterrence’ from Hezbollah (or from Iran). But, by demonstrating its incredible deterrent power in relation to the pinprick nuisance Hezbollah was posing on its border, it shows the US its potential future use, as a good investment.

In fact, by demonstrating its power, Israel shows the United States its potential as a good investment. That is to say, if the big mafia boss wants to find a local franchise-holder for himself, then the best bid a local mafioso can make for getting this franchise is by showing he is the sole mafioso in that specific area – the contract goes to the fiercest, the strongest, the most aggressive bidder for that role.

Strategy meeting

Look at the various wars that Israel has been engaging in. All have been used – or attempted to be used – not only to accomplish ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, but to assert or reinforce Israel’s regional hegemony. This applies to all the wars that I have mentioned so far, but here I want to focus on a war which, remarkably, is very little discussed nowadays: the Suez War.

It is, I think, neglected, because somehow it seems not to have succeeded. It failed because the colluders in this war – Israel, Britain and France – had to withdraw after a fairly short time. Israel was occupying the Gaza Strip at that time and was mulling over the ethnic cleansing of Gaza even then, but had no time to accomplish it. It briefly occupied the Sinai Peninsula too, but was soon forced by the United States to withdraw.

It is worth thinking about the plan that the prime minister of Israel at the time, David Ben-Gurion, presented on October 22 1956 to the secret meeting which was held by the plotters in Sèvres, near Paris. The minutes were supposed to be destroyed, but somehow a copy was preserved, and was published by the Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim:

[Ben-Gurion] presented a comprehensive plan, which he himself called “fantastic”, for the reorganisation of the Middle East. Jordan, he observed, was not viable as an independent state, and should therefore be divided. [Jordan consisted both of the East Bank and the West Bank that is now under Israeli occupation] Iraq would get the East Bank [that is to say, what is now the kingdom of Jordan] in return for a promise to settle the Palestinian refugees there, and to make peace with Israel, while the West Bank would be attached to Israel as a semi-autonomous region. Lebanon suffered from having a large Muslim population which was concentrated in the south. The problem could be solved by Israel expansion up to the Litani river, thereby helping to turn Lebanon into a more compact, Christian state. Meanwhile, the Suez Canal area should be given an international status, while the Straits of Tiran in the Gulf of Aqaba should come under Israeli control to ensure freedom of navigation. A prior condition for realising this plan was the elimination of [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser and the replacement of his regime with a pro-western government which would also be prepared to make peace with Israel.1 [Words in square brackets added by me – MM]

So we can see that what is going on now is not new. It is part of the long-term Zionist plan and was certainly not invented by Netanyahu or his government.

While Israel did not manage to advance its first strategic aim (ethnic cleansing and annexation) in 1956, the Suez war did result in a major advance towards its other one. As a reward for its collusion, it was helped by France to become a nuclear power, holding a jealously guarded regional nuclear monopoly.

I do not know how many of those reading this will remember the Suez war (many were probably not born yet). But I can say that this is not only, I think, a very interesting episode in the history of the Middle East and in the whole chain of Israeli wars, which aimed, in the long run, to fulfil strategic aims: for me personally it was a crucial event that opened my eyes to the nature of the Zionist project.

So the Israel-Lebanon wars to some extent reflect what Ben-Gurion proposed, and what is taking place nowadays should also be looked at in this light – not as a short-term response or tactic, which is what most commentators would have us believe, but part of the long-term, strategic aims of Israel in the region.

In this connection I would like to add that what is being revealed is that the current Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, the use of exploding pagers, and so on, are not short-term reflexes that Israel just thought of on the spur of the moment. They have long been in preparation. In fact, as The Washington Post and other media outlets have indicated, this war has been in preparation for several years. So the attack on Hezbollah – first of all, in order to accomplish Israeli aims in Lebanon itself, and then as an opening move to reinforcing hegemony in the entire Middle East (which also requires downgrading the position of Iran) – has been a long time in preparation.

In fact, some commentators have correctly indicated that Israel was so concerned with planning an attack on Hezbollah as an opening to a war with Iran that it overlooked what was actually happening in the Gaza Strip, and therefore was taken by surprise in October last year, because it was focusing on Lebanon.2 So ironically, and contrary to what seems to many to be the case, the current conflict with Hezbollah is not a mere consequence of Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza. As I have stated, many think of the current genocidal war from a short-term perspective, but, if in fact you look at it in the longer term, it is the opposite.

Will Israel succeed? We can certainly say what its strategic aims are, but whether it will succeed in achieving them is something I would not like to predict – there are all sorts of uncertainties, including the fragility of Israeli society itself. So I make no predictions about the possible outcome of this war, which is very much an open question. That is why I have stressed the need to focus on the large-scale and long-term nature of what is going on.

This article is based on Moshé Machover’s talk to the October 6 Online Communist Forum:


  1. A Shlaim, ‘The protocol of Sèvres,1956: anatomy of a war plot’ International Affairs, 73:3 (1997), pp509-30.
  2. A Tibon, ‘Hezbollah-Hamas paradox: the war Israel prepared for, and the one it didn’t see coming’. Haaretz, September 29 2024.