The Nile to the Euphrates: Mapping the Logic and the Limits of Greater Israel

A journalistic investigation into the demographic, practical, and theological questions behind the region's most explosive territorial vision

In August 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat for an interview with the i24NEWS network. The exchange lasted less than thirty seconds, barely a breath in the life of a decades long political career. But when the interviewer handed him a small amulet depicting a map of "Greater Israel" and asked whether he felt connected to the vision, Netanyahu's answer landed like a grenade in the already smoldering region.

"Very much," he said. "If you ask me what I think, we're there."

Six months later, in February 2026, the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, sat down with Tucker Carlson and went further. When asked about the biblical passage describing the land promised to Abraham's descendants, "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates," Huckabee did not demur. He did not hedge. He answered with a calm that belied the gravity of his words: "It would be fine if they took it all."

For decades, mention of "Greater Israel" in diplomatic circles was dismissed as conspiracy theory, paranoid fantasy, the fever dream of fringe extremists. But when a sitting prime minister and a sitting U.S. ambassador speak these words on camera, and when the White House offers no rebuke and the State Department issues only a quiet murmur about remarks being "taken out of context," the conversation shifts.

What follows is not a polemic. It is an attempt to answer a set of practical, even logistical, questions that the Greater Israel vision raises but rarely addresses. Questions that emerge not from ideology but from the cold mathematics of territory, population, and power.

Questions like: Who would live there?

I. The Map in Question: What "Greater Israel" Actually Means

The term "Greater Israel" (Eretz Yisrael HaShlema in Hebrew) is not a modern political invention. Its roots lie in biblical texts, most explicitly in Genesis 15:18: "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.'"

Interpretations vary. Some religious readings suggest the "river of Egypt" refers not to the Nile but to Wadi al Arish in the Sinai. Others take the verse literally. But the geopolitical implications are clear: a territory that would encompass, by even conservative estimates, all of modern Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, the entirety of Jordan, large portions of Lebanon and Syria, parts of Iraq to the Euphrates, and significant stretches of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In the modern Zionist political tradition, the concept has been reframed as a nationalist settler project, invoked to justify territorial expansion or to sustain the notion of a historical right, even when the original biblical conditions are not met. For some on Israel's religious and political right, it is a divine mandate. For others, it is a secular vision of strategic depth. For many in the surrounding Arab nations, it is an existential threat.

Between August 2025 and March 2026, the concept moved from the margins of Israeli discourse to its center. Netanyahu called it a "historic and spiritual mission." Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, after Huckabee's interview, posted a heart emoji in response: "I ❤️ Huckabee." Fourteen nations, along with the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, issued a joint statement declaring that "Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the occupied Palestinian territory or any other occupied Arab lands."

But the condemnations, while forceful, answered a different question, the question of legality, of sovereignty, of international norms. They did not answer the question at the heart of this investigation: If the vision were realized, what would it actually look like? And who would inhabit it?

II. The Demographic Impossibility: 200 Million People, 15 Million Jews

Let us begin with the numbers, because numbers are stubborn and they do not bend to ideology.

The territory encompassed by the maximalist Greater Israel vision, from the Nile Delta to the Euphrates River, is home to approximately 200 million people. These are not abstract statistics. They are Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Palestinians, and Saudis living in their ancestral homelands, governed by established states with armies, borders, and national identities forged over generations.

The entire global Jewish population today is approximately 15 million people. The population of Israel itself, as of 2024, is roughly 9.9 million, of which about 7.2 million are Jewish.

These two numbers, 200 million and 15 million, create an immediate and insurmountable demographic reality. Even if every Jew in the world relocated to Greater Israel, they would constitute less than eight percent of the territory's population. They would be vastly outnumbered by the existing inhabitants.

This is not, as some might frame it, a question of morality. It is a question of physics. Empires require populations. They require labor forces, tax bases, armies, administrative cadres. The United States, with its 340 million people, can project power across a continent. China, with 1.4 billion, can sustain its territorial integrity. India, with 1.4 billion, does the same. These are not moral achievements; they are demographic ones.

A state governing 200 million people with a core population of 7 to 15 million would face a fundamental structural problem: it would be, in the purest sense, a minority ruling over an overwhelming majority. History offers few examples of such arrangements that did not end in either collapse, continuous internal conflict, or the eventual absorption of the ruling minority into the majority population.

III. The Question of "Transfer": What Would Happen to the People?

The unspoken corollary to the Greater Israel vision, the question that hovers behind every discussion but rarely enters formal political discourse, is what would become of the people currently living in these territories.

Some proponents of the vision are explicit. In the same August 2025 interview in which he embraced the Greater Israel map, Netanyahu also revived calls to "allow" Palestinians to leave Gaza, stating that "we are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave." Past calls to resettle Gazans outside the war battered territory have sparked widespread fears of forced displacement.

The ideological foundations for such thinking are not new. The biblical texts that underpin the Greater Israel concept include passages that, interpreted literally, authorize extreme measures. Deuteronomy 20:16-17, cited in contemporary Israeli far right discourse, instructs: "In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes."

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a prominent figure in Israel's religious Zionist movement, has issued rulings that provide religious justification for such approaches. "It is permissible to fire upon and bomb Khan Younis and all places from which rockets are launched at Jews," he has stated. "The Arabs living in these places are not innocent but murderers who aid terrorists. Whoever kills them should not feel remorse."

Such pronouncements are not fringe. They come from a figure whose father, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, was a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and whose rulings carry weight in significant segments of the religious Zionist community.

But there is a vast gap between ideological pronouncements and practical implementation. The forcible transfer of 200 million people from their homes would constitute, by any legal definition, ethnic cleansing on a scale unprecedented in human history. It would require military forces capable of sustained occupation across an area larger than Western Europe. It would require the dismantling of multiple sovereign states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, each with its own army, its own national identity, its own capacity for resistance.

And even if such a project were attempted, it would face a practical impossibility: Where would 200 million people go?

IV. The Alternative Scenario: Would the Settlers Come?

Perhaps, some might argue, the vision is not about removing the existing population but about outnumbering it. If Israel, or a Greater Israel, could attract enough immigrants, perhaps the demographic balance could shift.

This raises its own set of questions.

Israel's population has doubled approximately every thirty years since its founding. Leading Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola projects that if current trends continue, the country could reach 40 million people by the end of the century. Yoav Lerman, founder of the Planet Institute for Connected Cities, notes that 40 million people is the current population of Tokyo, meaning it is possible to maintain an urban community of that size with proper planning.

But 40 million is not 200 million. To reach demographic parity with the current population of the Greater Israel territories, let alone to establish a Jewish majority, Israel would need to attract immigrants on a scale never seen in modern history.

From where would these immigrants come?

The global Jewish population is not growing rapidly. Outside Israel, Jewish communities in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are stable or declining. Even if every Jew in the world relocated to Greater Israel, the numbers would fall far short of parity.

Some proponents suggest that the state could attract non-Jewish settlers, secular people with no particular ideological commitment, motivated by economic incentives such as housing and financial support. This is the logic of settler colonialism: offering economic incentives to attract a loyal population willing to displace or dominate the existing inhabitants.

But this model faces its own demographic challenge. To reach 200 million, a state would need to attract roughly 190 million immigrants. This is not merely improbable; it is practically impossible within any foreseeable timeframe. The largest migration in human history, the European migration to the Americas, moved roughly 60 million people over four centuries.

Moreover, a state that attracted 190 million immigrants motivated primarily by economic incentives would not be a coherent nation. It would be a collection of people with no shared identity, no common purpose, no loyalty beyond the material benefits they receive. Such states do not endure.

V. The Question of Governance: Can an Empire Be Run Without an Empire's Population?

This leads to a deeper structural question: Even if the Greater Israel territory were somehow acquired, could it be governed?

The Israeli political system today struggles to govern 10 million people with consensus. The country is divided between secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, left and right, Jewish and Arab. Its political system, built on proportional representation, produces fragile coalitions that often collapse before completing their terms.

Expand that system to govern 200 million people across a territory the size of the entire eastern Mediterranean, and the administrative challenges multiply exponentially. How would elections be conducted? How would representation be structured? How would the army, currently stretched managing the West Bank and Gaza, secure borders with Turkey, Iran, and the rest of the Arab world?

"Whether those who will manage these Israeli urban sprawls of the future will resemble Japanese managers in their efficiency," Lerman told The Jerusalem Post, is the real question. He was speaking about managing a 40 million person Israel on its current territory. "We don't need to be like the Japanese. It would be enough if we resembled the Dutch. We lead the world when it comes to the Iron Dome, but when it comes to public transportation, we improvise. This poverty is not due to lack of money; it's because we lack [management] abilities."

If Israeli governance struggles with public transportation and urban planning for 10 million people, the prospect of administering 200 million people across a conquered region with active resistance movements, collapsed state structures, and hostile neighbors seems less like a political project and more like a fantasy.

VI. The Theological Dimension: What Does Religious Zionism Actually Believe?

To understand why the Greater Israel vision persists despite these practical impossibilities, one must understand its theological roots and the debates within Judaism about their meaning.

The concept of a divinely promised land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates is not in dispute. It appears in Genesis, in Exodus, in Deuteronomy. The question is how these texts should be interpreted and applied in the context of a modern nation state.

Within Judaism, there is no single, unified doctrine. Religious currents that regard the land as an integral component of religious identity nevertheless condition political action on specific moral or theological criteria. Some Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) strands have historically opposed Zionism on the grounds that it prematurely "hastens redemption," thereby contravening divine timing.

Religious Zionist movements, by contrast, seek to reconcile the modern state with scriptural promise, viewing political sovereignty as intertwined with religious fulfillment. But even within this camp, interpretations vary widely. Some see the biblical promise as a spiritual inheritance rather than a literal territorial mandate. Others, particularly in the settlements movement, advocate for maximalist expansion.

There is also a theological counterargument rooted in the text itself. The promise in Genesis is made to Abraham, who had two sons: Isaac, through whom the Jewish people trace their lineage, and Ishmael, through whom Arab peoples trace theirs. Some interpreters have argued that the promise might extend to the descendants of Ishmael as well. Rabbinic authorities have generally rejected this reading, but it exists as a minority tradition within Jewish thought.

As the International Institute for Iranian Studies noted in its analysis of Huckabee's remarks, the notion of a divine promise "does not translate into a fixed political program; instead, it remains a contested field of interpretation and debate within Judaism itself."

VII. The Geopolitical Reality: Why the Vision Clashes with the World

Whatever its theological roots, the Greater Israel vision collides with the fundamental structures of the modern international order.

The international system, as established after World War II, is built on the principle of state sovereignty and the inviolability of borders. Territorial expansion by conquest has been illegal under international law since the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population into occupied territory.

The reaction to Netanyahu's and Huckabee's statements reflected this global consensus. Fourteen nations, including Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates, issued a joint condemnation. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, representing 57 member states, joined the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council in rejecting the remarks.

Jordan called the statements a "dangerous and provocative escalation" and "a threat to the sovereignty of states." Egypt requested "clarification on this matter," characterizing it as tantamount to a "rejection of the option of peace in the region." Iraq condemned the comments as revealing Israel's "expansionist ambitions." Saudi Arabia voiced "its total rejection of the ideas and plans for colonization and expansion adopted by the Israeli occupation authorities."

The United States, notably, did not join these condemnations. The White House did not respond. The State Department did not respond. A single embassy spokesperson in Jerusalem murmured that the remarks had been "taken out of context." This silence, as one analyst put it, "was heard in Cairo, in Amman, in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Riyadh."

But even U.S. support has limits. The American political system, while currently accommodating maximalist Israeli rhetoric, also contains checks and balances. Future administrations may take different positions. And the international isolation that would accompany any serious attempt to implement the Greater Israel vision would be unprecedented in its severity.

VIII. The Voices of Dissent: Not All Israelis, Not All Jews

It is essential to note that the Greater Israel vision is not universally embraced in Israel or among world Jewry.

J Street, the liberal Jewish American advocacy organization, condemned Huckabee's nomination and the worldview it represents. The overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans, polls consistently show, support a two-state solution and oppose annexation of the West Bank.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a left-wing Jewish organization, has occupied public spaces with t-shirts reading "Not in Our Name" in protest of policies they view as inconsistent with Jewish values. The organization was later labeled a "hate group" by the Anti-Defamation League, a designation that prompted at least one ADL employee to resign in protest, stating: "Those were Jewish people we were defaming."

Within Israel itself, the political spectrum ranges from parties that advocate for full annexation to those that support Palestinian statehood. The Greater Israel vision is most associated with the religious Zionist and settler movements, but it is not the consensus position of Israeli society.

As Della Pergola, the demographer, told The Jerusalem Post: "The State of Israel is the axis on which the fate of the Jewish people now turns, and in Israel everything can happen. This is why I worry."

IX. The Unanswerable Question: What Is the Plan?

This investigation began with a question: What is Israel's plan? What do those who embrace the Greater Israel vision believe will happen once the territory is acquired?

The honest answer, based on the available evidence, is that there is no plan.

There are theological declarations and political statements and settler outposts and military incursions. There is a momentum, a drift toward expansion that has characterized Israeli policy since 1967. There are ideological commitments that treat territorial acquisition as an end in itself.

But there is no detailed blueprint for governing 200 million people. No demographic strategy for establishing a Jewish majority across an area larger than France and Germany combined. No administrative structure for integrating Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and Riyadh into a single state. No diplomatic plan for managing the international response to the dissolution of multiple UN member states.

The Greater Israel vision, in its current form, is not a policy. It is a slogan. It is an aspiration that, if pursued seriously, would lead to consequences its proponents have not calculated and perhaps cannot imagine.

X. Conclusion: The Weight of Words

On March 18, 2026, Arab nations issued a fresh round of condemnations following Netanyahu's remarks. Egypt requested clarification. Jordan called the statements an "assault on the sovereignty of states." Qatar decried them as "absurd and inflammatory."

The condemnations will continue. The debates will continue. The settlements will expand, and the maps will be brandished, and the rhetoric will escalate.

But the practical questions, the questions of who will live in the land and how they will be governed and whether 15 million people can rule 200 million, will remain unanswered. Because they are unanswerable.

History offers no example of a successful modern state built on the forcible displacement of 200 million people. It offers no example of a minority population governing a majority population of that scale without descending into perpetual conflict or outright collapse. It offers no example of a territorial vision of this magnitude succeeding without consuming the society that pursues it.

The Greater Israel vision, then, exists in a peculiar space: widely discussed, officially embraced by senior political figures, yet fundamentally detached from the demographic, administrative, and geopolitical realities that would determine its fate.

It is a vision that answers the question of "what land" without ever asking the question of "what then."

And as the region watches, as Cairo and Amman and Riyadh and Ankara calculate their responses, as Washington maintains its silence, as the settlements creep further into territory that was never meant to be settled, that unasked question will continue to hover over every declaration, every map, every amulet passed from interviewer to prime minister on live television.

Who will live there?

The vision offers no answer.