>>2826702>They see the only way for Israel to survive long term and stand on its own two feet is for it to dramatically expand its borders.There are crazy religious Zionists who want to conquer Jordan, but that's just not possible. I think the more arch-Machiavellian guys in the Israeli military establishment want to expand to "defensible" borders. They pulled out of the Sinai in exchange for normalization with Egypt, but Sinai is hard to defend because it stretches their supply lines by nearly 200 kilometers, which is more than twice the distance from Tel Aviv to their northern border. This was a big problem for them in 1973 because their pickets along the canal were overrun and wiped out by the Egyptians. The initial Israeli armored counter-attacks also failed.
I think there is interest in taking south Lebanon up to the Litani, and there are Israeli troops currently at the Litani now (and operating beyond it), because that's a more defensible natural barrier because it sits in a valley. I don't know if they'll stay permanently or not. They're blowing up and bulldozing a lot of villages in south Lebanon right now. But the last time they occupied south Lebanon it didn't work out very well for them. They see the Jordan River valley as their natural eastern border which is why they occupied the West Bank and began digging in there back in the 1960s, also they want the fresh water. Also the West Bank is high ground. It's interesting to look at the topography.
None of this rules out grabbing additional territory anyways. Like they grabbed some Syrian dirt when Assad collapsed which includes the peak of Mt. Hermon, which has military value, and a stretch of what used to be a demilitarized zone. Part of their strategy can also be to grab land to use as a bargaining chip.
I think part of the strategic picture, the way they look at it, is that their small size has both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are pretty obvious, but the advantage is they can rapidly maneuver troops around during a multi-front war. So, historically, they would try to smash their enemies in a piecemeal fashion along one front (in a matter of days) while trying to hold out on a second or third front and then rapidly maneuver troops from the initial offensive front to the other fronts, and then counter-attack along those fronts. But that becomes more difficult if you add another 200 kilometers in the case of the Sinai.
>>2826764>It also wants to have what amounts to puppet regimes to be in power everywhere in the middle east. They're doing pretty well in both categories, but just pretty well isn't enough for them, apparently.I think their picture of the Middle East is that there are roughly four-ish "groups." There are conservative monarchies (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE). Then there's the Axis of Resistance (which formerly included Syria). Then there's a Turkey-Qatar axis (Qatar is a monarchy but it's different), which now includes Syria. And then there's a loose "fourth" group comprising the minorities like the Kurds and Druze, and they almost consider themselves to be part of that group.
Not that the other people in that "fourth" group consider themselves to be in the same group with Israel (although Israeli Druze do). But this explains some of their positioning. They see the conservative monarchies as easier to deal with, although that used to not be the case, and they now have an alliance with the UAE (but not Saudi Arabia, although they talk to the Saudis). The Axis of Resistance are enemies and they want to annihilate them. The Turkey-Qatar axis is not an enemy which they're in an open war with, but it's like a Cold War and they don't like them. And they want to form alliances with minorities in the fourth group, so they see the Syrian Druze as a potential ally inside Syria.
BTW I think they're very much into deception and sleights of hand. Like deescalating on one front is an opportunity to rapidly escalate on another front. Or when people are looking at one thing, they will move in somewhere else where people are not looking. Israel has escalated with a ground invasion of south Lebanon in the midst of the Iran war, so the world isn't paying much attention to what's going on in Lebanon as they're destroying a bunch of people's homes and displacing the population. But then they might freeze things in Lebanon in exchange for something from Trump while he negotiates a deal, but when that happens, Netanyahu will suddenly escalate rapidly again in Gaza.