Middle East officials alarmed by Trump administration claim that Israel's border agreements are 'illusions'

The National

09-07-2025

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 in the region.
The warnings came after a US official, quoted anonymously in The Hill, said that 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.'
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 include 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 appear to endorse the possible desire of several countries to change the colonial-era border 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 [borders], it cannot be closed,' he said. 'It will have repercussions that will ultimately become dangerous to them.'
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.
'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 it was fanciful to expect 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 the rebel forces toppled Syrian president Bashar Al Assad in December.
Mr Trump has since moved closer towards an alliance with the country's new rulers, who used to belong to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which was once designated a US 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.