It was the summer of 1990. The First Iraq War, widely known as the Gulf War, began on August 2, 1990, with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

I was preparing for my Central Superior Services exam, and International Relations was one of the optional subjects. The Middle East, as always, was the main area of study, and I had a hunch that, with this cataclysmic event occurring, a couple of questions would come in the papers about the Middle East.

Starting then, two thoughts stayed enmeshed in me for all these years.

First, the importance of the Strait of Hormuz and how it gave Iran a stranglehold on the movement of oil across the world.

The second was the concept of “Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael HaShlema)”.

Never in my wildest imagination could I have imagined then that I would be witnessing history being made on these two topics in 2026, which at that time seemed to be a fairy tale.

According to research done at Yale University, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was composed over roughly 1,000 years, spanning from approximately the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE, with final canonisation occurring later.

In this Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Genesis, verse 15:18, God’s covenant with Prophet Abraham is as follows: "In that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

This idea of a divinely ordained promised land lies at the core of the Jewish religion, and this verse has been the cornerstone of the maximalist territorial vision of the Israeli elite.

The dispute between Israelis and the Arabs started with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.........

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