October 7 and the fall of Syria are not just Israel issues. They represent a dramatic shift in threat assessment for Arab regimes and the West.
These events underscore that the existential threat to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni regimes is no longer from the western frontier – Israel – but from the eastern and northern frontiers – Iran, Sunni extremism, and Turkey – directly or through proxies, as well as other emerging powers in the east.
We are witnessing how rapidly regimes can change, how quickly forces can advance through the desert, and how intelligence and experts’ analyses can fall short. A new and different thinking is needed: The West’s defense line can no longer be Europe’s Mediterranean shores, or Israel’s Jordan River. It needs to be in eastern Jordan and the Syrian desert.
The West’s new defense line
This can be accomplished by making the empty desert bloom and creating a “Desert Riviera” that would attract new populations, bring in tourists, and incentivize economic development zones.
In addition, the rapid construction of an extensive wall spanning Jordan and Saudi Arabia should be considered, applying the recent experiences of walls built along the US-Mexico and Israel-Egypt borders.
Such projects would, under normal circumstances, be viewed as dreamy and face insurmountable hurdles, but a perfect storm of conditions in 2025 provides a unique opportunity that removes those hurdles, unleashes tremendous economic opportunities, and leads to peace.
The extraordinary amount of workers needed would make such an undertaking unfeasible, given the global labor shortage. However, US President Donald Trump’s Gazan relocation proposal could solve this shortage immediately, even more so if the Trump proposal is expanded to include 1948's refugees, as suggested in last week’s article.
Another hurdle that would ordinarily make such a project a nonstarter is the enormous amount of funding required. However, the wars in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon have created the need for a global buy-in to some sort of a Middle Eastern Marshall Plan, funded by the international community.
Egypt and the United Nations are already talking about a starting figure of $53 billion.
Rather than directing those funds toward fixing what is not fixable and dumping money into charity programs that would only slightly alleviate the suffering of Palestinians, one could direct the funding to the return-on-investment-driven “Wild East.”
The third hurdle is security. Like the American expansion to the Wild West, the Arab expansion to the “Wild East” is not without risk, but the looming strategic threat from the east should be sufficient for the US-led coalition to prioritize addressing such tactical security issues.
Concerns that Hamas-indoctrinated Gazan laborers would collaborate with invading forces could be mitigated by proper dispersal along areas where labor is needed (It is a “blank canvas” project, after all).
Moreover, Palestinian refugees who chose to “go east” would become a beachhead for other populations that would likely join them, given the economic benefits and revenue opportunities.
Ecological challenges of population density
In addition, the “Wild East” would address the global ecological problem of population density, flagged for years by the UN and EU, both of which should therefore help fund this project.
Stunningly, the Middle East population is concentrated in a relatively small parcel of land in the west toward the Mediterranean Sea, while there are desolate territories in the east that are virtually unpolluted.
While in America, populations dispersed and over time spread to desolate areas, such a process has yet to take place in the Middle East. There is no “California,” in the Middle-East, yet.
The historical reason for this has been that those mass empty areas are deserts and were therefore deemed uninhabitable. This has all changed in recent years, as Israel has developed cutting-edge agricultural technologies that effectively “cancel” the desert and make such areas just as habitable.
Therefore, partnerships between Israel and its Arab neighbors can lead to a massive economic resurgence, not just for Jordan but for much of the Middle East.
It would also transform Palestinians who choose to go there from refugees facing security and humanitarian concerns to pioneers taking charge of their destiny and advancing humanity through settling the “Wild East” desert.
Middle East prosperity leads to peace
Such economic development would shift the narrative of Middle East funding by 180 degrees, from charity-based to merit-based; from conflict-driven, such as the large European investment in NGOs that incite Palestinians, to peace-driven.
Indeed, the “Wild East” is very much in line with the apparent shift in peace frameworks led by Trump: from the conflict-perpetuating “divide the baby” templates that keep everybody unhappy: “land for peace” and “two-state solution” – to win-win templates that benefit all actors: the Abraham Accords.
Moreover, it would symbolize the end of a century of Israeli-Arab conflict, as Arab armies and defensive postures would no longer be facing west but east. Indeed, the Jordan Valley’s slopes in western Jordan are now of little strategic relevance for Jordan. On the other hand, the eastern desert is.
Such a shift could also bring the region back to the utopic peace mindset of 1920, when a pro-Zionist Hashemite Arab kingdom was being built alongside a Jewish state in the making.
That was at the expense of Turkey, kicked out of the lands it had held for centuries, not just by the British but also by the Hashemites – today’s rulers of Jordan. This led to built-in Jordanian insecurity that, sooner or later, Turkey would be back.
The “Wild East” can end this insecurity, as it has enough economic incentives and strategic value to benefit all regional actors, including Turkey. Indeed, a deal could be structured that would address the needs of the various parties and therefore create long-term stability.
This is the type of deal that Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, envisioned and that nearly came to fruition in 1920 – before Europe plunged the region into a century of conflict.
This century of conflict should now be over, and the focus should be directed to the menacing threat to the Middle East, Israel, and the West that is coming from the east.
Building the “Wild East” would go a long way toward countering the threat and ushering in sustainable peace.
If you will it, it is no dream.
The writer is author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat is Coming from the West. He is also chairman of the Judaism 3.0 think tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com).