*The “villa in the jungle” reflects a core Israeli understanding of its place in the Middle East. At the heart of the idea lies a deep-seated fear about the place of Israel in the Middle East. As Berman Lazar mentioned “The metaphor recalls a pioneering homesteader who hacks down a small clearing in a dangerous forest, creating a precarious island of order with the trappings of civilization while threats lurk in the shadows beyond.” This metaphor, though often framed as a security necessity, also reflects a colonial mindset that has shaped Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. The vision of Israel as a "villa in the jungle" can be traced back to early Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and has been perpetuated by Israeli leaders such as Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu. This metaphor underscores Israel’s settler-colonial practices and its ongoing struggle to balance military power with diplomatic efforts in the context of its occupation of Palestinian territories. Herzl and Jabotinsky: The Founding Vision The roots of the "villa in the jungle" metaphor lie in the early Zionist movement. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, saw the establishment of a Jewish state as a way to insert European civilization into the Middle East, which he saw as “backward” and “chaotic.”: “We should form there a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia,” he wrote in The Jewish State, “an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a more radical Zionist, further developed this idea. He framed the creation of Israel as the establishment of a “villa in the jungle,” where Jews would build a modern, Western-oriented society in an Arab-majority region. For Jabotinsky, the “jungle” represented the surrounding Arab world, which he saw as hostile and unprepared for modernity (Jabotinsky, 1923). His "Iron Wall" doctrine, which called for strong military defence and the imposition of Jewish control over Palestinian land, laid the foundation for the aggressive security policies later adopted by Israeli leaders like Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu. Ehud Barak: Military Strength and the Iron Wall Ehud Barak, who served as Israel's Prime Minister between 1999 and 2001), was the main Israeli figure to popularize the idea of the Villa in the Jungle. In a speech he gave in 1996 as foreign minister to Jewish community leaders in St. Louis, he said, “The dreams and aspirations of many in the Arab world have not changed. We still live in a modern and prosperous villa in the middle of the jungle, a place where different laws prevail. No hope for those who cannot defend themselves and no mercy for the weak.” He repeated this phrase in 2006 when he was defense minister. In a speech at a military base, he said “We are not living in West Europe nor North America, we are in a tough region, and Israel is indeed a ‘villa in a jungle’ surrounded by adversarial forces”. Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar highlighted this phrase as implying that “animals in the jungle understand only brute force, and no negotiation can take place with savages. The only way to survive in such a hostile environment is by building fences, by insulating at home, and fuck the neighbors. They can kill each other and die of hunger. We ‘sober up’ from Yaser Arafat, Oslo agreement, Camp-David and from any peaceful solution”. The idea has inescapable colonialist undertones, and Barak has been criticised for the impolitic description of Israel’s neighbours. In artistic depictions from the colonial period in Africa, the jungle — a loaded concept, not a scientific designation — represents the limits of Europe’s ability to impose order, and thus to make sense of their surroundings. The jungle, as with other metaphors used by Zionists to describe Palestine, such as barren-land [Shmama], Tabula Rasa, wasteland, and desert, reflect their home culture and its relationship with the colonial Other. This approach, rooted in Jabotinsky’s ideas, emphasised the use of military power to protect Israel and force Arab neighbours to accept its existence. While he pursued some peace initiatives, Barak’s reliance on military force to achieve security mirrored the logic of a “village in the jungle” where Israel must remain strong to survive amidst a hostile environment (Shlaim, 2000). Barak’s security policies, including the construction of the West Bank Wall and the continued expansion of settlements, reinforced Israel’s settler-colonial project, deepened Israel's control over Palestinian territories, preventing the realisation of a Palestinian state. Benjamin Netanyahu: Security and Settlement Expansion During a tour of the Israel-Jordan border in 2016 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “In the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence surrounding it… They’ll say to me, ‘That’s what you want to do, to defend the villa?’ The answer is yes. ‘Will we surround all of Israel with fences and obstacles?’ The answer is yes. In the environment we live in, we must defend ourselves from the predators.” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, has embraced the rhetoric of Israel as a “villa” under siege, surrounded by a “jungle” of threats from Palestinian militants, Hezbollah, and Iran. Netanyahu’s policies have prioritised military security and territorial expansion, including the continued construction of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Much of these settlements consist of villas and farms that maximise the occupied land given only to Jews and which are subsidised to be much more affordable than detached or semi detached houses in Israel itself. Netanyahu’s approach has solidified Israel’s settler-colonial practices of ethnic cleansing and Apartheid in the West Bank and to genocidal tactics in the Gaza Strip since the murderous Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Colonialism and the Legacy of a “Villa in the Jungle” The metaphor of Israel as a "villa in the jungle" embodies the colonial logic that has underpinned Israeli policy since its inception. The early Zionist vision of a Jewish state in Palestine was shaped by European colonial ideals, where settlers sought to impose their civilization on an indigenous population. But this imposition, from land grabs, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, apartheid policies and recently what can be considered as genocide - is what the villa’s walls are made of. Considerably, it has been the colonial mindset and practices, if not a deliberate strategy, from which the jungle around that “villa” came into being. As Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with its extremist, fanatical, messianic, supremacist government the villa is rapidly transforming into a fortress - having the all hallmarks of Masada, where an extremist Jewish group, rebelling against the Romans in the 1st Century, eventually committed mass suicide. References: Jabotinsky, Ze’ev. The Iron Wall. 1923. Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W.W. Norton, 2000. Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld, 2006. Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso, 2003. Akiva Eldar, The Price of a Villa in the Jungle, Haaretz, 2006 Berman, Lazar. "After Walling Itself In, Israel Learns to Hazard the Jungle Beyond." Times of Israel, 2020. Margaret G. Weisberg Inventing the Desert and the Jungle: Creating identity through landscape in African and European culture. Yale University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2014. Gil Mualem-Doron, The Dead Zone & The Architecture of Transgression, TU Delft, PhD Theses. 2018