I think Reg is right, though—I don't see Bibi thinking, "Hmmm, I could take Poland!" Maybe Beirut, I guess, if he's really dreaming. I actually think it's easier to think of these types of people (the Netanyahu/Erdogan/Franco type) more as gangsters than politicians or diplomats. Al Capone's product was booze. Netanyahu's product is the even more intoxicating cocktail of fear, victimhood, and rage.
Patriotism, ideology, religion, etcetera—even simple humanitarian decency in these contexts are merely products to hook the rubes, get them hooked and keep them buying in.
How much of the history of Israel and the Palestinians is connected, for example, by the desire among competing interests to turn that prime 25 mile stretch of Mediterranean beachfront, and the oil deposits further inland into a financial empire? A financial empire absent of Palestinians, of course. It must be just tantalizing to certain types.
