Massive wildfires are tearing through Patagonia, displacing communities and destroying protected land. As the fires spread, local residents have begun reporting something unsettling: foreign individuals caught allegedly setting fires, with multiple reports pointing to Israelis.
Authorities say investigations are ongoing.
Patagonia is not just wilderness, it is one of the most resource-rich, sparsely populated regions on Earth:
• Freshwater reserves
• Fertile land
• Strategic geography
• Low population density
It is also a region that has long attracted foreign interest, legal and otherwise. This brings up a term many Argentines know well: Plan Andinia.
Plan Andinia refers to a mid-20th-century geopolitical concept, discussed in Argentine military and intelligence circles, proposing the establishment of a Jewish state or autonomous zone inPatagonia under certain conditions.
Whether speculative or strategic, it was real enough to be studied, debated, and feared. Plan Andinia was never implemented. But ideas do not need to be implemented to shape behavior. They need only to justify long-term positioning.
Land acquisition, NGO influence, tourism corridors, dual citizenship flows, security cooperation these are far more common tools than tanks.
Argentina’s south has seen:
• Large-scale foreign land purchases
• Restricted-access estates
• Private conservation zones with opaque governance
• Foreign security personnel operating under civilian cover
Wildfires introduce a new variable that Israelis will love…. forced displacement. Throughout history, environmental destruction has often preceded land reorganization.
Not because fires prove intent but because chaos creates opportunity:
• Emergency powers
• Property transfers
• International “assistance”
• Reframing of sovereignty as “management”
There are credible reports of Israelis caught setting fires on the hiking trails of Patagonia. In 2011, an Israeli was caught setting a fire that burned 17,000 acres of Chilean Patagonia.
When communities feel their land is being taken, reshaped, or destabilized without consent, they remember history.
Argentina has its own history with foreign interference, IMF restructuring, and externally imposed “solutions.” In that context, Patagonia is not peripheral. It is strategic. And Plan Andinia persists not as a plan, but as a symbol of vulnerability.
Wildfires should unite a country in defense of its land, not silence discussion.
History doesn’t repeat verbatim but it rhymes, especially when land is burning.
I have read that The land in question is legally protected and cannot be sold unless it is burned in a wildfire; then it can be sold and Milei is apparently doing just that. ABN
American Buddhist Net 