Movement for Greater Israel

Permanent retention of the territories brought under Israeli control in June 1967 was the movement's central objective.[1] It approached these territories not simply as assets to be exchanged in negotiations but as parts of the Land of Israel that the Jewish people had a historical responsibility to preserve.[1] Its first manifesto proposed that the June 1967 ceasefire lines become Israel's permanent borders and that Jewish immigration and intensive settlement integrate the newly held areas into the country.[1] The movement therefore joined a territorial position to a practical program of population growth, settlement, and public mobilization.[1]

The movement was initially an apolitical grouping founded by secular intellectuals, with Natan Alterman, Moshe Shamir, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and Zvi Shiloah among those identified with its founding.[2][4] Its national reach and political diversity distinguished it from an organization representing only one party or religious constituency.[1] Supporters included people associated with the Labor movement and kibbutzim, religious Zionists, and figures from parties to the Right of Labor.[2] The left-wing Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad and most of the Young Guard of the National Religious Party were particularly strongly represented.[1]

Several related English names appear for the organization, including the Land of Israel Movement, Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, and Movement for Greater Israel; its Hebrew name is Ha-Tenu'ah le-Ma'an Eretz Yisrael Ha-Shelemah.[1] The wider expression “Greater Israel” has also been applied to historic or biblical understandings of Eretz Yisrael and, after 1967, to opposition to relinquishing sovereignty over captured territories, including the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[5][6] That broader usage does not by itself establish the precise program of every organization or individual employing the expression.[5]

The movement's program developed within an Israeli debate that combined historical attachment, strategic concerns, demographic questions, and competing expectations about peace.[7] Some advocates of retaining the West Bank emphasized its historical and religious place within Israel, while others stressed its importance for strategic defense.[7] Within the government, supporters of retention faced ministers who warned that incorporating the territories could increase dependence on inexpensive Arab labor or deepen Israel's diplomatic isolation.[8]

The abrupt transition from anxiety before the Six-Day War to victory, territorial expansion, and a sense of national strength supplied the immediate setting for the movement's emergence.[2] Israel's new control over extensive territory and a large population turned questions that had previously been largely theoretical into immediate political choices.[2] The movement formed in 1967 amid concern that the government might respond to demands to return the territories captured during the war.[9] Alterman was among the secular intellectuals who founded the movement after the war.[4]

Three early expressions of the postwar discussion were the anthology Everything: The Peace Borders of the Land of Israel, the movement's founding meeting and first manifesto, and the collection Soldiers' Talk.[2] The anthology appeared before the organization was established, while the manifesto followed its formation.[2] The anthology, speeches at the founding meeting, and the manifesto all expressed opposition to returning the newly held territories.[2] Contributors to the anthology maintained that the prewar borders had failed to provide sufficient existential security and that Israel should consequently retain the territories it now controlled.[2]

The movement's first manifesto appeared in September 1967, with a statement titled “In Support of Greater Israel” published in Maariv on September 22.[1][3] Describing victory as the opening of a “new and critical era,” the statement called for preserving the territories then in Jewish hands as Eretz Israel.[3] It declared: “And no Israeli government has the right to relinquish this wholeness.”[3] The manifesto grounded retention in the Jewish people's history and responsibility toward the future, presenting the territory within the ceasefire lines as a trust that no government was authorized to surrender.[1]

Its signatories included S.Y. Agnon, Chaim Hazaz, Natan Alterman, and Uri Zvi Greenberg, alongside reserve army officers, business and industrial leaders, university teachers, rabbis, and kibbutz members.[1] About half of the declaration's signatories were authors or academics.[2] The range of participants extended from secular intellectual Aharon Amir to Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, from Mapam member Moshe Shamir to Shmuel Tamir of the Free Center.[2] Labor movement members, especially those connected with the kibbutz movement, played an important role despite this organizational pluralism.[2]

Haim Guri and Alterman were among the Labor-associated founders, reflecting the movement's roots in currents that predated the war.[10] Other founders included Uri Zvi Greenberg and Zvi Shiloah, while its social base included kibbutzim and members of the Kibbutz HaMeuhad and Religious Kibbutz movements.[4] The manifesto's signatories also included Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, Antek Zuckerman, Yehuda Burla, Eliezer Livneh, Haim Hazaz, and Yosef and Moshe Tabenkin.[3]

The movement initially operated through public meetings, lobbying, publishing, and support for settlement, but some leading members subsequently entered electoral politics.[1] It helped spearhead a National Committee to Oppose Withdrawal after the government adhered to American peace proposals associated with the Rogers Plan in summer 1970 and Gahal left the governing coalition.[1] Chaired by Dr. Chaim Yahil, the committee brought together prominent members of major parties from both government and opposition.[1] Opposition to withdrawal thus remained a basis for cooperation across existing party boundaries.[1]

In 1973, leading movement members joined the new Likud alignment under Menachem Begin.[1] Herut and the Liberal movement allied with the Free Center, the National List, and the Movement for Greater Israel in the alignment renamed Likud.[11] The movement was represented on the electoral list by reserve general Avraham Yoffe and writer Moshe Shamir; Yoffe entered the Eighth Knesset following the December 31, 1973 elections.[1] These developments connected part of the movement to a party framework without ending the original nonparty organization.[1]

In March 1976, this political group joined the Independent Center and the State List to establish La'am, which became Likud's third-largest component.[1] La'am won eight seats in the May 1977 elections, with Moshe Shamir representing the Land of Israel group.[1] After Likud came to power, the group's position enjoyed majority support within La'am.[1] Meanwhile, the original movement continued under Zvi Shiloah as a nonparty forum.[1]

In September 1977, that forum formed an association with Gush Emunim and the En Vered Circle, a grouping of Labor veterans from the moshavim.[1] Their shared objective was the development and expansion of Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line, particularly in Judea and Samaria.[1] The movement withdrew support from Begin's administration after the September 1978 Camp David accords.[1] At the end of that year, the Land of Israel Loyalists, or Berit Ne'emanei Eretz Israel, formed in opposition to the government's peace plans, including the proposed autonomy arrangements and agreements with Egypt.[1]

Key elements of the Land of Israel Loyalists established Tehiya in October 1979 to oppose the autonomy plan and further concessions to Egypt.[1] The original movement gradually lost appeal among younger people as Tehiya achieved electoral success and Gush Emunim grew.[1] Its later history therefore included both continued nonparty activity and the movement of supporters into newer political and settlement organizations.[1]

Mass Jewish immigration, movement of population into the newly held territories, and the establishment of settlements formed the movement's broadest areas of agreement.[2] These objectives extended the Zionist commitment to aliyah into the circumstances created by the Six-Day War.[2] The September 1967 statement identified immigration and inhabiting the country as principles for the future, describing a large influx of Jews from the Diaspora as a prerequisite for preserving Eretz Israel's national character and wholeness.[3] Its signatories pledged to motivate the public and pursue means of realizing those principles.[3]

Settlement was understood as an instrument for integrating territory rather than merely expressing an abstract claim.[1] The manifesto paired permanent borders with intensive settlement, and the earlier anthology included proposals to encourage Israelis to move to settlements.[1][2] The organization held mass meetings throughout the country and lobbied parties participating in the government coalition.[1] Its public campaign combined efforts to influence national decisions with practical assistance to communities seeking to establish or restore a Jewish presence in particular places.[1][7]

In November 1967, the movement gave moral and financial support to efforts to reestablish Jewish settlements in the Etzion Bloc.[7] Those settlements had been captured and destroyed by Jordanian forces during the War of Independence, and the Israeli government permitted their restoration.[7] This activity connected the postwar settlement program with the restoration of communities that had existed before 1948.[7] The movement also challenged the Labor government's policy concerning settlement in the West Bank.[7]

In April 1968, a small group of religious settlers financed by the movement moved into Hebron.[7] The government subsequently decided to establish Kiryat Arba nearby.[7] The movement's involvement in resettling Jews in Hebron was direct, while its participation in other settlement projects in the West Bank and Golan Heights was less direct.[1] These activities placed an organization with a substantial secular and Labor-associated membership alongside religious settlers in pursuit of a shared territorial objective.[1][2]

Publishing became another sustained means of advocacy when Zot Ha'aretz began appearing in April 1968.[9] The eight-page paper was issued twice monthly, focused primarily on settlement, and initially had an editorial staff that included Alterman, Eliezer Livneh, and Moshe Shamir.[9] Soldiers and police officers were offered free subscriptions.[9] At its tenth anniversary, Shamir described its purpose as promoting the national position that the achievements of the Six-Day War should be preserved intact and resisting proposals to relinquish them.[9]

The newspaper's subsequent affiliations followed the changing organizational landscape of territorial activism.[9] In 1978 it became a joint publication of the Movement for Greater Israel and Gush Emunim, and in 1979 it supported the newly established Tehiya movement.[9] It was later replaced by Nekuda, a publication associated with settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.[9] This publishing history linked the original intellectual campaign to later settlement-oriented institutions.[9]

The movement also opposed partial-retention proposals rather than only plans for a comprehensive withdrawal.[12] It rejected the Allon Plan from the outset and insisted on annexing all the territory captured in the 1967 war, in contrast to that plan's proposed Israeli control and settlement in selected areas.[12] Its resistance to the Rogers proposals, and later to the Camp David framework, likewise reflected its opposition to territorial compromise.[1] Annexation and opposition to such compromise were central features of its stated purpose.[13]

There was less agreement about the political arrangements for Palestinians living under Israeli control.[2] The anthology associated with the movement contained proposals involving continued Israeli rule, refugee resettlement, equal civil rights, greater Jewish immigration, and Jewish settlement.[2] Some contributors favored equal rights for Palestinians within Israel, while others suggested cantons or autonomy.[2] Alterman urged action on refugees independently of progress toward negotiations: “we must deal with the resettling and rehabilitation of the refugees—those who remained in our jurisdiction—whether or not the Arabs agree to peace talks.”[2]

The participation of prominent writers and Labor-Zionist figures made the movement an important expression of post-1967 territorial advocacy outside a narrowly religious or right-wing constituency.[2] Its membership brought secular intellectuals, kibbutz activists, religious leaders, and party politicians into the same organizational setting.[2] The Labor Party itself was sharply divided over the territories, and the presence of Labor members in the movement demonstrated that support for retention cut across those internal divisions.[7] Its founding coalition cannot therefore be reduced to the later political identity of any single settlement organization.[1][2]

Postwar declarations in favor of retaining the Greater Land of Israel extended beyond the movement's own institutional membership.[14] Sections of Labor Zionism issued such declarations alongside Herut and cultural figures including S.Y. Agnon, Naomi Shemer, and Moshe Shamir.[14] This broad response in summer 1967 preceded Gush Emunim, which emerged after the Yom Kippur War and began its settlement drive in earnest in spring 1974.[14] The original movement's subsequent association with Gush Emunim in 1977 represented cooperation between organizations with different origins.[1]

The movement also connected secular national commitments with language drawn from Jewish religious sources.[2] Its founding manifesto declared: “and just as we do not have the right to make concessions with respect to the State of Israel, so we are commanded to preserve what we have received from it: the Land of Israel.”[2] The word “commanded” gave the statement a religious connotation, and some movement texts employed spiritual and messianic language.[2] Such language appeared in an organization described as almost entirely secular, with a partly anti-religious background.[2]

Historical attachment and security reasoning often reinforced one another in the movement's arguments.[2][7] Yitzhak Tabenkin defended retention by describing the war as an existential struggle rather than an elective conquest: “It was not a war of conquest . . . but a war that was forced on us, accompanied by a threat to destroy us . . . for us this was a war over our very existence.”[2] He concluded that the victory was just because it removed “the sword of destruction that was hanging over us.”[2] This reasoning placed the new territorial situation within the experience of prewar danger and national survival.[2]

The name Eretz Yisrael itself connected contemporary political language to a longer Jewish vocabulary.[5] The expression has biblical origins and was used as the Hebrew name for Palestine during the British Mandate.[5] After 1948, David Ben-Gurion used Medinat Yisrael, while Menachem Begin continued employing Eretz Yisrael to express allegiance to a larger historical or biblical Israel.[5] The movement's postwar program gave this vocabulary a specific political application through retention of territory and settlement.[5]

The movement's confidence contrasted with the doubts expressed in Soldiers' Talk, a collection based on postwar discussions among kibbutz members.[2] Its firm policy positions and ideological and religious grounding helped shape later Israeli political discourse, although its influence was not immediately apparent.[2] Questions it addressed—borders, refugees, security, and Jerusalem—continued to recur in national debate.[2] Its organizational history also connected the intellectual response to the 1967 victory with Likud, La'am, Tehiya, and cooperation with Gush Emunim.[1]

An account of Haim Gouri's decision to sign a supporting manifesto illustrates the demographic expectations behind some secular supporters' positions.[15] Alterman reportedly persuaded him with a vision of a single state maintaining a Jewish majority through mass immigration from the West, with Arabs forming a respected minority possessing full religious and national rights.[15] This account emphasizes that at least some supporters paired territorial incorporation with expectations of immigration and equal rights rather than treating territorial policy as a question separate from the future population.[15]

The movement's rejection of territorial compromise placed it in direct disagreement with proposals that linked withdrawal or selective retention to peace negotiations.[8][12] Its supporters were united more firmly on retaining territory and encouraging Jewish immigration and settlement than on the status of Palestinians.[2] Proposals ranged from equal civil rights to cantonal or autonomous arrangements, while Palestinian self-determination received little attention in the associated discourse and was sometimes treated disparagingly.[2]

The translation and scope of “Greater Israel” also require distinction between the named organization and wider territorial ideas.[6] An interpretation favoring “Complete Land of Israel” rejects the implication of expansionism and describes the movement as concerned with claims to Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and part of the Golan rather than Jordan or southern Syria.[6] The founding manifesto, however, explicitly called for retaining the area bounded by the June 1967 ceasefire lines.[1] Broad accounts of Greater Land of Israel advocacy describe a predominantly religious attachment to the biblical Promised Land alongside secular nationalism, whereas the original organization's membership was substantially secular and included strong Labor and kibbutz participation.[16][2]