Daniela Weiss holds a laminated map of the Middle East titled “The Promised Land” to the camera and says: “This is the promise of God to the patriarchs of the Jewish nation.”
The map shows a Jewish state encompassing parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia — extending far beyond the 1949 armistice line, the so-called Green Line that defines Israel’s territory under international law. “It’s 3,000 kilometers — almost as big as the Sahara desert,” Weiss adds.
Weiss, sometimes called “the godmother of the Israeli settler movement,” refers to the idea of “Greater Israel,” or in Hebrew “Eretz Israel HaShlema” — “Complete Israel.” This expansionist concept, popular among the Israeli far right, draws on biblical claims.
For proponents of settlement policy such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich or National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, historian Gil Shohat says, the claim to the whole of historical Palestine is framed as a divine promise. Some Israelis interpret “Greater Israel” to include territory seized in 1967 — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — as well as the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and, historically, the Sinai Peninsula. Others aim for the broader biblical territory stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Weiss’s comments date to a 2014 interview, but the ideas have gained traction in Israeli politics as Israel fights a multi-front war across the region.
‘Greater Israel’ in current politics
In March 2023 Smotrich caused diplomatic uproar when he spoke at a Paris memorial behind a podium displaying a “Greater Israel” map that included Jordan. A year later he told a European channel that “the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.” In September 2024 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a map that fully annexed the West Bank when outlining plans for the “day after” the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In August 2025 he told an Israeli channel he was “very much” connected to the vision of “Greater Israel,” prompting demands for clarification from Egypt and Jordan. In February 2026 the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told a US talkshow host it would be “fine” if Israel took over the entire Middle East.
The origins of ‘Greater Israel’
The biblical story in Genesis records a promise to Abraham and his descendants of land from the Nile to the Euphrates. That vision was later adopted by some Jewish religious and nationalist thinkers and became part of Zionist discourse. Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky referenced biblical boundaries; Herzl called the idea “excellent” in his diaries, and Jabotinsky’s youth movement Betar promoted a song declaring both banks of the Jordan as belonging to the Jewish people. Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu, was active in Jabotinsky’s movement.
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, flirted with the idea but pursued a pragmatic path focused on establishing a sovereign Jewish state. He left Israel’s borders undefined in the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, creating strategic ambiguity for future expansion. In 1937 he said accepting partition did not require abandoning a broader vision of Zionist aspirations.
Expansion is already reality
Israel expanded beyond the UN Partition Plan allocations in 1948 and, after the 1967 war, came to occupy East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The international community does not recognize these areas as part of sovereign Israeli territory, but Shohat notes that occupation has been normalized in many Israeli contexts: “It’s been almost 60 years since Israel occupied these areas. Even in textbooks of more liberal schools in Tel Aviv, the map of Israel includes the West Bank and Gaza.”
Today more than 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations. Estimates for settlers in the Golan Heights range between 23,000 and 31,000, alongside about 20,000 Druze who remained after Israel seized the area. The UN regards settlements beyond the Green Line as a violation of international law, and the International Court of Justice in a 2024 advisory opinion found the occupation illegal.
Since 1967 the idea of “Greater Israel” has influenced far-right religious and nationalist groups, and while it is not mainstream in Israeli society, it has permeated key parts of government. In March 2026 Smotrich called for the annexation of southern Lebanon. At a 2024 conference hosted by Nahala, Weiss’s settler organization, Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Weiss lobbied for the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza.
On stage, Ben Gvir said: “If we don’t want another October 7, we need to go back home and control [Gaza]. We need to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians] and impose death sentences on terrorists.” Two years later, on March 30, the Knesset approved a law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks, moving policy closer to the hard-line positions espoused by some in the settler movement.
Edited by: Kyra Levine and Sarah Hofmann