In a 2014 interview, settler leader Daniela Weiss held up a laminated map labelled ‘The Promised Land’ and told the camera it represented the biblical promise to the patriarchs of the Jewish people. The map she displayed showed a Jewish state stretching well beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders — into parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia — far past the 1949 armistice line known as the Green Line.
Weiss, often described as a founding figure of the modern settler movement, endorses the idea commonly called ‘Greater Israel’ (in Hebrew, Eretz Israel HaShlema). That expansionist vision, rooted in biblical claims, ranges in contemporary advocacy from incorporating territory captured in 1967 — the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights — to a maximalist conception of lands from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Support for territory-based religious and historical claims exists mainly on the Israeli right, but it has surfaced repeatedly in public life. Historian Gil Shohat says figures such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir frame aspirations for historic Palestine as a divine promise rather than merely a political project. High-profile incidents have kept the theme in the headlines: in March 2023 Smotrich stirred controversy by appearing at a Paris memorial in front of a ‘Greater Israel’ map that included Jordan; the following year he told a European broadcaster that Jerusalem’s future could involve expansion toward Damascus. In September 2024 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a map that treated the West Bank as annexed while laying out plans for the post-war ‘day after’ in Gaza. In August 2025 Netanyahu told an Israeli channel he felt strongly connected to the ‘Greater Israel’ vision, prompting demands for clarification from neighboring states; and in February 2026 the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told a US talkshow host it would be ‘fine’ if Israel extended its control across the region.
The notion of a vast Jewish homeland has older intellectual roots. Genesis records a promise to Abraham and his descendants of land extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, and some early Zionist thinkers and activists incorporated biblical boundaries into their thinking. Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky made reference to historical or biblical frontiers in their writings and movements; Jabotinsky’s youth group Betar popularized songs and slogans about both banks of the Jordan belonging to the Jewish people, and Benzion Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, was active in that milieu. At the same time, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, pursued a pragmatic state-building path. The 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel left borders undefined, a formulation that allowed both the creation of a sovereign state and strategic ambiguity about future territorial aims.
Territorial expansion is already part of Israel’s modern history. In 1948 Israel’s final lines exceeded the UN partition allocations, and the 1967 war placed East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights under Israeli control. The international community does not recognize these areas as part of sovereign Israel. Still, occupation has, in many Israeli contexts, become normalized: Shohat and others note that maps used inside Israel sometimes depict those territories as part of the state, and public debate has treated the status of those areas as settled in practice even when it remains contested under international law.
Today more than 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to United Nations figures. Estimates put Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights between roughly 23,000 and 31,000, alongside about 20,000 Druze who remained after Israel captured the territory. The UN regards settlements built beyond the Green Line as a violation of international law, and in a 2024 advisory opinion the International Court of Justice concluded that the occupation is unlawful.
Since 1967 the idea of a Greater Israel has influenced religious-nationalist and far-right movements. While it remains far from a universal or mainstream position in Israeli society, it has gained purchase in influential political circles and institutions. In March 2026 Smotrich called for annexing parts of southern Lebanon. At a 2024 conference hosted by the settler organisation Nahala, senior figures including Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Weiss advocated policies aimed at reducing Palestinian presence in Gaza through what they described as ‘voluntary emigration.’ On stage, Ben Gvir argued that preventing another October 7-style attack required reasserting control over Gaza, finding legal mechanisms to encourage Palestinians to leave, and taking tougher measures against militants. On March 30 (two years after the conference), the Knesset approved a law introducing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks, marking a legislative move toward positions long voiced by hard-line settler activists.
The debate over Greater Israel mixes theology, history and realpolitik. Its advocates draw on religious and historical narratives to justify territorial aims; its opponents — inside Israel and abroad — warn of the legal, ethical and diplomatic consequences of annexation and permanent control over occupied populations. As Israel conducts a multi-front war and faces intense regional pressures, these competing visions of land, sovereignty and security continue to shape policy and provoke regional concern.
Edited by Kyra Levine and Sarah Hofmann