The Fiction of Great Israel: A Genealogy of Religious Orthodoxy and an Analysis of Political Reality

Introduction — Where to Find the Question

This report states "Great Israel" (Hebrew: ארץ ישראלהשלמה Eretz Yisrael HaShlema The purpose is to thoroughly examine the validity of the concept of "the land of perfect Israel" from the perspective of its genealogy and historical development. This concept should not be understood as a spectrum of territorial restorative ambitions that take on a variety of meanings depending on biblical interpretations and political contexts, rather than having a single, clear definition. In a narrow sense, it refers to the combined territory of the Israeli state after the Third Middle East War in 1967 and the Palestinian occupied territory (West Bank and Gaza Strip), and in a broad sense it refers to a vast area that extends from the Egyptian river to the Great Euphrates, as described in the Bible.

The analysis in this article head-only faces the questions presented by the users, "the validity of the fiction of the Great Israel" and the accompanying "the pros and consequently the collapsed 'religious orthodoxy"". Therefore, this report does not accept "religious orthodoxy" as an obvious premise, but rather views it as a "assertion" that is constructed historically and politically, and critically analyzes its formation process and logical vulnerability.

To achieve this objective, this report employs historical theological analysis techniques. First, we examine the Old Testament accounts, which are the theological source of concepts, from multiple angles, and uncover the multiple contradictory boundaries that lie within them. Next, we discuss how this ancient religious concept was "reinvented" as a secular political ideology during the rise of modern nationalism in 19th century Europe. It follows historical events from the Balfour Declaration to the founding of Israel and the War of 1967 over time, detailing how ideology was transformed into territorial reality. Finally, it introduces critical perspectives such as international law, Israeli "new historians" and settles colonialism theory, and concludes the role this concept plays in the modern Israel-Palestinian conflict.

What is revealed through this analysis is the strategic ambiguity of the concept of "great Israel." When exposed to international criticism, this term is rejected as a "conspiracy theories exploited by anti-Semitics," but when spoken by leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is affirmed as a "historical and spiritual mission." It is this semantic resilience that allows this ideology to function simultaneously in both mainstream Israeli politics (settlement in the West Bank) and religious extremists' dreams (from the Nile to the Euphrates). Therefore, in order to dismantle the "fiction" of "great Israel," we need to not refute a single claim, but to unravel the multi-layered narrative, in which its ambiguity itself functions as a political tool.

Theological sources and diverse interpretations of the "Promised Land"

The Great Israel concept relies on as the source of its ultimate orthodoxy in the Old Testament, "The Promised Land" (Hebrew: הארץ המובטחת, Ha'Aretz HaMuvtahat ) is the concept of . However, a detailed analysis of the scriptures reveals that this "promise" does not present a single, well-defined map, but rather includes multiple, sometimes mutually conflicting geographical descriptions and theological conditions. The absolute and unconditional territorial rights as claimed by modern political ideologies cannot be derived from the Bible text itself.

Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 15)

The most extensive and fundamental account of the "Promised Land" is the covenant that God made with Abram (later Abraham), found in Genesis 15. This contract is characterized as an unconditional contract in which God is unilaterally responsible for performance. The land promised here is defined as "from the Egyptian rivers to the Great Rivers and the Euphrates," and is assumed to exclude many indigenous peoples, including the Cainians, Kenazis, Cadmonites, Hethites, Periji, Rephaims, Amorites, Canaanites, Gilgassians, and Jebus.

This statement is frequently cited as the basis for the later largest edition of "Great Israel." However, theological interpretations are not uniform. First, this promise is made to Abraham's "descendants," and is limited to the lineage of Isaac and Jacob in Jewish tradition, but the text itself leaves room for interpretation as including all descendants of Abraham, namely Ishmael and other sons. Second, Christian theology, and in particular the interpretation of the apostle Paul, Abraham's true "descendants" are redefined as a single being, defined by faith rather than bloodline, a single being, namely Christ, and the promised inheritance is not a physical land, but a spiritual salvation. These interpretations challenge theologically to make Genesis accounts the basis for exclusive territorial rights by certain ethnic groups.

The Boundary of Canaan (Numbers 34)

In contrast to the vast imperial vision presented in Genesis, Numbers 34 describes in a very specific way the boundaries of the lands that Israelites who have escaped from Egypt should conquer and inherit. This land is clearly "the land of Canaan" (

Eretz Kna'an ) and its boundary is detailed, from the south end of the Tsin wilderness and the southern tip of the Dead Sea, to the west, from Mount Hor to Lebo Hamat to the north, and from the Jordan River to the east.

What is important is that it refers to a much more limited territory than the promise of Genesis: land on the West Bank. This shows that there is a first major contradiction within the texts that are considered the biblical basis for the "Promised Land." The boundary in the Book of Numbers is identified as "a place where escapees from Egypt inherit," suggesting a more realistic range of settlements that differ from their grand promises to Abraham.

The Prophet's Vision (Ezekiel 47)

Written in the post-Babylonian period, Ezekiel Chapter 47 presents a third vision of the boundaries of the land of Israel to be restored to the future. This boundary is similar to that of the numberings, but its theological context is very different. Ezekiel's visions are eschatological, and the restored land is said to be shared as inheritance not only by the twelve tribes of Israel, but also to the "residuals" who live among them. This comprehensive vision challenges the notion of exclusive ownership based on pedigree, adding an ethical dimension to inheritance of land.

Land as a conditional gift (Deuteronomy and Leviticus)

The most important theological counterdiscipline that fundamentally shakes the religious orthodoxy of the Great Israel is the idea that land ownership is linked to the condition of submission to God's law. It is repeatedly emphasized in Deuteronomy and Leviticus that the Israelites can only continue to live in the promised land if they faithfully follow the covenant with God.

In particular, Leviticus 18:25 explains that the indigenous Canaanites were expelled from the land because their immoral deeds "defiled the land" and as a result, "the land spewed its inhabitants." And they are warned against the Israelites that if they do injustice as well, the land will "spew" them too. The land here is depicted as not mere possessions, but as a holiness in itself and as an actor who places high ethical demands on the inhabitants. This idea rethinks inheritance of land not as an unconditional "right" but as a conditional "responsibility," suggesting that territorial claims that ignore justice and justice are contradictory to the ethics of the Bible itself.

"Erez Israel" in the Diaspora and Rabbinic literature

After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the center of Jewish life shifted outside of "Erez Israel" (land of Israel), that is, to the diaspora. During this long period of discrepancies, the concept of "Erez Israel" was sublimated from physical territory to spiritual and symbolic centers. The holiness of the land (

Kedushat Ha-Aretz ) was repeatedly recalled in daily prayers and rituals, and became the object of longing for atonement and return by the Messiah. In rabbinical literature of this era, "Erez Israel" was a theological concept that, while connected to geographical locations, occupying a highly symbolic and mythical position, not a political program that sets concrete borders. This historical process of spiritualization is a stark contrast to the later attempts of modern Zionism to politically reterritorialize this concept.

Table 1: Comparison of statements regarding the boundary line of the "land of Israel" in the Old Testament

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As is clear from this comparison, the Bible does not provide a single, coherent map of the "Promised Land." When modern political movements assert specific "Bible boundaries," it inevitably acts of selective interpretation of these diverse and contradictory texts that meet their own purposes.

The theological concept of "promised land" in the Bible is not a static deed of ownership, but is essentially a story of "process and conditionality." It is located in a series of narrative chains: promises (Genesis), journeys (Exodus), the awarding of the laws that are the conditions for settlement and ownership (Leviticus and Deuteronomy), and conquest and settlement (Joshua). At the heart of this story is the warning that if you work injustice, you will be expelled from the land, and the holiness of the land imposes ethical and moral obligations on the inhabitants.

However, modern political ideology, which advocates "great Israel," extracts only the final result of "the award of land" from this narrative chain and asserts it as an absolute and unconditional right. This separation from the context is the manipulation of transforming ancient "religious" concepts into modern "political" ideology. It is nothing more than an act of renounceing theological burdens inherent in the concept (the obligation to practice justice and justice) and retaining only its political interests (territorial claims). The collapse of "religious orthodoxy" therefore does not deny the biblical accounts, but rather reveals how this political ideology fundamentally distorts and subversives the complex theological framework of the very scriptures it claims to rely on. In this sense, this ideology can even be said to be a kind of heresy to the text itself that it claims to be fulfilled.

Political reinvention of "Erez Israel" by modern Zionism

Modern Zionism, born in Europe in the late 19th century, redefines the ancient religious concept of "Erez Israel," as the goal of secular nationalism, and transformed it into a political territorial restoration movement. This process was not merely a succession of tradition, but rather an act of "invented tradition," as historian Eric Hobsbohm calls it, the act of reconstructing the past for modern purposes.

European context: nationalism and anti-Semitism

The emergence of political Zionism is positioned in the context of two major trends in 19th century Europe: the rise of nationalism, advocating for national self-determination, and the associated intensification of racist anti-Semitism. The Dreyfus incident in France made many Jewish intellectuals, including Theodor Herzl, realize how difficult it is to assimilate Jews, and was a decisive opportunity to drive them to build their own nation-state. Zionism was essentially a search for a political solution to the "Jewish problem" that emerged in Europe using the logic of European nationalism.

Herzl and Political Zionism

Theodor Herzl's Jewish Nation (1896) The Jewish state ) laid the theoretical foundation for this new movement. Herzl's vision was not religious salvation or fulfillment of prophecies, but rather secular and political. He argued that the establishment of a sovereign state was essential to "normalize" the Jews and make them "people like all other peoples." The ancient homeland of Palestine was chosen as a candidate site to exploit the historical and emotional ties to mobilize the diaspora Jewish community.

"Creating Tradition" and Building the National Myth

Zionism needed to create a unified national consciousness in order to build a modern nation-state. Here, Eric Hobsbohm's concept of "creating tradition" provides an extremely effective analytical framework. Zionist thinkers have constructed a linear historical narrative that directly connects the ancient Kingdom of Israel with the Jews of modern Europe. This story simplifies the diverse history of the diaspora that lasted nearly 2,000 years into a single "exile and return" story, creating the impression that Jews have existed as a single ethnic group and nation throughout history.

This "created tradition" served two important functions. First, it presented a community of imagination that "we are one nation" to diverse Jewish communities that are dispersed around the world and have different languages ​​and cultures, allowing them to mobilize for national construction projects. Second, by asserting the assertion of "historical rights," he justified the international community to settle Palestine and build a state. In this process, Zionism negatively captures the history of the diaspora (Hebrew: שלילת הגלות,

shlilat ha-gaut , denial of discretion) was seen as an abnormal state to overcome.

Criticism of National History (Shlomo Zand)

Israeli historian Shlomo Zand wrote about his book, "The Origins of the Jews: Is History Really Correct? ' (original title: The Invention of the Jewish People ) and criticized this Zionist national history from a fundamental perspective. Zand argued that the "myth of exile" itself, which states that ancient Jews were expelled from their homeland by Rome, is not a descendant of ancient Israelites, but a descendant of a diverse group of people who converted to Judaism at each stage of history, such as the inhabitants of the Khazar Kingdom. Zand's theory has received much criticism in the academic world, but his arguments are thought-provoking how well the concept of ethnic and pedigree continuity that Zionism relies on is.

The challenge of revisionist Zionism

In light of the international situation, the mainstream (later Labor Zionism) represented by Herzl and Heim Weitzmann initially took a realistic stance that it was impossible for state building in parts of Palestine, while revisionist Zionism led by Zev Jabotinsky made its more rigid and territorial maximalist position clearer. They deemed the entire British Mandate Palestine, the territory that includes both the east and west sides of the Jordan River, as "Eretz Israel," and claimed its full possession. Their slogan, "Two banks on the Jordan River, this is ours, and so is that," clearly shows this ambition. This revisionist trend formed a lineage that went through the later armed groups such as Ilgun and Lech, leading to the Hert Party led by Menachem Begin and the current Likud Party, becoming the most direct political heir to the Great Israeli ideology.

Modern Zionism carries a paradox at its core. This is that, while still a modern and European nationalist movement in nature, it had to appear to have an ancient, non-European origin to justify colonialist claims in Palestine. Its success relied on mobilizing discrete people and building a "created tradition" that was compelling enough to persuade the great powers. This tradition converged the diverse history of Jews into a single story of "exile and return," while also expunging the existence of Palestinian indigenous peoples and their history through the discourse of "a land without human beings."

Therefore, the "religious orthodoxy" of Zionism is not an organic continuation of Jewish tradition, but the result of modern politics's diversion of religious symbolism to serve secular nationalism and colonialist goals. This paradox of modern yet ancient poses asserting the inherent rights to European yet non-European lands is central to the "fiction" that this report seeks to unravel.

From philosophy to state — mandate, division, and war

In the first half of the 20th century, the philosophy of modern Zionism shifted to a concrete national construction project, with the geopolitical interests of the British Empire and the recognition of the international community. This process went in a way that ignored the wishes of the indigenous peoples of Palestinians, ultimately resulting in a proposed division by the United Nations and the subsequent creation of forced reality by the war. The events of this period were the critical stages of the transformation of the "great Israel" philosophy from religious discourse into a territorial reality defined by military force.

Balfour Declaration (1917)

The letter, the Balfour Declaration, sent by British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour on November 2, 1917, to Sir Lionel Walter Rothschild, was a groundbreaking event for the Zionist movement. This declaration was expressed by the British government "in favor of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine," and for the first time gave the Zionist goal the approval of a major global power.

However, the motive for this declaration was not a theological belief, but rather an extremely realistic imperialist interest in carrying out World War I. The UK was planning to gain the support of the Jewish communities in America, Russia and Germany, leading to the advantage of the Allied war situation. Furthermore, it was strategically important to establish pro-All-American Jewish forces in Palestine in anticipating the division of the Ottoman territory after the war and protecting access to the Suez Canal.

The declaration was given the terms of reservation that "the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine should not be harmed," but it did not mention any political or ethnic rights. This inherent contradiction contained the spark of subsequent conflicts in Palestine.

British Mandate

After World War I, the League of Nations entrusted the rule of Palestine to Britain. The mandate clause, officially approved in 1922, placed the wording of the Balfour Declaration at its core, imposing the obligation on Britain to promote the establishment of a Jewish ethnic neighborhood. The preamble to the clause recognized the "historical relationship between Jews and Palestine," and the basis for "rebuilding" their ethnic hometown, and incorporated the "created traditions" built by Zionism into international legal documents.

Under this legal framework, a large influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe led to the Jewish community (Issube) building its own political, economic and social institutions one after another. Meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs have become more resistant to being denied the right to self-determination and being deprived of their land and resources, and riots and strikes have been frequent. Britain was caught between two nationalisms: Jews and Arabs, and was constantly in conflicting policies.

1947 United Nations Division Resolution (No. 181)

After World War II, the exhausted Britain left the Palestine issue to the United Nations. After an investigation by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a proposal for division (Resolution 181) that would divide Palestine into Arab and Jewish states and put Jerusalem under international control.

The resolution was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but was immediately rejected by the leaders of Palestinians and Arab countries. The reason for their rejection was first of all, that the UN had no authority to divide their lands, ignoring the right to self-determination of Indigenous peoples. Secondly, the split plan itself was significantly unfair. This is because at the time, only about 42% of the territory was allocated to Arabs, who accounted for about two-thirds of the Palestinian population, while Jews, who were only one-third of the population and owned less than 7% of the land, were given about 56% of the territory, including fertile coastal land.

1948 War and Nakba

Shortly after the adoption of the UN division resolution, civil wars in Palestine began to intensify between Jewish militias and Palestinian militias. Research by Israeli "new historians" shows that even before the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 15, 1948 and the intervention of the Arab regular army, Zionist militias had launched planned attacks on the Palestinian community and expelled its residents under an operation called "Plan Darrett."

On May 14, 1948, as the British mandate ended, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel. The next day, troops from Egypt, TransJordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Palestine, causing the First Middle East War to break out.

The outcome of the war ended with an overwhelming military victory for the Zionist movement. With the 1949 armistice agreement, Israel took control of 78% of the former Mandate Palestine, gaining territory well beyond the territory allocated to Jewish states under the proposed division of the United Nations. The remaining West Bank (including East Jerusalem) was under control by TransJordan, and the Gaza Strip was under Egypt.

This war is remembered by the Palestinians as a "naqba" (major disaster). More than 750,000 Palestinians became refugees and were either exiled or forced to be evacuated from their homelands. More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, many of which had Jewish towns and forests built on their former sites. This massive ethnic cleansing has ruined Palestinian society and is the root of the refugee problem that continues to this day. "New historians" such as Benny Morris and Iran Pape argue, based on declassified official documents, that the expulsion was not an accidental outcome of the war, but a deliberate policy to establish a Jewish majority state.

The 1948 war did not directly bring about the Great Israel ideology. In fact, realists like Ben-Gurion had publicly accepted the proposed division of the United Nations. However, he expressed his view in his private letter that division was merely the first step towards "liberation of the whole country." The outcome of this war was that Israeli borders were not due to international agreements or "religious orthodoxy" but rather by military forces, and that they were "fait accompli" (

accomplished facts ) has established a pivotal precedent that is determined by the creation of the '. Instead of the border proposed by the United Nations, the 1949 Armistice Line (Green Line) became Israel's de facto border. This experience fostered a political culture that justified the expansion of territorial expansion achieved by military force, in the name of security needs. This principle, practiced by the war in 1948, became a fertile ground for the seeds of the dormant ideological "Great Israel" to be reseave after the next major military victory in 1967.

1967 Third Middle East War — Territorial expansion and ideology revival

The Third Middle East War (Six-Day War) that broke out in June 1967 became a watershed that fundamentally overturned the history of Israel and, in turn, the geopolitical map of the entire Middle East. Israel's overwhelming military victory in this war was more than just a territory expansion, but dramatically revived the ideology of the Greater Israel, which had been dormant since 1948, and provided a powerful driving force for the settlement movement to make it happen.

War and geopolitical consequences

The war ended in just six days, with Israel occupying the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights from Syria. This has led to Israel's territory more than triple before the war, transforming from a vulnerable small country into a regional power with an undeniable military advantage. This victory poses the Arab world with the reality that it is impossible to destroy Israel militarily, ensuring Israel's strategic depth.

Revival of territorial maximalism

This dramatic victory was interpreted not as a secular military success within Israel, particularly among religious nationalists, but as a divine intervention that marked the arrival of an age of Messianic salvation. The ideology of "Great Israel," which had retreated from the public eye of political discourse since 1948, has come to life in this new reality.

In particular, the physical control of historical and religiously important lands such as the Old Town of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the tombs of Hebron's patriarchs, and the Jewish Samaria region, which is frequently seen in the Bible, gave the previously abstract philosophy of "Erez Israel," a palpable reality. The setting of the Bible story spreads before us as a real landscape, and ideology is indistinguishable with concrete territory.

The birth of the settlement movement

Amid this enthusiasm, radical religious nationalist groups such as the Great Israeli Movement (formed in July 1967) and the subsequent Gush Emnim (Block of Loyalty) were born. They advocated Jewish settlement in newly occupied territory as a religious duty to bring God's promises to fulfill, rather than mere security policy. They began building settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights without waiting for government permission or under the government's tacit understanding.

Aron Plan and the Labour Government's policy

Even the Labour Party, which was in power at the time, could not have been irrelevant to the reality of this expansion of territory. The Aron Plan, proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Igal Aron, was annexed to Israel's strategic key points, such as the Jordan Valley and the Greater Jerusalem area, excluding areas with densely populated Palestinians, and justified the settlement for security reasons. Although the plan has a different motivation from the ideologically driven settlements under the later Likud administration, it pioneered the policy of having civilians settled in occupied territories, paving the way for the construction of settlements to be made into fait accompli.

The rise of the right

Israeli politics since 1967 experienced changes that could be considered crustal movement. Until then, a right-wing party (later Likud) led by Menachem Begin, the heir to revisionist Zionism, which had been relegated to the margins of politics, had up until then, emerged as a major driver of nationalism, hoping to own Jewish Samaria, the "liberated homeland." As the left sought "an exchange of territory and peace," the right sought for territorial indivisibility and became seen as an embodiment of patriotism. This trend was brought about when Likud won a historic victory in the 1977 election and took power for the first time, and was a critical change in Israel's national policy.

The war in 1967 was a critical moment when the "created tradition" of secular Zionism recombined with the powerful Messianic religious fervor. Until then, Labour Zionism in particular was a secular movement, and even the National Religious Party (NRP) were cautious about immediately linking the existence of a state with Messianic salvation. However, the overwhelming victory, including the recapture of Jerusalem, was seen as a miracle to many, and provided empirical "evidence" for Messianic interpretations of history.

This led to the military actions of the secular state being reinterpreted as the fulfillment of God's prophecy. This interpretation was born from Gush Emnim, who united the nationalist goal of land settlement with the religious belief that it was part of the process of Messianic salvation. This is how the ideology of "Great Israel" has undergone a transformation. It no longer was a mere revisionist political slogan, but it became a God-given precept for some enthusiastic, devout people. This process of "resanctification" gave settlement projects ideological resilience and driving force that could never be achieved through pure security theory alone. Thus, "fiction" has been written in a powerful new chapter based on events that were perceived as God's work.

Settlement expansion, international law, and annexation policy

Since the Third Middle East War in 1967, Israel has continued to build and expand Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory in a manner that violates international law. This policy is not merely a maintenance of public security or responding to population growth, but rather a planned territorial annexation process aimed at transforming the ideology of "great Israel" into a physical reality, making it impossible to establish a Palestinian state.

History of the expansion of settlements

Settlement activities began shortly after the war in 1967. Initially, under the Labour Party's government, settlements were built in areas with a weak Palestinian population, which were considered to be important for security purposes, such as the Jordan Valley and the Greater Jerusalem region, based on the aforementioned "Aron Plan."

However, when Likud, led by Menachem Begin, came to power in 1977, the settlement policy strengthened its ideological character, expanding to the entire West Bank, including mountainous areas close to the Palestinian population and the western Samaria region. The "Drobless Project" formulated by the World Zionist Organization has set a clear goal of preventing the establishment of the Palestinian state, and painted a blueprint for a large-scale network of settlements.

The peace process under the Oslo Accord in the 1990s did not stop this settlement activity. Rather, while peace negotiations progressed, the Israeli government built thousands of new homes on the grounds of "natural growth," and the settler population in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) increased by about 100% between 1993 and 2000. Today, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the settlements form a huge infrastructure that divides and isolates Palestinian communities.

Illegality of settlements under international law

The international community has a nearly perfectly consensus on the fact that Israeli settlement activities violate international law. The central legal basis is Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. This clause explicitly prohibits occupying states from transferring or residing some of their civilians to the territory they occupy.

This position has been repeatedly confirmed by the UN Security Council (such as Resolutions 446, 478, 2334), the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In particular, Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016 declared that settlement activities were "blatant violations of international law" and "has no legal validity." The ICJ's advisory opinion in 2024 also reaffirmed the illegality of the settlements, urging Israel to end its occupation, halt its settlement activities and withdraw all settlers.

Israeli rebuttal and its denial

The Israeli government has developed several independent legal arguments to deny the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The main argument is (1) the West Bank of the Jordan River was not part of an internationally recognized sovereign state prior to 1967, and is therefore a "disputed land" rather than an "occupied territory," and (2) what the treaty prohibits the "forced" deportation of residents, and Jewish settlements are voluntary.

However, these claims have been almost completely rejected by the international legal academia and the international community. The definition of occupation is based on the fact that it does not depend on the presence or absence of previous sovereignty in the territory of the country, but effectively controls the territory of another country by military force. Furthermore, the prohibition under Article 49 is interpreted as an absolute measure to prevent the demographic changes of the occupying territory, whether the transfer is forced or voluntary.

Netanyahu era: From de facto annexation to legal annexation

During the long-term prime minister of Benjamin Netanyahu, the expansion of settlements accelerated, and the movement of the "great Israel" philosophy shifted from a de facto annexation to a legal annexation. The Netanyahu administration has openly refused to settle the two-state and continued to destroy the physical foundation of the Palestinian state by creating "facts on the ground."

In particular, the move towards annexation became even more blatant when far-right politicians such as Bezalel Smotric and Itamaru Ben-Gevill became the main ministers of the coalition government. They have transferred the administrative powers of the West Bank from the military to civilians (the minister in charge of the Ministry of Defense, where Smotrich himself serves), and are attempting to make the application of sovereignty addict by obscuring the legal distinction between the settlement and the mainland of Israel.

International community response (US and EU)

The international community's response has not come to deter this Israeli policy. The government has shaking American policies. Successive administrations have officially viewed settlements as an obstacle to peace, but the Donald Trump administration effectively approved Israeli policies, saying that settlements do not violate international law. The Joe Biden administration has returned to the traditional position of illegal settlements, but has not overturned many of the Trump administration's policies (such as the relocation of embassies to Jerusalem), and continues to provide strong military and diplomatic support to Israel.

The European Union has consistently deemed settlements a violation of international law and has condemned them for their expansion. In recent years, some member states have been pushing for mandatory labelling of settlement products and measures to ban trade with settlements, but the EU as a whole has not yet put any substantial pressure on Israel.

Israeli settlement projects act as "creeping annexation" or "slow motion annexation." This is a strategy that uses bureaucratic and legal systems to achieve the goals of Great Israel, while still leaving plausible denial of its ultimate intention. The open annexation of the entire West Bank has been repeatedly debated, but has ultimately been avoided, taking into account international costs and the "population issue" (the dilemma that giving Palestinians citizenship would shake the nature of the Jewish state).

Instead, successive governments have established control of Palestinian land using a variety of mechanisms, such as declaring land as "state-owned land," confiscating it with military orders, building bypass roads exclusively for settlers, and applying separate legal systems to settlers and Palestinians. This will divide Palestinian territory (in the form of "Swiss cheese"), and the settlement bloc will become integrated with the mainland Israel, making it physically impossible for the future Palestinian state to exist.

This process is progressive. Building each and every home and laying roads seems like a small step, but as they accumulate, the strategic goal of permanent control, which is the essence of annexation, is achieved. This "creeping annexation" allows Israel to pursue maximalist goals while managing the international backlash that tends to respond more strongly to sudden, dramatic actions. The "fiction" of "Great Israel" is becoming reality every day, not by grand declarations, but by millions of bureaucratic decisions and a thousand bulldozers.

Critical perspective — An attempt to demythologize

The ideology of "Great Israel" and the reality of occupation and settlement that it brought about have been exposed to diverse critical perspectives from within and outside Israel. The deconstruction of the founding myth by Israeli "new historians," the application of the analytical framework of colonialism, the analytical framework of colonialism, the accusations of occupation by human rights groups within Israel, and the Palestinians themselves of resistance and claims challenge the orthodoxy of "Great Israel" from different angles.

"New Historians"

In the late 1980s, Israeli historians such as Benny Morris, Iranian Pape and Avi Shreim used declassified official documents to challenge Israel's official view of founding history. They were called "new historians" and particularly overturned the common beliefs about the 1948 war and the outbreak of Palestinian refugees. Official historical views suggest that Palestinians voluntarily displaced at the request of Arab leaders, but new historians have revealed that intentional expulsion by Israel (then Zionist militias) and the fear caused by the fighting were the main cause of refugees.

However, even among new historians, views are not uniform. Morris concluded that despite the expulsion, it was carried out amid the heat of the war and not a pre-planned ethnic cleansing. He later retreated to a more conservative position, even suggesting that the expulsion was inevitable and justified. In contrast, Pape declared that it was a planned ethnic cleansing by the Zionist leadership, and made it clear that he criticized Zionism itself as settler colonialism.

The framework of colonialism

In recent years, an approach to analyzing Zionism within the framework of "settler colonialism" has become increasingly influential in academic circles. This theory distinguishes between classical colonialism, which is primarily intended to exploit natural resources, and settler colonialism, in which settlers seek to replace Indigenous peoples and build a permanent society. The latter is said to be based on the "logic of elimination" to exclude Indigenous people.

Apparently applying this framework argues that Zionism was not just a national liberation movement, but a project by European settlers to eliminate Palestinian indigenous peoples and build a new state. They point out that early Zionist leaders, such as Herzl and Jabotinsky, themselves described their businesses using the term "colonization." From this perspective, the Nakbah of 1948 and the expansion of settlements since 1967 are not contingent, but rather as manifestations of structural impulses inherent in the project of Zionism.

Opposition from within Israel

Within Israeli society there is also an active civil society that opposes occupation and settlement, recording and accusing them of their actual situation. Peace Now has challenged government policies by monitoring the expansion of settlements and providing information domestically and internationally. B'Tselem is a human rights group that closely records human rights violations of Palestinians under occupation, and its reports have been widely cited in international organizations and in the media.

In recent years, Betherem has published a report that concludes that Israel has a "partheid regime" that gives Jews superior status throughout the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is extremely important in that major Israeli human rights groups officially recognize that occupation is not temporary but a structure of permanent rule and discrimination.

Palestinian response

The responses from the Palestinian side are of course diverse, but two major trends can be mentioned.

• Palestinian Autonomous Government (PA) : For many years, the Palestinian Autonomous Government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, have set the official goal of a two-state solution based on the boundary line of 1967. This is a concept that establishes an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and coexists peacefully with Israel. This position is supported by the majority of the international community and represents the mainstream diplomatic path of Palestinian nationalism.

• Hammers : Meanwhile, the Islamic resistance movement Hammas has taken a more harder position. The Hammers charter, published in 1988, aimed at destruction of Israel and establishing an Islamic state across Palestine, and used a lot of anti-Semitic language. However, a new policy document released in 2017 showed a stance that, despite rejecting Israel's approval, the company was hoping to tolerate the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state based on the border in 1967. This is seen as a tactical flexibility in response to political reality rather than a fundamental shift in ideology.

These diverse critical perspectives, starting from different starting points (historical studies, social theory, human rights law, and the experiences of the parties), converge at one core. In other words, there is fundamental incompatibility between the Zionism Project's goal of "maintaining the majority of the Jewish population in the largest edifice" and the principles of "universal human rights, international law, and democracy."

New historians have revealed that in order to create a Jewish majority state, the banishment (Nakba) at the time of founding was not a coincidence but a structural inevitability of the war. The framework of settler colonialism argues that this logic of "exclusion" (if not physical, demographic, if not physical) is inherent in the project. And records of daily life under the occupation of Betherem - land confiscation, restrictions on movement, and double legal systems - provide empirical evidence of the continued modern era of this structural rule. Their adoption of the term "apartheid" is nothing more than a logical consequence derived from this evidence.

Therefore, criticism of "Great Israel" is not merely a discussion of borders on maps. It is a critique of the very political structure needed to maintain its ideology. "Fantasy" inevitably demands the reality of inequality. That is why these diverse critical frameworks, each taking a different approach, come to such similar and poignant conclusions.

Conclusion — The collapse of "religious orthodoxy" and "fiction" as a political ideology

This report has historically and critically examined the concept of "great Israel" from its theological origins to modern political reality. Through this analysis, we can draw the following conclusions on the original question, "the validity of the fiction of the Great Israel" and "the pros and consequences of the collapsed 'religious orthodoxy"".

The collapse of "religious orthodoxy"

"Religious orthodoxy," which forms the basis of the claims of "Great Israel," has collapsed in a double sense.

First, the claim is based on arbitrary and decontextual reading of biblical texts. As this report details in Chapter 2, the Old Testament does not provide a single, coherent geographical definition of the "Promised Land." The vast vision of Genesis, the limited boundaries of Numbers, and Ezekiel's eschatological visions each have different contexts and theological intentions, and even contradict each other. It is not a sincere interpretation of text that modern political ideologies choose only those that meet their own purposes from among these diverse statements and use them as the basis for absolute territorial rights. More importantly, it completely ignores the powerful ethical and theological counterdisciplinary inherent in the Bible, that land ownership is linked to the conditions of submission to God's law and practice of justice. Asserting the unconditional priesthood is nothing more than an act of renunciation of the moral responsibility imposed by the Bible itself.

Second, the modern political concept of "great Israel" is not a direct continuation of ancient religious traditions, but a "tradition created" within the entirely different historical context of 19th century European nationalism. Political Zionism, which began with Theodor Herzl, was essentially a secular project, aimed at building a modern nation-state to solve the "Jewish problem" in Europe. In the process, ancient religious symbols and stories were mobilized as political tools to form national consciousness and justify territorial claims against Palestine. References to God were not a search for theological truth, but rather a means of achieving political ends. Therefore, its "orthodoxness" is not derived from religion, but from the ideology of modern nationalism.

The practical effect of political ideology as a "fiction"

Even if the religious and historical claims of "Great Israel" are constructed "fictions," the impact that "fictions" have had on the real world is immeasurably enormous. Ideology has the power to mobilize people and shape history, whether it is true or not.

This "fiction" has been a powerful mobilization force for the settler movement since 1967 to sanctify its actions and overcome all difficulties. It provided discourse that justified the construction of settlements, a clear violation of international law (Treaty of Geneva, Fourth Geneva), as "liberation of sacred land." It has overshadowed ethical questions by positioning the expulsion of Palestinians and land stolen within the grand narrative of fulfilling God's promises. And today it is the political foundation of the Israeli Right, rejecting the international consensus of a two-state solution and promoting permanent occupation and annexation.

Thus, the "fiction" of "great Israel" functions as a destructive reality that deprives Palestinians of land, property and self-determination, and remains one of the major obstacles that make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict irresolvable.

Final evaluation

In conclusion, we must evaluate "Great Israel" as not the periphery of some extremists, but as a core or at least a deeply pervasive element of the dominant political ideology in Israel today. It has created the reality of lasting conflict and structural injustice by putting the rights to the mythologized "all" above the rights of all those who live there.

Ironically, this ideology creates a reality that is the opposite of the ethical and moral demands of justice, justice, and consideration for the residency found in biblical texts that it claims to rely on as a source of orthodoxy. In that sense, the collapse of "religious orthodoxy" is not just the result of academic analysis, but also shows an ethical failure in which ideology, in its true form, betrays its ideals.