This past Sunday, the religious right-wing organized a major political rally with leaders of the settler movement, Yossi Dagan, mayor of the Binyamin Regional Council, Daniella Weis, leader of the Nachala settler movement, and cabinet ministers and MKs from three of the four coalition parties, Likud, The Religious Zionist Party, and the Haredi United Torah Judaism party.
The purpose of the event was to promote the idea that there can be no victory in Gaza without renewed Jewish settlements. This is far from a consensus position in Israeli politics; indeed it is widely considered extreme and Messianic, but not in a positive way.
The map presented not only included restoring those settlements destroyed following the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in 2005, a moment of great trauma for the settler movement and in particular the religious right, but also included new settlements, including in the center of Gaza City.
For many, including those within the religious community themselves, the timing and backdrop for such an event could not have been more wrong, and as a religious Zionist myself, I was deeply troubled. Instead of feeling their optimism, I felt a strong sense of concern.
The Land of Israel – a divine promise
Everyone brought up on the ideals of religious Zionism and Bnei Akiva learned from an early age that the whole of the Land of Israel is promised to the Jewish people. However, many of us also learned and understood that there is a reality gap between heavenly promises made in the Bible and political reality. Just as there is a difference between the utopian reality of the Messianic times and the reality we actually live in.
Key speakers like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Missions Minister Orit Strock see the mystic and the political as one and the same thing: that every centimeter settled within the historic or religious borders of the Land of Israel is itself the way to hasten the Final Redemption.
Minority politics damages solidarity
Only a small minority of Israelis are even interested in the possibility of building new or rebuilding the old settlements in Gaza. In repeated polls by Shmuel Rosner’s The Madad, around 25% of Jewish Israelis respond that they are in favor of settling Gaza. A poll carried out for Channel 12 after the rally showed 50% against and 35% in favor of settling Gaza. In the same poll, Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, the ideological heart of this idea, just passed the threshold with four seats. Hardly a position of strength to drive such a controversial plan.
It is hard to see how this could ever be a consensus issue for Israelis, and at a time when we are waging a cruel war and with still over a hundred Israelis being held hostage, it is hard to understand why this should be the first agenda item for large parts of the ruling coalition.
On the other hand, I can think of several very good reasons why this should not be a priority.
We need all the national cohesion and solidarity we can muster. The amazing soldiers and officers fighting for months now in Gaza, need to feel the full weight of that solidarity behind them. Seeing large parts of the coalition promoting, nay celebrating, the idea that victory will only come when new Jewish settlements drop anchor in Gaza can only harm that sense of national solidarity and resilience so critical for the war effort.
Israel needs maximum support from its allies, and especially the US. From the beginning of the war, it has been crystal clear that while there is very strong backing from all of Israel’s key Western allies, there are repeated calls for serious discussion about the political and not just the military’s next steps for Gaza. The government has not proposed anything or launched any type of serious debate.
Into this vacuum lurch the hard right with a major rally, music, and dancing, celebrating the settlement and permanent Israeli presence in Gaza. This, only days after we all saw the damage caused by Israeli politicians making aggressive statements regarding Palestinians in Gaza and how this impacts the proceedings at the International Court of Justice.
One can only imagine the anger many felt watching MKs and ministers dance together at the event and the potential damage this may cause, both inside Israel and on the international stage. The fact that those involved seem indifferent to these risks means that they are either incredibly selfish, short-sighted, or just reckless. Moreover, the sense of moral superiority, fueled by the narrative that they represent the new elite and heirs to national leadership, just accentuates the huge disconnect between them and large parts of Israeli society.
THE EVACUATION of Gaza in 2005 was traumatic in multiple ways for the religious settler movement. First, it struck at the heart of seeing the State of Israel as the vehicle for the active hastening of Redemption. The wider tragedy was that Israeli society as a whole was unsympathetic to their fate because of the political and ideological divide surrounding their philosophy regarding the status of every inch of the Land of Israel in the wider Zionist vision.
While that trauma was very much on display during MKs Simcha Rothman and Yariv Levin’s legal reform process prior to the war, it seems that Sunday’s show indicates that the current generation of hard-right religious Zionist politicians remains as out of touch on this issue as they were in 2005.
Pinchas Wallerstein is part of the “Old Guard” of the settler movement and was one of its leaders for many years. During and after the events of 2005, he became more distant from the hardcore of the settler movement, specifically because of his less-than-radical approach to resisting the government and evacuation at the critical moment during that fateful summer.
In an article he published following the rally he stressed that “the evacuation was carried out by the government of Israel and I believe that the tikkun of reestablishing the settlements can only be realized with a popular consensus of the people. The State made a terrible mistake, to withdraw from territory, and the State is the body that must decide to restore.”
Wallerstein is a lone but important voice, believing in the principle of settling everywhere in the Land of Israel while understanding that the people must be carried along in the decision.
What comes first – The Land of Israel or its people?
At the heart of religious Zionist philosophy stands the trinity of “the people of Israel, living according to the Torah, and in the Land of Israel.” In an article responding to a related question, Rabbi Dr. Ido Pachter of Ne’emanei Torah v’Avodah expounded: “This is in a specific order. We are first and foremost a people, with a common destiny, this is followed by an idea, a vision, a certain spirit. Only once we have achieved those we ask that we realize it our Promised Land. Holding the land alone will not bring closer the Redemption. Settling the land, whether in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, or Israel proper will only have meaning if its legitimacy is based on a broad consensus.”
This is ultimately the argument, not just between the religious right and the secular left, but within the religious Zionist community itself. Pushing Gaza resettlement in this way is not only unlikely to bring closer the physical settlement of that territory but actually harms the core values and solidarity of the Jewish people itself.
Many of those present are fueled by the trauma of being evacuated from Gush Katif. However, instead of prioritizing the evacuees of 2024, not to mention the families of the hostages, they were busy fueling their own Messianic fervor. As a religious Zionist who believes Israel is the early harbinger of our Redemption, the pit of my stomach reflected my feelings that this event pushed it further away, and not closer.
The writer, a founding partner of Goldrock Capital, is the founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research. He is a former chair of Gesher, World Bnei Akiva, and the Coalition for Haredi Employment.