Greater Israel

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Greater Israel (Hebrew: ארץ ישראל השלמה, Eretz Yisrael HaShlema) is an expression with several different biblical and political meanings over time.

[2] It holds that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Joshua and the later Prophets.

The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Early Revisionist Zionist groups such as Betar and Irgun Zvai-Leumi regarded the territory of the Mandate for Palestine, including Transjordan, as Greater Israel.

The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land, is the maximal reinforcement of our strength at the present time and a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country.

"[12] The capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt during the Six-Day War in 1967 led to the growth of the non-parliamentary Movement for Greater Israel and the construction of Israeli settlements.

Greenberg notes: THE seed was sown in 1977, when Menachem Begin of Likud brought his party to power for the first time in a stunning election victory over Labor.

The organization was formed in July 1967, a month after Israel captured the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War.

Meir Kahane, an ultra-nationalist Knesset member, who founded the American Jewish Defense League and the banned Israeli Kach party, worked towards Greater Israel and other Religious Zionist goals.

[citation needed] In March 2023, the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, spoke at a Paris memorial behind a podium featuring a 'Greater Israel' map including Trans-Jordan.

[28] Conspiracy theorists have suggested the blue strips of the Israeli flag represent the Nile and Euphrates as the boundaries of Eretz Isra'el as promised to the Jews by God according to religious scripture.

... No Israeli, even those who demonstrate understanding for Palestinian distress, will accept the ... nonsense about the blue stripes on the flag, which was designed according to the colours of the traditional tallit (prayer shawl) ..."[32]

Location map showing Israel and its neighboring countries
The "Royal Grant" to Abraham consisting of all the land east of the Brook of Egypt and west of the Euphrates , north of Kadesh and south of Hamath , from a 1919 book by Clarence Larkin .
The 1917 Balfour Declaration by the British government promising all of Palestine to the Jews.
Emblem of the Irgun , showing all of British mandate territories, including Trans-Jordan