[11] Gush Emunim was founded by students of Zvi Yehuda Kook in February 1974 in the living room of Haim Drukman,[12][13] who is also credited with coining the term.

[15] In addition to Drukman, its ideological and political core consisted of other disciples such as Hanan Porat, Moshe Levinger, Shlomo Aviner, Menachem Froman, Eliezer Waldman, Yoel Bin-Nun, and Yaakov Ariel.

In 1974, an affiliated group named Garin Elon Moreh, led by Menachem Felix and Benjamin (Beni) Katzover, attempted to establish a settlement on the ruins of the Sebastia train station dating from the Ottoman period.

After seven attempts and six removals from the site by the Israel Defense Forces, an agreement was reached according to which the Israeli government allowed 25 families to settle in the Kadum army camp southwest of Nablus/Shechem.

[19] The Yesha Council, in its role as the political umbrella organization, and Amana, as the executive, settler-building branch, nowadays form the two main institutions of the settler movement.

[citation needed] Yoel Bin-Nun, one of the founding members of Gush Emunim, broke off from the organization in the aftermath of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

[9][20][21][22][23] Its beliefs were based heavily on the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son, Zvi Yehuda Kook,[24][25] who taught that secular Zionists, through their conquests of Eretz Israel, had unwittingly brought about the beginning of the Messianic Age, which would culminate in the coming of the messiah, which Gush Emunim supporters believe can be hastened through Jewish settlement on land they believe God has allotted to the Jewish people as set forth in the Hebrew Bible.

[33] In October 2017, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pinchas Wallerstein, one of the founders of Gush Emunim, was appointed to head a new government committee created for the purpose of legalising illegal outposts and other types of unauthorised settlements in the West Bank.

[35] The perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre as well as the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were proponents of the Greater Israel ideology, with the latter being educated in the Gush Emunim-oriented Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh.