THE WHOLE LAND OF ISRAEL

Author: Adil Faouzi, a Moroccan journalist with a Master's degree in Media Studies from Qatar. Adil contributes about the Western Sahara dispute, Morocco-Israeli relations, and Jewish-Muslim coexistence

Eretz Yisrael is  a sacred geography that has animated prayer for millennia. But turning liturgy into latitude – elevating “Greater Israel” from scripture and slogans into a political program – isn’t faith; it’s maximalist cartography dressed in messianic rhetoric. It collapses ethics into acreage and swaps statecraft for a theology of permanent exception.

What “Greater Israel” actually means has always been contested. The Hebrew phrase most Israelis use is Eretz Yisrael HaShlema – the “Whole Land of Israel.” In practice it has carried two main meanings: a narrower, post-1967 claim to all the territory “between the Sea and the Jordan,” and a maximal, biblicist claim stretching to the Euphrates and, depending on who is speaking, down to the “brook of Egypt.” The first has been embedded in party platforms; the second is a religious-text reading sometimes weaponized by ideologues and conspiracy theorists. Either way, it is territorial irredentism, not a doctrine of peace.

The textual seed for these visions lies in the Bible itself. Genesis 15:18, Exodus 23:31, Deutoronomy 11: 24 and Joshua 1: 4 all sketch boundaries far beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines. Yet having verses in scripture does not make them modern border treaties. Ancient sacral maps varied, and none were zoning laws for a 21st-century nation-state. Treating them as such is a category error – theology misapplied as cadastral survey. These are the verses that move the debate from maps to metaphysics and back.

David Ben-Gurion understood the power of ambiguity. In the drafting of Israel’s 14 May 1948 Declaration of Independence, he opposed locking in fixed borders or even explicitly referencing the UN Partition Plan as binding, insisting instead that Israel’s borders would be determined by the realities of war – whether territories like Galilee or areas near Jerusalem could be captured and held. Later, in the early 1950s, he acknowledged that Israel had been founded “in only a portion of the Land of Israel” and that many doubted whether its full historic boundaries would ever be restored – but he never framed this as a “hidden occupation” nor promised inevitable expansion. It was calculated flexibility, not a biblical mandate.

On July 9, 1947, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Fishman (Maimon) told the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) that the “Promised Land was quite a large one, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates” – a theological citation voiced in a diplomatic hearing. The resulting partition plan, of course, bore little resemblance to that sermon. The modern revival of the concept took on political flesh after the 1967 Six-Day War. The Movement for Greater Israel demanded permanent retention and settlement of newly captured territories. Its leaders blended poets, generals, and ideologues; its spiritual charge came from the Kook school’s religious Zionism, with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook sacralizing the land as divinely granted. In parallel, Likud’s 1977 platform canonized the formula: “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” That sentence has since framed coalition politics for decades.

The maximalist imagination also drew fuel from Oded Yinon’s 1982 essay – later dubbed the “Yinon Plan” – which argued that fragmenting neighboring Arab states would serve Israel’s strategic ends. Scholars have debated its influence; conspiracy theorists have treated it as scripture. It is best read as one ideologue’s blueprint, not state policy, but its logic – rule by engineered balkanization – has haunted the more aggressive strategic visions ever since. Then there is the “10 agorot coin” controversy. In 1990, Yasser Arafat waved a coin before the UN General Assembly, claiming it bore the map of Greater Israel. The Bank of Israel’s own records make clear it features motifs from ancient coins – pomegranates, palms, lyres – not a Nile-to-Euphrates map. Nonetheless, the myth has persisted in polemics.

The Israeli constitutional framework adds another twist. Israel never adopted a single written constitution; instead, it operates via Basic Laws passed by the Knesset – the Knesset’s own explainer is plain about this. The 1948 Declaration of Independence deliberately avoided defining borders after an internal debate; Ben-Gurion argued that the realities of war would dictate them. De jure borders since then have been formalized only through treaties, such as with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, not through any constitutional clause. Practically, that constitutional vacuum leaves maximalists to say, with a wink, that borders are “elastic,” while jurists insist – correctly – that it is treaties and statutes that bind.

The so-called “New Middle East” Netanyahu loves to parade is not some visionary project – it’s a recycled slogan. Its most famous early mainstream use came from Shimon Peres, whose 1993/1994 book The New Middle East branded the concept worldwide as a utopian vision of economic integration after Oslo. But after the Iraq War in 2003, US policymakers – most notably Condoleezza Rice in 2006 – revived the phrase with a very different edge: not cooperation, but redrawing borders through regime change and enforced democratization. Born in that crucible of post-Iraq chaos and the Lebanon war, today’s “New Middle East” is once again less about prosperity and more about power. It’s a map of the region carved up to fit Israel’s security obsessions and expansionist appetites, sold under the false banner of “stability” and “peace.” What it really means is an entrenched regional order where Israel dictates terms, Arab fragmentation is permanent, and the Palestinian cause is buried under economic deals and normalization photo-ops.

Today, Israel’s slow-burn application of the “Greater Israel” doctrine is no longer subtle. Piece by piece, it has entrenched irreversible control over the West Bank, normalized its occupation through diplomatic breakthroughs, and tested its reach in Gaza with unprecedented destruction and displacement. The Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967 and unilaterally recognized by the United States as Israeli territory in 2019, is another example of how conquest has been laundered into permanence. The map Netanyahu hints at is not hypothetical – settlements, annexation laws, and military dominance have already shifted facts on the ground. This is progress not toward peace, but toward a maximalist reality where Israel extends its influence from the Mediterranean to deep into Arab heartlands, using war, diplomacy, and economics as interchangeable tools. It’s not a “new” Middle East – it’s an old colonial fantasy dressed in modern PR.

Demographics, too, challenge the fantasy. An Arabic Rawabet Center think-tank analysis in 2016 described the global Jewish population – then “not exceeding fourteen million” – as too small to sustain the Greater Israel project. Today, the figure stands at roughly 15.8 million worldwide, about 7.3 million of them in Israel. The increase changes little: it remains less than 0.2% of the global population, underscoring the gap between ambition and human resources.

The rhetoric around Greater Israel has not vanished. Netanyahu himself, in January 2024, declared that Israel must retain “security control over all territory west of the Jordan River” – a functional “river to sea” position couched in security terms. In August 2025, he doubled down with his “Very much” endorsement of the Greater Israel vision, reviving the debate with a single phrase. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has pressed ahead with plans for the E-1 settlement bloc, which critics say would bisect the West Bank and extinguish the possibility of a Palestinian state; in 2023, he even said the Palestinian town of Huwwara “should be erased,” later calling it an “emotional slip.” Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” outlines permanent Israeli sovereignty, forced choices for Palestinians, and an architecture of annexation by administrative attrition. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been more blunt still: “My right, the right of my wife and my children, to move around Judea and Samaria [West Bank] is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs [Palestinians]. The right to life comes before freedom of movement.” Former UN ambassador and Likud MK Danny Danon co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing the “voluntary resettlement” of Gazans – a genteel phrase for demographic engineering. These are not isolated slips but part of a continuum: statements, plans, and policies that keep the Greater Israel idea alive under different guises – “security control,” “normalization corridors,” “facts on the ground.”

Against this backdrop, dismantling the idea requires confronting it on every front. Biblically, theology isn’t a title deed. Biblically inflected borders shift from Genesis to Joshua to Ezekiel; rabbinic sources themselves dispute their scope and applicability. To elevate one expansive verse while ignoring the prophetic corpus’ insistence on justice over conquest is cherry-picking as statecraft. Ancient maps were fluid, contingent, and often symbolic; prophetic texts tethered the covenant to ethical conduct, not perpetual annexation. Political sovereignty may draw inspiration from tradition, but it cannot outsource the drafting of modern borders to antiquity – turning a covenantal promise into a cadastral survey is to commit a category error, confusing theology with zoning law.

Historically, Herzl sketched big, then sought charters; Ben-Gurion repeatedly prioritized viability over “sanctified borders,” accepting partitions in 1937 and 1947 and later arguing that fetishizing lines was a political mistake. Maximalists like to wear the mantle of founders; the record shows the founders were transactional.

Legally and demographically, permanent annexation without citizenship entrenches an apartheid-like regime; annexation with citizenship dissolves the Jewish majority. International law is not optional: settlement and annexation in occupied territory carry costs, from ICJ opinions to sanctions and isolation.

Strategically, it’s a boomerang. “Security control” over millions of unwilling subjects produces not stability but a permanent mobilization – perpetual reserve duty, perpetual guard duty, perpetual flashpoints.

Internally, organizing politics around sacred soil corrodes the state and breeds messianic governance – coalitions held hostage by the most theocratic partners, budgets bent toward settlement blocs, and judicial independence attacked to keep the project alive.

Regionally, the “from river to sea” frame – whether chanted by Palestinians or coded into Israeli platforms – zero-sum-ifies the conflict, ensuring it remains endless. You cannot normalize with neighbors or stabilize alliances while signaling that Palestinian self-determination will never be realized. Even Israel’s friends have said as much when its leaders flaunt the maximalist line. You can’t chant Eretz-Yisrael Hashlema at home and then demand international coalitions abroad; you can’t point to Abraham Accords while hinting that Abraham’s borders are your borders. It detonates legitimacy, hardens boycott politics, and hands your worst critics their exhibit A. If Zionism is a movement to normalize Jewish self-determination, “Greater Israel” is its self-abnormalization – the place where a Jewish democratic state melts into a forever-occupation state and loses the mamlachti soul Ben-Gurion insisted on preserving.

Ethically, the Jewish story is not just sovereignty regained; it is sovereignty restrained – law binding king, prophet rebuking ruler. Jewish sovereignty has always been bound to law and restraint. A “Greater Israel” sustained by permanent domination is not a  sanctification of the divine name – but a desecration of the very values invoked to justify it. That’s not Torah ; that’s proof-texting to launder power. It is political messianism masquerading as statecraft, a misreading of scripture, a misquotation of history, and a misplacement of power. Zionism’s actual tradition worth defending is not the maximalist chant but the hard, unglamorous practicality of defensible borders, functioning institutions, and the capacity to live with neighbors in dignity.

Even on its own terms, the project is unserious. It presumes unlimited manpower, infinite resources, and zero diplomatic blowback. The IDF is over-tasked, reserves are exhausted, the economy absorbs political-risk shocks, and the Jewish people – 15-plus million worldwide – remain small in number and bound to higher principles than territorial hunger. The Jewish story doesn’t need an ever-widening border to be secure; it needs a border that is morally defensible and therefore politically sustainable. As the saying could go in Hebrew, expanding borders without justice is small-souled. Zionism has endured because it could distinguish truth from myth and practicality) from talk. Greater Israel collapses those distinctions. It turns a living people into an annexation project. It’s time to end the illusions. Savlanut (Hebrew word for patience, tolerance, or forbearance) , yes — but no more illusions.

Bottom line. “Greater Israel” is political messianism masquerading as strategy. It misreads scripture, misquotes history, and mistakes force for future. The actual Israeli tradition worth defending is not the maximalist chant but the hard, unglamorous practicality of borders you can defend, institutions you can trust, and neighbors you can live with. That tradition – the one Ben-Gurion recognized and even Likud once hedged with diplomatic pragmatism – demands that Jews choose a state that is proportionate, law-bound, and livable over a map that is maximal, lawless, and unendingly violent. If the choice is between Eretz Yisrael HaShlema and a Jewish-democratic homeland that can look its own prophets in the eye, Jewish history has already told you which one survives.

Note: 

The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant.  Related biblical, religious, and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine.

The biblical definition of the limits of the Land of Israel are outlined in Ezekiel 47:13-20, and differ from the borders of established historical Israelite and later Jewish kingdoms, including the United Kingdom of Israel, the two kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah, the Hasmonean kingdom and the Herodian kingdom . At their heights, these realms ruled lands with similar but not identical boundaries.

Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied.[(1) Though the Land of Israel is not used as a phrase in the Torah ,[2] it is held 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 (Exodus 6:4)"I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners"). According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to Abram's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abram for his descendants (Gen: 16:18-21 (NIV): "On that day the LORD made a covenant"). Abram's name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac  and to the Israelites descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This belief is not shared by most adherents of replacement theology (or supersessionism ), who hold the view that the Old Testament prophecies were superseded by the coming of Jesus,[3] a view often repudiated by Christian Zionists  as a theological error.[4] Evangelical Zionists variously claim that Israel has title to the land by divine right,[5] or by a theological, historical and moral grounding of attachment to the land unique to Jews.[6] The idea that ancient religious texts can be warrant or divine right for a modern claim has often been challenged,[7][8] and Israeli courts have rejected land claims based on religious motivations.[9]

The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel . It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank , referred to in official Israeli discourse as the Judea and Samaria Area .

Biblical borders

Ezekiel 47

The borders of the land described by the text in Ezekiel include the northern border of modern Lebanon, eastwards (the way of Hethlon) to Zedad and Hazar-enan in modern Syria; south by southwest to the area of Busra on the Syrian border (area of Hauran in Ezekiel); follows the Jordan River between the West Bank and the land of Gilead to Tamar (Ein Gedi) on the western shore of the Dead Sea; From Tamar to Meribah Kadesh (Kadesh Barnea), then along the Brook of Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. The territory defined by these borders is divided into twelve strips, one for each of the twelve tribes.

Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47 define different but similar borders which include the whole of contemporary Lebanon, both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Israel except for the South Negev and Eliat. Small parts of Syria are also included.

Exodus 23:31

Exodus 23:31describes the borders as "from the sea of reeds (Red Sea) to the Sea of the Philistines (Mediterranean sea) and from the desert to the Euphrates River", although the Hebrew text of the Bible uses the name, "the River", to refer to the Euphrates.

Only the "Red Sea" (Exodus 23:31) and the Euphrates are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the full land promised to the Israelites. The "Red Sea" corresponding  was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea. Although the English name "Red Sea" is derived from this name ("Erythraean" derives from the Greek for red), the term denoted all the waters surrounding Arabia—including the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, not merely the sea lying to the west of Arabia bearing this name in modern English. Thus, the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the borders described. Modern maps depicting the region take a reticent view and often leave the southern and eastern borders vaguely defined. The borders of the land to be conquered given in Numbers have a precisely defined eastern border which included the Arabah and Jordan.

Numbers 34

Numbers 34: 1-15 describes the land allocated to the Israelite tribes after the Exodus. Numbers 34: 14-15 provides a detailed description of the borders of the land to be conquered west of the Jordan for the remaining tribes. The region is called "the Land of Canaan” in Numbers 34:2 and the borders are known in Jewish tradition as the "borders for those coming out of Egypt". These borders are again mentioned in Deuteronomy 1:6-8, 11: 24 and Joshua 1: 4.

 Numbers 34: 1-13 uses the term Canaan strictly for the land west of the Jordan, but Land of Israel is used in Jewish tradition to denote the entire land of the Israelites. The English expression "Promised Land " can denote either the land promised to Abraham in Genesis or the land of Canaan, although the latter meaning is more common.

The border with Egypt is given as the Brook Of Egypt in Numbers, as well as in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Jewish tradition understand this as referring to the Nile; more precisely the Pelusian branch of the Nile Delta.

The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, which is referred to in official Israeli discourse as Judea and Samaria, from the names of the two historical Israelite and Judean kingdoms These debates frequently invoke religious principles, despite the little weight these principles typically carry in Israeli secular politics.]

Ideas about the need for Jewish control of the land of Israel have been propounded by figures such as Yitzhak Ginsburg, who has written about the historical entitlement that Jews have to the whole Land of Israel. Ginsburgh's ideas about the need for Jewish control over the land has some popularity within contemporary West Bank settlements.[ However, there are also strong backlashes from the Jewish community regarding these ideas.