Daniela Weiss holds a map in front of the camera Middle East with the inscription "The Promised Land" and says: "It is God's promise to the ancestors of the Jewish people." The map shows a Jewish state that includes not only the occupied Palestinian territories and the annexed Golan Heights, but also parts of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, an area that far exceeds the so-called "Green Line" that has defined Israel's borders under international law since 1949. "That's 3.000 kilometers - almost as long as the Sahara," says Weiss.
Weiss - whom some call the "godfather." Israeli settlement movement" - speaks of "Greater Israel". In Hebrew: "Eretz Israel HaShlema". In translation, it does not mean "Greater Israel", but "whole" or "complete" Israel. It is an expansionist concept from the Bible that is particularly popular among the Israeli right-wing, writes DW.
"Proponents of the settlement policy, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich or Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, do not care about making Israel bigger, but about completing the work," explains historian Gil Shohat in an interview with DW. "For them, claiming the entire historical Palestine, or Eretz Israel, as they call it, is a divine promise," says Shohat, who heads the Tel Aviv office of the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is close to Germany's Left Party.
What is meant by "Greater Israel"?
Depending on the interpretation, the concept covers different areas. Some of them mean, along with the currently internationally recognized state territory within the armistice line of 1949 (the Green Line), and the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza - the annexed Golan Heights, such as the Sinai Peninsula that Israel returned to Egypt.
Others aim for the entire area promised in the Bible - from the Egyptian Nile, to the Euphrates that flows through present-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Danielle Weiss's words are not new - they come from an interview with Australian ABC News in 2014. But her ideas have only gained strength in Israeli politics since then, partly against the background of the war that Israel has been waging in the Middle East since October 2023.
An idea that came from the margins to the heart of politics
Thus, in March 2023, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich caused a diplomatic scandal at a meeting in Paris, speaking from a lectern plastered with a map of "Greater Israel". On the map, not only the Palestinian territories currently occupied by Israel are declared Israeli territory, but also the neighboring country of Jordan. A year later, Smotrich told the German-French channel ARTE that "the future of Jerusalem" is to "extend all the way to Damascus."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also repeatedly spoken out about the concept. In September 2024, he presented his plans for “the day after the war in Gaza,” showing a map showing the West Bank completely annexed.
In August 2025, he told the Israeli channel i24NEWS that he felt "strongly connected" to the vision of a "Greater Israel" - after which Egypt and Jordan asked for clarification.
Netanyahu received support from the American side. In February of this year, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told American podcast host Tucker Carlson that it would be "okay" if Israel took over the entire Middle East - as promised in the Bible.
The History of "Greater Israel"
In the Book of Genesis 15:18-21, he promises Abraham and his descendants the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. Zionist theorists later referred to these biblical boundaries in their writings. Although Theodor Herzl never specifically determined the borders of the future Jewish state, in his diaries he described the idea of biblical borders, advocated by his associate Max Bodenheimer, as "excellent".
Vladimir Zejev Jabotinsky dealt with that idea both politically and through music. In his poem "Smol Ha'Yarden" (Jordan's East Bank), which later became the anthem of the Betar youth movement he founded, each stanza ends with the verse: "Jordan has two banks - this one belongs to us, and the other one too."
Jabotinsky's "Betar" movement is associated with revisionist Zionism, an expansionist current within the Zionist movement that is considered the forerunner of right-wing parties such as Netanyahu's Likud. Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, was himself active in Jabotinsky's revisionist movement and shortly before Jabotinsky's death served as his secretary. Jabotinsky was also for a time the supreme commander of the Zionist paramilitary organization "Irgun Zwai Leumi", which displayed the concept of "Greater Israel" on its logo and posters.
The first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion also considered the idea of a biblically defined Israel, but in the end he chose a pragmatic course: first the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state, and only then expansion. He left the borders of the newly founded state of Israel open in the 1948 Declaration of Independence – opening the door for possible later territorial expansions.
In a 1937 speech, he formulated his thoughts this way: "Acceptance of the partition plan does not oblige us to give up Transjordan. None of us can demand that we give up our vision. We will accept the state within the limits established today, but the limits of Zionist endeavor are a matter for the Jewish people and no outside factor will limit them."
Expansion has long been a reality
Already after the War of Independence in 1948, Israel controlled much larger areas than the United Nations partition plan envisaged for the future state of Israel: instead of the originally allocated 56 percent, it was about 77 percent of the former British mandate area. After the Six Day War in 1967, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai joined.
With the exception of Sinai, which was returned in the peace treaty with Egypt, those areas have been occupied ever since. International law does not recognize them as Israeli state territory. But the majority of the Israeli population accepts them as state territory, Shohat says: "It's been almost sixty years since Israel occupied those areas. Even in the textbooks of liberal schools in Tel Aviv, the West Bank and Gaza are part of Israel's state territory."
Today, according to UN data, more than 700.000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the Golan Heights, estimates oscillate between 23.000 and 31.000. About 20.000 Druze remained in the area even after the Israeli annexation. The UN Security Council characterizes all Israeli settlers on the other side of the Green Line as a violation of international law. The International Court of Justice declared the 2024 occupation illegal in an expert opinion.
Not yet mainstream, but gaining popularity
Today, the idea of "Greater Israel", despite the growing support, has not entered the Israeli mainstream, according to Shohat: "The occupation of historical Palestine - that is, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza - has been normalized. I do not see the normalization of permanent settlements in the south of Lebanon or in parts of Syria yet. But that could change if there is no serious resistance."
There is resistance, both inside and outside of Israel. Despite this, the idea of expanding the state's territory has long resonated with the Israeli government. Recently, in March 2026, Finance Minister Smotrich requested the annexation of southern Lebanon.
At the conference of the settler organization "Nahala" in 2024, Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Weiss openly advocated "voluntary emigration" of Palestinians from Gaza. Ben Gvir declared on stage: "If we don't want another October 7th, we must return home and control Gaza. We must find a legal path for voluntary emigration and introduce the death penalty for terrorists."
Two years later, it appears to be one step closer to its goal: On March 30, Israel's parliament passed a law introducing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of "terrorism" by Israeli military courts in the occupied Palestinian territories with a fatal outcome.
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