The Hamas attack has given fresh ammunition to the orthodox religious right in Israel—to dream of recreating the mythical land of milk and honey that was promised to the Jews in the Bible. God’s chosen people, the children of Israel, have a right to their inheritance, and the current state of Israel does not conform to the Biblical contours and must be expanded. The toxic mix of religion and politics—brought in by the fringe groups of ultra-nationalists and religious extremists that are part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet—is now being played out in both the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank. Their ambition is to reclaim the legacy of Abraham and also rebuild the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.
“The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God,” is one of the many references that Zionists quote to claim their inheritance of the Promised Land. The land of Canaan, mentioned in the Old Testament, encompasses modern day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and southern parts of Syria and Lebanon. The ultimate aim is to reclaim the biblical land of Canaan. This is the land that the tribes of Israel conquered after their exodus from Egypt and the Canaanites are people they drove out.
This is not to say that everyone in Israel wants to recreate the mythical Promised Land, but the fringe parties that make up Netanyahu’s coalition government aspire to do just that, and the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa mosque, the incursion of a 1,000 settlers into the Al-Aqsa complex, the soldiers deployed to stop young Palestinian worshippers from entering the mosque, the desecration of some of the graves are all a build-up to strengthen the case for a new temple in the Mount and extend Israeli control over the ancient city of Jerusalem. Israel’s claim to the holy city got a fillip when US President Donald Trump decided to shift the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2020.
Following the conquest of Jerusalem by King David, his son Solomon built a temple around 1,000 BC. The temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, when he conquered Jerusalem. A second temple was built after the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Construction was completed by 515 BC. This was destroyed by the Romans when they took over the city, around 70 AD. Building a third Solomon temple had always been on the Zionist agenda. The Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, two of the holy shrines of Islam, are built on top of the Temple Mount. Some scholars believe that the Dome of the Rock was built on the very spot where the second Solomon temple stood. However, a new temple on the very spot remained a pipe dream. But now with hard core leaders of the ultra-zealous religious leaders as part of the government, nothing seems impossible.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli National Security Minister, is known for his hard-line rhetoric against Palestinians. He has always held that “Israel is the owner of the Temple Mount,” and paid a controversial visit soon after being sworn in as minister last year. His visit to the Al-Aqsa complex on January 3, and June 21, angered the Muslim world. The intent of the visit was clearly to lay claim and establish Israeli sovereignty here. Jordan, which controls the Al-Aqsa complex, protested against the minister’s provocative action. Any change to the status of the Al-Aqsa mosque will not be ignored by Muslim Arab rulers and could spark a holy war.
Along with the effort to enforce Israeli sovereignty over Al-Aqsa is the attempt to expand the frontiers of Israel. Jordan was livid when Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, speaking in Paris, displayed a map on the podium that included Jordan and the occupied West Bank as part of Israel. He claimed in his speech that the Palestinian people are an “invention” of the last 100 years, and said that his family members who were born in Jerusalem in the 19th century are the real Palestinians. “There is no such thing as Palestinian people,” he said with a flourish. Jordan protested loudly and condemned what it called as “racist” and said in a statement that Smotrich had violated the peace agreement that had laid down that the two countries would not claim each other’s territory. Jordan was the second Arab nation after Egypt to sign a peace treaty with Israel in October 1994.
Both of Israel’s neighbours, Jordan and Egypt, are watching Israel’s disregard for civilian lives in Gaza in shock. The relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip has led to speculation that Israel is bent on evicting the Palestinians from their homes to either Jordan or the Sinai desert in Egypt—to vacate the land that would eventually be absorbed by Israel. Both countries had closed their borders to ensure that people cannot be pushed out of Gaza.
Under Netanyahu’s watch, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank has continued unabated. The settlers often take strident positions against the Palestinians, taking over their land with the backing of the Israeli army. There is talk on social media of another Nakba, or catastrophe that befell Palestinians in 1948, when they were violently attacked by Israel and forced out of their land. Many called the Nakba an ethnic cleansing by Israel, and today, the same language is being used to describe the happenings in the Gaza Strip.
Anger at what is unfolding in Gaza is now not confined to ordinary Muslims in mosques and bazaars of the region. Dignitaries like Jordan’s Queen Raina had publicly questioned the double standards of the US and the West in an interview with CNN. Jordan’s Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh had warned that uprooting Palestinians was a red line for Jordan. Foreign minister Ayman Safadi said such an act would be interpreted as a “declaration of war”. As the bombardments and fighting in Gaza resumed, the warnings have had no effect on Netanyahu’s government.
But in Israel, the ultra-nationalists are optimistic that the time has come to fulfil the Biblical prophecy. The idea of a greater Israel, confirming to the Biblical interpretation of the contours of the Promised Land, was always a part of the Zionist ideology. Greater Israel stretched from the lands of the Nile valley to the Euphrates. In 1948, when Israel was founded, the Labour party leadership within the Zionist movement accepted the idea of the partition of the former British Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states, realising that this was as far as the international community was ready to grant them. The Labour wing of the Zionist movement was opposed by the Revisionists even at that early stage. The revisionist faction, which later evolved into the current Likud Party, did not change its views and till today supports the idea of an Israel that includes both Gaza and the West Bank and more if feasible.
Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund and a leading figure in the Zionist movement, had this to say of a Jewish homeland. “It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples… If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us. The only solution is a land of Israel without Arabs.”
This sentiment has gained currency since the Hamas attack that had stunned Israel. But any move to do so would lead to a wider regional war. No Arab leader can accept such a claim.
