In 1973 Israel Galili, a minister without portfolio in the cabinet of Prime Minis-
ter Gold Meir, drafted another semiofficial document that promoted the establishment
of settlements. Known as the Galili Document, this plan called for new settlements in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but also promised government assistance for Pales-
tinian refugees living in the occupied territories. Labor Party leaders also endorsed this
document but never submitted it to the government for formal approval. Government
officials, however, reportedly used the plan as the basis for approving at least some
new settlements.
The religious nationalist movement emerged as a crucial force behind the expan-
sion of the settlements. Its leaders argued fervently that God intended—indeed, had
ordered—that Jews live in all of the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the
eastern bank of the Jordan River. An increasingly powerful voice for this argument
arose in March 1974 with the creation of Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful), a
movement based on the “redemptionist” teachings of Rabbi Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook,
who argued that Jews would be redeemed, as a nation, by fulfilling God’s command
that they control all of Eretz Yisrael ha-Shlema (Greater Israel).
Gush Emunim devoted much of its early efforts to combating one of the impli-
cations of the unofficial Allon plan—that much of the central section of the West
Bank remain free of Jewish settlements so that it could be returned to Jordan in an
eventual peace settlement. For almost five years, the city of Nablus, north of Jerusalem,
would be the focal point of a struggle between Gush Emunim and other settler groups
and the government.
On July 25, 1974, a group of Gush Emunim adherents moved into the aban-
doned Sebastia train station near Nablus. The army, under orders from Prime Minis-
ter Yitzhak Rabin, forced the settlers to leave. Rabin’s cabinet on July 26 issued a state-
ment asserting that settlements only be established “solely in accordance with the
government’s decisions. The government will prevent any attempt at settling without
its approval and decision.” Explaining the government’s action in a speech to the Knes-
set, Rabin noted that the settlers had moved into Sebastia after being told not to and
therefore had evaded the “rule of law.” Rabin did not argue, however, that Israelis
should not live in the West Bank and the other occupied territories. “Our right to this
land is indisputable,” he said.
Such government intervention did not deter Gush Emunim leaders, who argued
that they were acting in accordance with God’s higher authority. The group made six
more attempts to settle at Sebastia, and each time the army forced them out. In late
1975, however, Defense Minister Shimon Peres relented and agreed to allow the set-
tlers to move temporarily into a nearby former army camp. This camp eventually
became the Kedumim settlement, which today is home to some 3,000 settlers.
Gush Emunim was allied in its early years with the National Religious Party, one
of Israel’s small political movements that exercised leverage when the mainstream par-
ties needed its votes in the Knesset. Starting in 1977, Gush Emunim and similar
groups found an even more powerful patron in the rightist Likud Party, which won
elections that year, and its leader, Menachem Begin, who became prime minister. After
Begin agreed in 1978 to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for peace,
he apparently became even more determined to hang onto the Gaza Strip, Golan
Heights, and West Bank by expanding the settlements there. A legal battle over the
Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, coupled with pressure from Gush Emunim led
180 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS