THE SETTLEMENT PROJECT'S FORMATIVE YEARS: GUSH EMUNIM'S CONFRONTATION WITH THE STATE

Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful), the religious Zionist movement that championed the settlement project, has been studied extensively, both from the “inside” by its participants (Harnoi Reference Harnoi1994; Segal Reference Segal1987; Shafat Reference Shafat1995), and from the “outside” by its (mainly) academic detractors (Ra'anan Reference Ra'anan1980; Rubinstein Reference Rubinstein1982; Reference Rubinstein2000, chap. 7; Sprinzak Reference Sprinzak1981; Reference Sprinzak1986, chap. 8; Reference Sprinzak, Marty and Appleby1993; Reference Sprinzak1998; Reference Sprinzak1999; Tal Reference Tal1987; Aran Reference Aran1987; Don Yehiya Reference Don Yehiya1987; Lustick Reference Lustick1988; Reference Lustick and Silberstein1993; Naor 2001; Zertal and Eldar Reference Zertal, Eldar and Vivian2007; Gorenberg Reference Gorenberg2006; Herriot Reference Herriot2009, chap. 3; Taub Reference Taub2007; Fischer Reference Fischer2007; Feige Reference Feige2009; Wilcox Reference Wilcox2011; Dalsheim Reference Dalsheim2011; Inbari Reference Inbari2012; Pedahzur Reference Pedahzur2012; Shachor Reference Shachor2015).

Academic researchers, especially of the first generation of study (from 1970's to the early 2000s) were mostly critical of the settlement project (Ra'anan Reference Ra'anan1980; Rubinstein Reference Rubinstein1982; Reference Rubinstein2000, chap. 7; Sprinzak Reference Sprinzak1981; Reference Sprinzak1986, chap. 8; Reference Sprinzak, Marty and Appleby1993; Reference Sprinzak1998; Reference Sprinzak1999; Tal Reference Tal1987; Aran Reference Aran1987; Tal Reference Tal1987; Zertal and Eldar Reference Zertal, Eldar and Vivian2007). But in the last decade a new generation of scholars has presented the settlement project with more nuance and complexity (Fischer Reference Fischer2007; Feige Reference Feige2009; Dalsheim Reference Dalsheim2011; Inbari Reference Inbari2012). Most recently, a Ph.D. thesis studying the settlement rabbis' ideology was written by scholar who is married to one of the leading rabbis in the settlements and it too highlights the complexity of settler thought (Shachor Reference Shachor2015). Our paper belongs to the new wave of research that tries to present the picture from the “inside” (although not as participants or even supporters of the settlement project) without taking sides in the political debate surrounding the issue. Our research differs from the important recent works of Feige (Reference Feige2009) and Dalsheim (Reference Dalsheim2011) that are largely anthropological in character and from Inbari's (Reference Inbari2012) that is based on psychological cognitive dissonance theory and is focused on the religious Zionist rabbinic leadership. Parallel to Shlomo Fischer's (Reference Fischer2007) Ph.D. thesis, we concentrate on the intersection between theology and politics, mainly but not exclusively on the worldview of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and his disciples.

A number of different groups merged to found Gush Emunim at the start of 1974. Some were students of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem; others were “middle class” residents of the greater Tel Aviv area. Still others were members of the activist “young guard” of the National Religious Party (Harnoi Reference Harnoi1994, chap. 1–2; Shafat Reference Shafat1995, chap. 1). Typically, different interpretations of the Gush are dependent upon which of these groups is seen as its major ideological source.

According to Gideon Aran's (Reference Aran1987; Reference Aran, Marty and Scott1991) well-known interpretation, Gush Emunim derived mainly from the teachings of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook. In Aran's highly critical view, Gush Emunim was part of a faith-based fundamentalist revolution that converted “religious Zionism” into a “Zionist religion.” He argues that for Gush Emunim's adherents, the theological-messianic drive toward settling the Greater Land of Israel represented the deepest stratum of both Judaism and Zionism. Doubtless, the political theology of Rabbi Kook's followers was based on the contention that terrestrial political activities are the external mirror of inner, spiritual intentions (Hellinger Reference Hellinger2008).

Aran sees Gush Emunim as a “fundamentalist,” “messianic” movement or in the terminology of Almond, Appleby and Sivan “a strong religion” (Almond, Appleby and Sivan Reference Almond, Appleby and Emmanuel2003). Indeed, in the Fundamentalism Project of the University of Chicago, a number of research articles were devoted to Gush Emunim. Clearly, fundamentalist movements in different religions possess a kind of ‘family resemblance’: they strive to keep eschatological yearnings alive, to preserve religion in its pure form while drawing a sharp line between themselves and their adversaries (Marty and Appleby Reference Marty, Appleby, Marty and Appleby1993, 1–9). Aran follows these characteristics closely: Gush Emunim is fundamentalist because of its messianic character, its emphasis on strict observance of Halacha, its Jewish exclusivism, and its totalizing perspective in which holiness penetrates into every area of daily life (Aran Reference Aran, Marty and Scott1991). Ian Lustick (Reference Lustick and Silberstein1993) follows Aran in interpreting Gush Emunim in messianic terms.

But other scholars, especially in the last decade, present a more multi-chrome portrait of the Gush's origins and its “on the ground” ideology. Feige states that “Gush Emunim is a religious-fundamentalist movement with a certain brand of messianism and an ultra-rightist political outlook” (Feige Reference Feige2009, 5). Its shrewd practical agenda “aims primarily at creating geo-demographic facts that will prevent any territorial compromise on the part of Israeli government. As such, it raises the price Israel will need to pay — financial, moral or political — for any agreement it makes” (Feige Reference Feige2009, 67). Like others, Motti Inbari identifies Gush Emunim with the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva:

And yet Inbari (Reference Inbari2012) presents the variegated attitudes — at times radical, at others pragmatic — within Gush Emunim and the settler rabbinic leadership. During times of crisis — such as the evacuation of Yamit (Sinai), the exposure of the Jewish Underground, and the disengagement from Gush Katif (Gaza) — settler attitudes were hardly of one piece. Indeed, Shlomo Fischer (Reference Fischer2007) claims that interpreting Gush Emunim as a one-size-fits-all fundamentalist movement is overly simplistic. Even Mercaz HaRav, undoubtedly a “strong” religious institution, at times fostered cooperation and compromise and adopted modern ideas about human autonomy and the participation of women in politics and society (Fischer Reference Fischer2007, chap.1). Moreover, Naomi Shachor (Reference Shachor2015) has recently argued that the settler's rabbinic leadership has not been monolithic in key issues such as disobedience to government decisions to evacuate settlements and, more basically, its very perception of the religio-political standing of the State of Israel (Shachor Reference Shachor2015).

Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz question the too simple identification that Aran and others make between Gush Emunim and the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. As they rightly point out, a sizeable part of those who led the settlement project emerged from the middle class center of the veteran religious Zionist community. They did not study in the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva; neither did they develop a messianic political theology. For them the settlements represented the renewal, in religious form, of the secular pioneering tradition of the Second and Third Aliyot (waves of immigration). It was based not on messianism but on the classical Zionist program of “liberating” the land through settling it (Sagi and Schwartz Reference Sagi, Schwartz, Sagie and Schwartz2003).

Similarly, Yoni Garb (Reference Garb, Cohen and Harel2004a; Reference Garb, Cohen and Harel2004b, 344–345) points to the affinity between Gush Emunim and the “young guard” of the Religious Zionist Party (Mafdal). Although many of the founders were Mercaz HarRav students, in practice, the mantle of leadership rapidly passed onto the (non-yeshiva) activists in the field (like Benny Katzover, Yisrael Harel, Pinchas Wallerstein, and Uri Elizur). It is true, Garb concedes, that it was the students of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda (Chanan Porat, Rabbis Levinger, Waldman, Aviner, Melamed and Bin Nun) who set down the intellectual groundwork of Gush Emunim. And yet, Garb contends that there is too much emphasis on the messianic component of Gush Emunim, which derives from the movement's exaggerated identity with Mercaz HaRav (Garb Reference Garb, Cohen and Harel2004b, 336). Even those who downplay the messianic-theological component of the movement like Sagi (Reference Sagi2010) agree nevertheless that it was Mercaz HaRav students who transformed religious Zionist discourse, established the movement's messianic-mystical style and empowered rabbinic authorities.

Gush Emunim's objective during the first Rabin government (1974–1977) was to establish settlements in Judea and Samaria even though they violated explicit government decisions. They saw the fait accompli character of the settlements as a means of leveraging the government to accept their agenda. Many openly admitted that they were committing illegal acts arguing that even if their actions were illegal, they were not illegitimate (Sprinzak Reference Sprinzak1986, 124). Moreover, even if their actions were illegal, they did not represent a breach of acceptable democratic norms. After all, civil disobedience is a common enough phenomenon in western democracies when individuals feel that a law is unjust and, as morally engaged citizens, they choose to disobey it.

Gush Emunim ideologues argued that they were doing nothing that had not been done before by secular Zionist settlers during the British Mandate period. These early settlers did not hesitate to defy the British authorities; indeed, they often flouted the policies of the established Jewish Yishuv leadership in their drive to establish new Jewish settlements (Sprinzak Reference Sprinzak1986, 125). Then as now, prohibiting settlement by the government was unacceptable on religious and moral grounds. Gershon Shafat, a prominent member of the Gush, makes clear how profoundly convinced the setters were that their actions did not in fact violate the law.

In the eyes of Gush Emunim's ideologues, authority was justifiably defied for the sake of Israel's collective good. They emphasized the difference between breaking the law for personal gain (as in illegal strikes for higher salaries) and sacrificing oneself and accepting the legal punishment in order to further the core imperative of Judaism and Zionism. Indeed, they saw themselves as model citizens. And yet, despite Gush Emunim's democratic rationalizations, their theological-halachic arguments were the decisive factor justifying their illegal activity. Ehud Sprinzak dismisses the parallel drawn by Gush Emunim leaders between their form of (what he famously calls) “illegalism” and the illegalism that characterized the Labor movement during the British Mandate period:

Moreover, as opposed to the Mandate period, Jewish citizens in Israel had the right to vote. This obliged them to accept majority decisions.

Aran is even more critical: “For the purposes of Gush Emunim there is only one law: the commands of God and His will…The right to the land is not subject to the laws of nations, for this is a right given to us by God and the Torah. And tactically, if the state's laws do not accord with Divine commandments, there is no obligation to obey them” (Aran Reference Aran1987, 137).

The figure dominating the Halachic discourse regarding the Greater Land of Israel during Gush Emunim's formative years was Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook (Hoch, Reference Hoch1994). When the first settlements were founded in June 1974, the government dispatched Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to remove their inhabitants. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda's defiant response was: “This entire Knesset only has power in regard to financial, economic, money matters — if the public agrees. But in the matter of uprooting us from land, we are commanded by the creator of the universe not by the Knesset” (Kook Reference Kook and Melamed1995, 175). At much the same time as these words were written, the settlers refused to leave Chawara, an outpost they had set up in the vicinity of Shechem (Nablus). The IDF was compelled to evacuate them by force. Present at the site, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda declared: “Just as it is impossible to coerce me to eat pork and to profane the Sabbath; you will not coerce me to move from this place” (Segal Reference Segal1987, 29). In Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda's eyes, the settlements are not illegal; what is illegal is precisely the prevention of settlements: “He who hinders Jews from settling in the land commits an illegal action…These lands belong to us from the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they are also the possession of millions of our brothers all over the world” (Kook Reference Kook and Melamed1995, 73–74).

Rabbi Kook seemed to believe sincerely that the Israeli public, in its heart of hearts, supported Gush Emunim's agenda. In struggling against the government, his followers were therefore the authentic champions of Israel's democratic will. Whence this conviction derived is hard to say. Surely, not from election results or public opinion surveys. And yet, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda seems to have convinced himself that it was the government that was resisting popular will, acting undemocratically. In the summer of 1974 he declared:

He did not hesitate to use even harsher words. In a letter to the army's Chief of Staff, General Mordechai Gur in May 1975 he asserts:

Prime Minister Rabin took this threat seriously. The conflict between the democratic rule of law and the allegedly superior law of the Torah seriously endangered Israeli democracy. Rabin asserted:

Indeed, in his autobiography, Rabin did not mince words. He called Gush Emunim “a cancer in the body of Israeli democracy” (Rabin Reference Rabin and Goldstein1996, Pinkas Sherut (Service Record) 547 Cited in Zertal and Eldar Reference Zertal, Eldar and Vivian2007, 128). But Rabin's position did not represent the views of all his government ministers. Not a few supported the Gush, such as the ministers of the National Religious Party — the “parent” party of Gush Emunim — and even senior Labor Party ministers such as Foreign Minister Yigal Alon and Minister of Defense, Shimon Peres. High-ranking officers in the IDF, including the Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur evinced a warm and sympathetic attitude toward the settlers although they avoided saying as much explicitly. Therefore, Gush Emunim activists could justify their demands by referring to government complicity, even if it came in the form of a wink and a nod.

Government support for the establishment of settlements like Ma'aleh Adumim and Elkanah also vindicated the Gush's belief that without (at least tacit) official collusion the settler movement would not have thrived as it did. In breaking the law, they were only doing what the government would have done, was it not so weak. Dan Be'eri wrote:

The political reversal of 1977 that brought the Likud to power thoroughly changed the relations between Gush Emunim and the government. The Gush was now a partner to the policies of the Likud that had committed itself to settling all of the Land of Israel. Although the Likud's motives were national, historic, and security-related while Gush Emunim's driving force was religious and messianic, a genuine partnership developed between them (Na'or Reference Na'or2001).

A central figure in this Likud-Gush Emunim partnership was Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon. More than anyone else in Begin's government he was responsible for settling Judea and Samaria. His nickname, the “bulldozer,” was well-earned: although his motives were surely not religious, he energized the settlement project. In cooperation with the Gush, he worked to cover Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) with Jewish settlements. From only 20 settlements with a population of 6,000 in 1977, in four years of Likud government, 35 new settlements were founded with about 17,000 residents. In 1992, when Rabin returned as Prime Minister, there were already more than 100,000 settlers in the West Bank (Taub Reference Taub2007, 73).

SETTLER RESTRAINT IN MOMENTS OF CRISIS: THE YAMIT AND GAZA EVACUATIONS

Setting aside the turmoil over the Oslo process, two major crises pitted religious Zionist settlers against the Israeli government. Both involved the evacuation of settlements that were located beyond the 1967 “green line”: the Yamit region in the Sinai and the Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip. In both cases, the settler leadership prepared in earnest to prevent the evacuation. In both cases, predictions of massive disobedience, of violent even bloody clashes between settlers and the defense forces, were quite common. However, these predictions proved exaggerated. Although very hard-pressed, the settler religious-political leadership, for the most part, acted with restraint. The source of this restraint is our central theme.

THE “THEOLOGICAL-NORMATIVE BALANCE” AND RELIGIOUS ZIONIST RESTRAINT

A number of studies have been devoted to the relatively non-violent behavior of the settler majority over the course of the last 40 years. One form of explanation emphasizes the close relationships between the settler leadership and the political and military authorities. Although he characterizes Gush Emunim as a classic case of militant, absolutist fundamentalism, Peter Herriot (Reference Herriot2009, 104–108) calls attention to its relatively peaceful nature. He argues that Gush Emunim chose dialogue over disobedience because he believed that it could realize more of its goals through negotiations than through violence. This was especially true when the ruling coalition was sympathetic to its aims. Thus, the settler movement preferred to pursue what we might call “balanced pragmatism” rather than to engage in unconditional religious militancy.

A different perspective is offered by David Weisburd and Chagit Lernau who studied the allegedly vigilante tendencies of the Gush Katif settlers during the evacuation from Gaza. Their research reveals that the oft-repeated prediction of bloody battles to prevent the evacuation was not borne out in fact. Resistance to the evacuation was, to be sure, dramatic and highly memorable but it remained mostly within the bounds of normative passive resistance. They write:

Despite the cogency of their arguments, as far as they go, we believe there is another critical factor — perhaps the most critical one — that averted a wide-scale mutiny on the part of the religious settler community. It goes beyond Herriot's stress on reasoned pragmatism and Weisburd and Lernau's insistence on the importance of a united, responsible, Jewish and democratic Israel in the settler's thinking. We believe that neither of them gets to the heart of settler acquiescence because they overlook the profound theological foundations that underpinned their restraint.

Developed over the years in Jerusalem's Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, this theological worldview attributes deep religious-messianic significance to the State of Israel, to its institutions and to its army. As famously formulated by Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, Jewish sovereignty embodies the “essential seat of God in the world” (Kook Reference Kook and Kook1993, 160). Therefore, the religious community must preserve what we call a “theological-normative balance” — a dynamic balance between Israel's holiness on the one hand, and, on the other, the unavoidable fact that the state is secular in character. Ideally, religious commitment to the State of Israel is primary but realistically, the state frequently acts in ways that violate Judaism's commandments. This clash between religious duty and the legally binding nature of government decisions creates an intra-religious tension that has dogged religious Zionism since its origin more than a century ago. Balancing the two has become the movement's core dilemma. Even when government decisions have been seen as sinful, religious Zionism has been by turns cautious, flexible, pragmatic, highly principled, at times even adamant. Bestowing religious status upon the secular state prevents the growth of de-legitimation and anti-system politics. Paradoxically, religious principles restrain messianic intransigence. Countervailing powers are at play here and they create an equilibrium between obedience to Halacha on the one hand and religious loyalty to the State of Israel on the other. For our specific purposes, the sanctity of the state restrained the call for civil, political and military disobedience even when settlements were dismantled.

Given the holiness of the state and its institutions, otherwise routine bureaucratic practices such as being drafted into the army take on the sacredness of religious rituals. National symbols become religious symbols. Indeed, for many religious Zionists, settling the Land of Israel is held to be equal in importance to all the other Torah commandments combined. Jews living and flourishing in Zion becomes a religious no less than a nationalist vision. The State of Israel expresses the bond between the Jewish people and God — it is, in the oft-repeated phrase, “the beginning of salvation.”

This political theology is widespread among religious Zionists who are the driving force behind settlement project. In most yeshiva primary and high schools, in every Zionist institution of higher religious learning etc., an intensive educational effort is made to inculcate the redemptive-messianic character of the State of Israel. In other words, the discourse of loyalty is consensual while the discourse of disobedience faces significant religious hurdles.

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook's defiant reaction to the evacuation of Yamit in 1978 was the first serious challenge to the “theological-normative balance” in religious Zionist history. Nevertheless, in the end, the balance held. Even though messianic hopes were thwarted, even though the most militant spoke of collective suicide, loyalty to the religiously sacrosanct Jewish state prevailed. Despite his threats, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda stepped back from the precipice; he did not call for a mass mutiny against the state and its institutions. And most of his students followed him. Twenty-three years later, the evacuation from Gush Katif/Gaza Strip posed an even more serious threat to the “theological-normative balance” and here too the sense of obligation to the sacrosanct state and its security prevailed. Not only, to be sure, for pragmatic reasons but because the state's welfare and safety are for religious Zionists preeminent Torah values.

Religious Zionist leaders, rabbinical and lay, are therefore taken up with the following kinds of questions: How much disobedience is justified in light of the need to preserve the state's role as the vehicle of redemption? What trade-offs are permissible when the democratic rule of law clashes with major Torah prohibitions? These questions, and others like them, represent the fulcrum of the “theological-normative balance.”

No Israeli sector lives so tautly drawn between such profoundly conflicting obligations as the religious Zionists. Ultra-Orthodox Jews do not attribute religious significance to the state (indeed, it is an abomination in their eyes) and, hence, the theological-normative dilemmas with which religious Zionists struggle are foreign to them. Moreover, the ultra-Orthodox do not relate to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) with anything like the same messianic ardor as the religious Zionists.

The position of the secular Right is also lacking in nuance and complexity when compared to the religious Zionists. Theirs is the less conflicted language of Jewish nationalism and Israeli security. The state is the realization of a millennia-old dream of returning to Zion and an expression of Jewish sovereignty. It possesses no religious standing. Although Judaism is a critical cultural-historical component in the right-wing Zionist narrative, it does not lay claim to their deeper loyalties or inspire their politics.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

To recapitulate: When confronting a secular state, militant religious messianism can, potentially, lead to defiant, adversarial, anti-system politics. We have attempted to show why this is not the case in the Jewish state. Although religious beliefs have often been violated by state actions, these very religious beliefs prevent mass defiance because the State of Israel is seen as a vehicle of religious salvation. Hence, religious messianic beliefs both encourage and discourage anti-system behavior leading to a troubled but generally pacific truce. Even though the Greater Land of Israel is a non-negotiable issue for many religious Zionists, two major evacuations have led to tumult and turmoil but not to life-threatening violence. Radical rhetoric did not, in the main, lead to radical action. In a word, until and including the dismantling of the Gush Katif/Gaza Strip settlements in 2005, the “theological-normative balance” succeeded in maintaining its hold over religious Zionist politics.

And yet, in the past decade or so, the balance has become more precarious. Fundamentalist messianic circles among the settlers find it increasingly difficult to put up with what they see as the government's timidity in the setting up settlements everywhere and without limit. The breakdown of communal discipline, the rise of vigilante hooliganism, vandalism against mosques, churches and IDF installations, even outright murderous terrorism — although still relatively marginal — may foretell an ideological paradigm shift in part of the religious Zionist camp.