The Gush Immonium movement is one of the products of the War of 67. This movement encouraged Jewish settlement in Palestine on the basis of two “religious and practical” and religious premises, according to the biblical narrative, as claimed by its author, “God wants the Jewish people to live in the land of Palestine.” The practical is to seek settlement for fear of receding settlements.
In terms of ideology, Imonium regards the ‘67 war as an extension of the ‘48 war and that the borders of the so-called state must be increased and expanded.
This movement received semi-official support from the Likud government after it came to power in ‘77.
This movement is one of the main political movements that influenced political decision-making in the occupying power. It was able to impose its positions on the political map and consolidate the settlement approach and its belief on the right to settle every part of what it calls “the Land of Israel” and save it from outsiders, and that the presence of these outsiders, i.e. the Palestinians, is illegal and poses a threat to the so-called “salvation”.
The Land of Israel is sacred, and national Judaism is a geopolitical reality, which means that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel according to their Torah according to their false claims.
The movement has conducted a struggle with the governments of the state against withdrawal from any part of the Palestinian territory, and has managed a struggle for the establishment of settlements in the occupied territories.
It also adopted an ideology that was illegal and even adapted from the distorted Torah, exploiting the religious motive to indduce Jews to believe in what they called “the divine promise to the people of Israel.”
Hence, it believes that the settlements in Judea and Samaria will fulfill the promises of their Torah and help achieve Jewish sovereignty over the land of Palestine. Its leaders and supporters see their treatment of Palestinians as deriving from “halakha,” which depends on the power of the Jews to expel Palestinians from Palestine.
The movement also believes that the intensification of settlement activity paves the way for Palestinian “recognition” of the occupying state.
This movement began with atrophy and ended in the late eighties, but established a settler ideology that later formed the base. Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party inherited a hardline agenda, all of whom have urged settlements, and Sharon is even considered the architect of the settlements.
Today, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his second term as prime minister, has launched six wars on Gaza, the last of which is the 2023-2024 war, and thus he is implementing Gush Imunium’s metaphysical messianic vision of Jews controlling what it calls “the ungodly” and that Jewish law governs the Jews and that an eternal war prevails between the Jews and the outsiders.
In 2019, in a television interview on a Hebrew station, Netanyahu said, “There will never be a Palestinian state contrary to what people say, it will never happen,” thus implementing the vision of the movement’s leaders calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine.
On November 23, 2014, Netanyahu’s government voted on a law designating the occupying state as a Jewish nation-state rather than a Jewish democratic state, institutionalizing discrimination against Palestinian Arabs.
It also adopted a policy of settlement in the West Bank extensively, and ratified a number of settlement decisions. During his reign, incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem and other areas increased.
In 2009, Netanyahu launched inflammatory political and media campaigns against the Palestinians, demanding that they “recognize” the occupying state as a Jewish state, and stated that his state does not want Arabs to be citizens or subjects there. In doing so, he inherited Gush Imunium’s ideology, but the resistance has perpetuated this ideology in Gaza.