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Political Entities - Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim was an Israeli extra-parliamentary national religious movement, founded in February 1974. It has advocated the assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as essential to the realization of Zionism. Gush Emunim argued that this goal requires massive Jewish civilian presence in these areas. At the same time, it verbally advocated coexistence with the indigenous Arab population.
The religious mentor of Gush Emunim was Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. He argued that the essence of the Jewish people is to attain physical and spiritual redemption by living in and developing the whole of Eretz Yisrael. The sanctity of Eretz Yisrael makes it imperative to continue to hold on to every part of the land which has been liberated from foreign rule. The most prominent figures in Gush Emunim in its early days were Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who settled in Hebron, and Hanan Porath, who later to became a member of the Knesset.
In its early days, Gush Emunim was closely connected to the National Religious Party. After a while it cut dropped its political affiliation. At first, Gush Emunim concentrated on settlement activities outside the parameters of the Allon Plan, which was the basis of the settlement policy in the first government of Yitzhak Rabin. Among Gush Emunim`s first settlement targets was Elan Moreh, near the remains of ancient Sebastia in the vicinity of Nablus. Gush Emunim activists were expelled repeatedly from the area by the Israel Defense Forces. However, they were finally permitted by Minister of Defense Shimon Peres to settle in a nearby military camp.
In time, Gush Emunim acquired support from non-religious groups as well, including the Movement for Greater Israel. When the Likud Party came to power in 1977, Gush Emunim found itself much more in alignment with the govenment`s settlement policy. The government of Menahem Begin was initially rather to Gush Emunim`s liking, but it strongly objected to the autonomy plan as agreed in the Camp David Accords. They also objected to the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, persuant to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.
A National Unity Government was formed in Israel in 1984. Under this govenment, Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip stopped almost completely. With an increase in Palestinian acts of armed resistance and terrorism and the outbreak of the Intifada in December 1987, Gush Emunim demanded increased settlement activities and more effective military action in the territories. Gush Emunim tried to take the initiative with armed civilian "reconnaissance" missions in the territories, but was stopped by the IDF.
Internal difficulties began to surface in Gush Emunim as a result of its institutionalization and the emergence of a bureaucracy. The settler population, its natural base of support, had become more heterogeneous. Many settlers had moved to the territories for economic rather than ideological reasons. There were more radical and more moderate forces, and a Jewish Underground at work within the movement. It was involved in terrorist activities against Palestinians in the years 1980 to 1984. It had planned to blow up the Mosques on the Temple Mount. The efforts of Daniela Weiss, who had been elected Secretary General of the movement in 1984, to have the members of the Jewish Underground released, brought the crisis to a head. Efforts of the more moderate elements within the movement, including Rabbi Yo`el Bin-Nun, Rabbi Menahem Froman, and Hanan Porath to change the militant leadersbip, failed. This resulted in the disintegration of Gush Emunim.
In the elections to the thirteenth Knesset in 1992, the leaders of Gush Emunim did not manage to run together in a single list. The two lists identified with Gush Emunim, the Tehiya and a list established by Levinger, failed to qualify. An effort by Rabbi Binyamin Alan to set up a new movement by the name of "Emunium" did not succeed. Alan himself entered the fourteenth Knesset as a member of the Moledet Party.
Gush Emunim had a significant influence within the National-Religious Party (Mifdaf),and had gradually done much to shape the National-Religious Party`s political position on the territorial aspects of the Arab Israel Conflict and settlement policy. Since the general elections of 1996, members that had identified with Gush Emunim became a majority in the Mifdal Party`s Knesset representation. Thus, in a sense, the National-Religious Party has become the successor to Gush Emunim.