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The 2022 Guidelines and the Nation-State Law

A party platform is a promise. A government's guidelines and a country's Basic Laws are something more: they are what the state commits to in writing. This page covers the two documents that turned Likud's old platform into the governing framework of the Israeli government that went to war with Iran: the coalition guidelines signed in December 2022, and the Nation-State Basic Law passed in 2018. When anyone tells you "Greater Israel is not official policy," these are the documents to put on the table.

The coalition guidelines, December 2022​

When Netanyahu formed his sixth government, the most right-wing in Israel's history, with the Religious Zionism party of Bezalel Smotrich and the Jewish Power party of Itamar Ben Gvir, the government's official guidelines began with this principle:

"The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel—in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria" (Times of Israel, 28 December 2022; the same text is printed in Peace Now's 2026 report under the heading "Guidelines for the Establishment of the 37th Government of Israel" and by DAWN).

Two words carry the weight. "Exclusive" means no one else, meaning no Palestinian people, has a right to any part of it. "Inalienable" means the right cannot be given away, meaning no future government can trade land for peace. And "all parts of the Land of Israel" puts the Golan Heights, taken from Syria, and Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, on the same list as the Galilee and the Negev inside Israel's recognized borders.

The coalition agreement with Smotrich's party carries a similar clause. A reader on Hacker News, citing the agreement published on the Knesset site and reporting by Axios's Barak Ravid, points to article 118: "the Jewish people have an exclusive right" to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (Hacker News thread). The X user JD put the point in one line: "That is the signed governing document of a nuclear-armed state" (JD on X, 21 February 2026).

The Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, writing in The Nation in November 2023, quoted the same guidelines and called them the current form of Likud's 1977 claim (The Nation, 22 November 2023).

The Nation-State Basic Law, 2018​

Israel has no written constitution. Its Basic Laws serve in its place. In July 2018, Netanyahu's previous coalition passed "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People." As quoted by an X user challenging an AI's description of Greater Israel as "non-binding rhetoric," it declares that "the Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people" and that "the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people" (Bitcoin Snow on X, 26 September 2026). The New York Times summarized it the same way: it "enshrined the right of national self-determination in Israel as 'unique to the Jewish people'" (New York Times, 9 November 2023).

Yariv Levin, now justice minister, called it "Zionism's flagship bill… it will bring order, clarify what is taken for granted, and put Israel back on the right path. A country that is different from all others in one way, that it is the nation-state of the Jewish people." Netanyahu said in 2019: "Israel is… the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them" (both as quoted by Vanguard Online, 29 November 2023). Rashid Khalidi writes that "The commitment to Greater Israel was enshrined in the 'Basic Laws' of the Israeli state in 2018" when the law passed.

From the documents to the votes​

The documents were followed by votes:

  • 18 July 2024. The Knesset voted 68 to 9 against a Palestinian state west of the Jordan, "with Gantz's backing," as Haaretz noted, meaning with votes from the centrist opposition (Times of Israel; Haaretz, 18 July 2024).
  • 23 July 2025. The Knesset voted 71 to 13 for a motion declaring the West Bank "an inseparable part of the Land of Israel," that "Israel has the natural, historical and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel," and calling on the government to "apply Israeli sovereignty, law, judgment and administration" to the settlements and the Jordan Valley (Times of Israel, 23 July 2025).
  • October 2025. A preliminary bill for applying sovereignty to the West Bank passed its first reading (Grok summary on X, 26 September 2026).
  • September 2026. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported that the Knesset had just passed a resolution declaring the West Bank "an inseparable part of Israel" (CAIR, 25 September 2026).

The motions are formally non-binding, and formal annexation has waited, El País reports, because President Trump "adopted a very different tone" after meeting Arab allies in October 2025. But on the ground the guidelines are being carried out line by line: see Smotrich's "De Facto Sovereignty" Machine and Annexation by the Numbers.

What this means for the "not official policy" claim​

The line most often repeated in defense of Israel's government is that Greater Israel is "not official policy." The narrow Greater Israel, all the land from the sea to the Jordan plus the Golan, is written in the governing coalition's first principle, in a coalition agreement, in a Basic Law's definition of the homeland, and in two Knesset votes. It is official policy. The wider map is discussed on The Denials Against the Record and What Greater Israel Means.

Evidence rating: the government's own guidelines claim an "exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel," including the Golan and the West Bank: CONFIRMED.

Status: Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, Yariv Levin, Rashid Khalidi, and Barak Ravid are alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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