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Jabotinsky and "Both Banks of the Jordan"

Likud's 1977 platform stops at the Jordan River. The movement Likud came from did not. Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, who founded Revisionist Zionism in the 1920s, claimed the land on both sides of the Jordan: today's Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Kingdom of Jordan. His followers built the Betar youth movement and the Irgun militia; Irgun's commander, Menachem Begin, became Likud's first prime minister; Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, served in Jabotinsky's movement. The claim to "the other bank" has never been renounced by the movement's heirs, only postponed, and in 2023 it reappeared on a podium in Paris behind a sitting finance minister.

The claim, in Jabotinsky's words​

In 1930 Jabotinsky wrote a hymn, "The Left of the Jordan," later the anthem of Betar. The political scientist Nadav Shelef prints it: "There are two Banks to the Jordan — This one is ours, and that [one] as well." "Stretching from the sea to the desert, And the Jordan, the Jordan in the middle." "If I forget the left bank of the Jordan, May my right hand be withered by the Lord" (Nadav Shelef, Evolving Nationalism, book scan). The last line is a deliberate echo of Psalm 137, the oath never to forget Jerusalem.

Jabotinsky, according to a text scan of his biography, required every new Revisionist member to take a vow of Shlemut Hamoledet, "the wholeness of the homeland": "the right of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel in its entirety (that is, on both sides of the Jordan River)." In 1922, when Britain separated Transjordan from the Palestine Mandate, he rejected the compromise because the nation required "territorial control of Eretz Israel in its entirety, on both banks of the Jordan." At the 17th Zionist Congress in 1931, the historian Avi Shlaim writes, Jabotinsky "insisted on a forthright declaration that the aim of the movement was a Jewish state on both sides of the River Jordan" (London Review of Books, 9 May 1996).

A blog post on the subject explains that the Revisionists held "the Palestine Mandate should have extended to both sides of the Jordan River, instead of Article 25 of the Mandate decision allowing Great Britain to postpone the application of the reconsitution of the national Jewish homeland east of the Jordan River," and that "A map representing the demanded borders was always prominent... And the Irgun adopted it as well" (My Right Word, 24 August 2024).

Shelef summarizes: "All the variants of the Zionist Right have a common goal: Jewish sovereignty over Palestine (Eretz Israel) on both banks of the Jordan River — or at least the western bank between the river and the sea."

The "Iron Wall"​

Jabotinsky's 1923 essay "The Iron Wall" explains the method. As quoted from a page on Zionist maximalism: "Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population" (hamascase.com, section on Zionism as a maximalist ideology). Barnett Rubin introduced the essay as the work of "the founder of Revisionist Zionism, the direct political ancestor of Benjamin Netanyahu" (Barnett Rubin on X, 19 March 2024).

The heirs: Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu​

Begin, in his victory speech of May 1977, looked back to that 1931 congress, as Avi Shlaim records. A summary of the Revisionist line runs: Begin "as Jabotinsky's disciple and Irgun commander, put the Iron Wall into practice," founded Herut, "which became Likud's core," and passed on "Revisionist hardline views on security and statehood that shaped Netanyahu's outlook"; Benzion Netanyahu later faulted Begin's peace treaty with Egypt (Grok on X, 25 September 2026). The Routledge study Netanyahu and Likud's Leaders: The Israeli Princes (Gil Samsonov, 2020) describes Benzion as the "foreign minister" of Jabotinsky's movement.

In public, the heirs spoke about the east bank carefully, which is not the same as giving it up. Asked in 1973 what "wholeness of the land" Likud agreed on, Begin replied, "The answer is that we are affirming our belief." Shamir, Shelef writes, framed the east bank as "a historical claim." Benjamin Netanyahu's own book places it at the founding of the Mandate: "At Versailles the Jewish nation was promised that it would be allowed to establish a state in Palestine: the national home included both sides of the Jordan in those days" (as quoted by Shelef). A promise, in the prime minister's telling, made and then taken away.

"The other bank" today​

The claim came back into the open in March 2023, when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke in Paris from a podium draped with a map of Israel that included Jordan, the Irgun's map. See Smotrich in Paris: The Map That Included Jordan. In October 2024, Middle East Eye and Anadolu reported his words in a French-German documentary, as rendered by Anadolu: "the eastern bank of the Jordan River will be taken over gradually" (Anadolu Agency on X, 11 October 2024).

A writer on Italian X notes that Likud governs today alongside Kahanist parties whose slogan is "From the sea to Transjordan" (Oca sapiens on X, 26 September 2026). And a 2026 op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, as quoted by the historian Zachary Foster, argued that Israel "must control the territory up to the Litani River and resettle it with Jewish communities," adding: "Ben-Gurion also made clear that the Jordan River was never meant to be the eastern border of the Land of Israel" (Zachary Foster on X, 14 March 2026). Foster's comment: "The Greater Israel nightmare is now on live stream."

Jordan's government has noticed. In 2025 Israel's newspaper Maariv reported plans to withhold 50 million cubic meters of water from Jordan in 2026 under the 1994 treaty (Threads, 10 December 2025); in July 2026 a headline warned Israel's refusal to extend the water agreement was "a 'stab in the back'" that "may spark crisis" (JEWISHLIVESMATTER on X, 9 July 2026). Jordan's view of all this is on Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq and The Neighbors, Country by Country.

Evidence rating: the Revisionist movement that produced Likud claimed both banks of the Jordan, and a sitting minister displayed that map in 2023: CONFIRMED.

Status: Ze'ev Jabotinsky is deceased (1940). Menachem Begin is deceased (1992). Yitzhak Shamir is deceased (2012). Benzion Netanyahu is deceased (2012). Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, Nadav Shelef, Avi Shlaim, Barnett Rubin, Gil Samsonov, and Zachary Foster are alive. Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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