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Herzl to Lehi: The Founders and the Wide Map

The most common reply to anyone who mentions "Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates" is that the phrase was invented by Israel's enemies. The founders' own records say otherwise. This page walks through what the men who built the Zionist movement and the Israeli state said about borders, in order, from 1896 to 1967.

Theodor Herzl: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates"​

Theodor Herzl founded political Zionism with The Jewish State in 1896. In his diary he wrote that the area of the Jewish state stretches "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates" (Complete Diaries, vol. II, p. 711, as cited by David Miller on X, 11 October 2024 and Daniel Haqiqatjou on X, 6 October 2024). Miller's post, headed "Surprise! The 'Arabs' were right all along about a 'Greater Israel'. It's always been the plan," was viewed about 667,000 times. The fact-check site Factually, which argues the wide map is not state policy, still roots the ideology in "Theodore Herzl's vision of a Jewish state from 'the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates'" (Factually, December 2024).

Versailles, 1919: the first map​

At the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War, the Zionist delegation made its first formal border claim. Menachem Ussishkin told the conference on 27 February 1919: "The historic desire of the Jewish nation is to be returned to its [territorial] borders and to restore the land that was divinely promised to the children of Israel 4,000 years ago." The World Zionist Organization's official 1919 map "proposed borders that included not only mandatory Palestine but also the fertile agricultural lands of southwestern Lebanon (up to the Litani River), the Golan Heights, and the East Bank of the Jordan River (modern-day Jordan)" (as summarized in a Threads post citing Bishara, 2011). The Litani and the Golan are exactly the lines Israel's army holds or claims today.

Jabotinsky: both banks of the Jordan​

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, the movement from which Menachem Begin's Herut and later Likud grew, wrote the anthem "There are two Banks to the Jordan — This one is ours, and that [one] as well" and demanded that every new Revisionist take a vow to the "territorial control of Eretz Israel in its entirety, on both banks of the Jordan." The political scientist Nadav Shelef notes that a minority in the movement, including the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg, "based its claim on the biblical promise and desired the land all the way to the Euphrates." See Jabotinsky and "Both Banks of the Jordan".

1947: testimony to the United Nations​

When the United Nations sent its Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Fishman (Maimon) of the Jewish Agency, the body that became Israel's first government, testified on 9 July 1947: "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon" (as cited by David Miller). And David Ben-Gurion, accepting the 1947 partition plan, is quoted as saying: "The boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people, and no external factor will be able to limit them" (as quoted by brane mijatovic on X, 12 March 2026). Israel has never formally declared its borders since. See A State That Never Declared Its Borders.

Lehi: "a Hebrew kingdom from the Euphrates to the Nile"​

Lehi (also called the Stern Gang) was a pre-state armed underground. Its leaders included Yitzhak Shamir, later a Likud prime minister. The Jewish Virtual Library describes Lehi's goals as "maximalist: conquest and liberation of Eretz Israel; war against the British Empire ... and establishment of a 'Hebrew kingdom from the Euphrates to the Nile.'" Its 1941 "Principles of Renaissance," written by Avraham Stern and published in its paper Bamahteret, declared:

  • "The Homeland is here in Eretz-Israel with its borders as defined in the Torah."
  • "Israel took Eretz-Israel by the sword. There it became a nation, only there will it be reborn."
  • Among its tasks: "Conquering the Homeland by force from the hands of strangers, as our Eternal Possession" and "Solving the problem of the gentiles by population exchange."

(Jewish Virtual Library, Lehi; the Jabotinsky Institute holds the Lehi platform drafts, catalog K 5-1/1/1.) Shamir, as prime minister, "gave the settler movement funding and Israeli governmental legitimisation," according to Wikipedia's summary.

After the state: the founders kept the door open​

After 1948 the question stayed open at the top. The historian Zachary Foster has collected Israeli leaders' words: Moshe Dayan in 1949, that the "frontier of Israel should be on Jordan [River]"; Yigal Allon, "I never forgave the Israeli government under Ben-Gurion for not letting us finish the job in '48-49"; the government's 1951 Year Book, "We have set up a dynamic state bent upon ... expansion"; and Yitzhak Rabin in 1963 describing ideal borders at "the Jordan River in the east, the Suez Canal in the south and west and the Litani River in the north" (Zachary Foster on X, 3 April 2026). A Jerusalem Post op-ed in March 2026 revived the same line: "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).

After the 1967 war a Movement for Greater Israel formed at once, and within weeks the first settlers went up to the Golan (see The Golan Heights).

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that the Nile-to-Euphrates and Litani-and-both-banks claims appear in the founders' own records, not only in their enemies' speeches.

Why it matters​

The wide map is not a smear that appeared with social media. It runs from Herzl's diary through the 1919 map, the 1947 testimony, and the Lehi program, whose members later governed Israel. Today's ministers who name the Litani and Damascus are not inventing something new. They are returning to the founders' map at a moment when the army is on the ground to hold it.

Status: Zachary Foster, David Miller, and Daniel Haqiqatjou are alive. Theodor Herzl is deceased (1904). Menachem Ussishkin is deceased (1941). Ze'ev Jabotinsky is deceased (1940). Yehuda Leib Maimon is deceased (1962). David Ben-Gurion is deceased (1973). Avraham Stern is deceased (1942). Yitzhak Shamir is deceased (2012). Moshe Dayan (1981), Yigal Allon (1980), and Yitzhak Rabin (1995) are deceased.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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