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The Founders of the Settlement Movement

The settlements did not appear by accident. They were started days after the June 1967 war by people who said what they were doing, and every generation since has added a new layer: the religious movement Gush Emunim in the 1970s, the government's own settlement plans, the "hilltop youth" outposts of the 1990s, and today a movement whose members say they will not rest until the whole land is emptied of non-Jews. This page follows that line from the first outposts to the present.

1967: "just like in the Ukraine"​

According to the Israeli historian Tom Segev's book 1967, as summarized by Grok, officials requested plans for the captured territories within days of the war, and left-wing kibbutz activists founded the first outposts on the Golan Heights in July 1967, hailing it as "just like in the Ukraine" (Grok on X, 20 September 2026). Building in the West Bank began that September (jewdas on X, 14 December 2023). A Movement for Greater Israel formed the same year, bringing together figures from the Labor movement and the Revisionist right; its "Labor Movement for Greater Israel" wing later joined the parties that founded Likud in 1973 (Wikipedia; archived Likud history page). A question in the Knesset on 24 July 1968 already concerned the defense minister's speech on the Golan and "settlement and expansion of the borders" (NYU Jewish Settlements Archival Project).

Plans for "control forever"​

The settlements were a government program from the start. Government plans such as the 1980 Drobles plan told authorities to "settle the land btw minority population centers," noting that doing so would "remove any trace of doubt about our intention to control" these areas forever (as quoted by Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir, X, 27 April 2021). Documents from a public archival project show Israel poisoned Palestinian land to build a West Bank settlement in the 1970s (Haaretz, 23 June 2023). Menachem Begin, the first Likud prime minister, was, in the words of the French-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin, "a loyal supporter of Gush Emunim" and "raised the banner of Jewish settlement in Judea & Samaria," as Likud's own history page put it.

"The Jewish agenda triumphs"​

The founders of the religious settlement movement said openly that the project outranks democracy. In a documentary clip posted in September 2026:

  • Benny Katzover, a founder of the settlement movement in Samaria: "Where democracy and Judaism clash, the Jewish agenda triumphs."
  • Moti Karpel, co-founder of the Bat Ayin settlement: "Whoever abides by Jewish law is not in awe of democracy."
  • Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun, a leader of the early movement, on the promised borders running between the Nile and the Euphrates: whatever Israel can establish within them "is the fulfillment" (as the poster renders him).
  • A young settler: "We'll occupy Transjordan and build settlements there. It's all temporary." Asked about borders: "From the Euphrates River to the Tigris, virtually all the way to Iraq." "And the Nile too?" "Yes."

(The Compass Report on X, 10 September 2026.) The poster's summary: "The people who built the settlement enterprise, saying exactly what it was for."

The hilltops​

In the late 1990s a younger generation began seizing hilltops, the "Hilltop Boys," which one critic dates to Ariel Sharon in 1997. Its current form includes the "Hilltop Girls": young women who, after army service, set up tents on a West Bank hill that later become recognized communities. Maoz Esther and Or Ahuvia, northeast of Ramallah, are cited as examples (Saif Maher on X, 20 October 2025). Farm outposts of this kind now control more than 1,070,000 dunams, about 18 percent of the West Bank, according to Peace Now and Kerem Navot.

"Not a single gentile"​

The newest voices drop all euphemism. Ariel Horowitz of Homesh, an outpost that the Knesset legalized in effect in March 2023: "Will not rest until the people return to all of greater Israel... In all of this area, we will dispossess and expel... there cannot be a single gentile [non-Jew] here" (The Resonance on X, 27 December 2025). Rabbi Menachem Ben Shachar, who once made a video titled "Q&A - Why should Huwara be erased?", toured the new settlement Nofei Gideon on the lands of the village of Qaddum: "The view is amazing. You can see the coast, you can see Qaddum, the village of the evil ones" (B.M. on X, 14 July 2025). In February 2023 Finance Minister Smotrich had said "Israel should erase Hawara," as Israeli Foreign Ministry staff themselves listed among the statements that damaged Israel (Shaiel Ben-Ephraim on X, 25 August 2026, summarizing Ynet).

The million-settler plan​

In August 2023 Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, sent Netanyahu a proposal, endorsed by "hundreds" of settler leaders, to raise the settler population in his region to one million by 2050. In the same period Defense Minister Yoav Gallant began a process to let settlers return to four settlements near Jenin evacuated in 2005, and the Times of Israel reported the defense minister envisioning "a new city in the West Bank as settler numbers grow" (Times of Israel).

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that the settlement project was government-planned from 1967 and that its founders and current leaders describe its aim in their own words as the whole land.

Status: Benny Katzover, Moti Karpel, Yoel Bin Nun, Ariel Horowitz, Menachem Ben Shachar, Yossi Dagan, Yoav Gallant, Bezalel Smotrich, Charles Enderlin, Tom Segev, and Omar Shakir are alive. Menachem Begin is deceased (1992). Ariel Sharon is deceased (2014). Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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