Messianic Religious Zionism Confronts Israeli Territorial Compromises

The Six Day War in 1967 profoundly influenced how an increasing number of religious Zionists saw Israeli victory as the manifestation of God's desire to redeem God's people. Thousands of religious Israelis joined the Gush Emunim movement in 1974 to create settlements in territories occupied in the war. However, over time, the Israeli government decided to return territory to Palestinian or Arab control. This was perceived among religious Zionist circles as a violation of God's order. The peak of this process came with the Disengagement Plan in 2005, in which Israel demolished all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the West Bank. This process raised difficult theological questions among religious Zionists: What supreme religious significance could be attributed to these events? Was the State of Israel no longer to be considered a divine tool for the redemption of the Jewish people? This book explores the internal mechanism applied by a group of religious Zionist rabbis in response to their profound disillusionment with the behavior of the state, reflected in an increase in religious radicalization due to the need to cope with the feelings of religious and messianic failure.

Mordechai ('Motti') Inbari is the author of Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple?, which won the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Best Publication Award in Israel Studies (2008) and the Ben Shemesh Best Dissertation Award for the Study of Zionism and the State of Israel (2007). His work has appeared in Israel Studies, Hebrew Union College Annual, Nova Religio, Modern Judaism, Journal of Church and State and Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Prior to his appointment at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, he served as a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University.