Greater Israel Movement

The Greater Israel Movement (in Hebrew "Hatnuah Lema'an Eretz Yisrael Hashleimah - "The Whole Land of Israel.") An Israeli extremist ideology that believes variously either that Israel should settle as much as possible of the territories conquered in the Six Day War, annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip conquered in the Six Day War and not exchange any territory for peace, or that Israel should expand to take up all of the "historic" land of Israel including the kingdom of Jordan, originally  part of the Palestine Mandate, including Transjordan, and in the most extreme forms,  sometimes including all of Israel as promised by God and never fulfilled - from el-Hama in Syria in the north to the Nile in the south, and from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Mediterranean.

The official Greater Israel Movement is a secular ideology of the Likud party, but they are joined by the Gush Emunim religious group which has the same goal. Arab extremists and anti-Zionists caricature the Greater Israel movement and indeed all of Zionism, as aspiring to the maximal territories according to the biblical promise. While Zionists always have tried to get the largest possible territory for a Jewish state, no particular boundaries were ever considered to be vital to fulfillment of the Zionist ideal.

Encyclopedia of the Middle East

Note - This encyclopedia is a work in progress. It is far from complete and is being constructed and improved all the time. If you would like to contribute articles or expansions of existing articles, please contact news (at) mideastweb.org.  Suggestions and corrections are welcome. The concise version of this dictionary is at our Middle East Glossary.

Spelling - Spelling of words in Middle-Eastern languages is often arbitrary. There may be many variants of the same name or word such as Hezbollah, Hizbolla, Hisbolla or Husayn and Hussein. There are some conventions for converting words from Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.  There are numerous variant renderings of the same Arabic or Hebrew words, such as "Hizbollah," "Hisbulla" etc. It is not possible to find exact equivalents for several letters. 

Pronunciation - Arabic and Hebrew vowels are pronounced differently than in English. "o" is very short. The "a" is usually pronounced like the "a" in market, sometimes as the "a" in "Arafat."  The " 'A " is guttural.  " 'H "- the 'het ('Hirbeh, 'Hebron, 'Hisbollah') designates a sound somewhat similar to the ch in "loch" in Scots pronunciation, but made by touching the back of your tongue to the roof of your mouth. The CH should be pronounced like Loch, a more assertive consonant than 'het.

The "Gh" combination, and sometimes the "G," designate a deep guttural sound that Westerners may hear approximately as "r." The "r" sound is always formed with the back of the tongue, and is not like the English "r."

More information: Hebrew, Arabic