In the period following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a new movement has gainec increasing popular support in Israel. Called Gush Emunim ("The Bloc of the Faithful"), the movement presents an irredentist stance vis-a-vis the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and other "administered territories" (the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights). The focus of Gush's activities has been the establishment of Jewish settlements in these territories, "beyond the Green Line." The settlements were founded with volunteered labor and without the consent of the (then-) Labour government.' The political opponents of Gush viewed these settlements as illegal, a blatant defiance of the government. Many critics demanded their removal, if necessary by force. Gush responded by rejecting the political arguments. In their view each settlement was a further move towards the integration of Eretz Yisrael, The Land of Israel, into a Third Jewish commonwealth. Thus the leaders and supporters of Gush saw themselves standing "above party politics" and, if necessary, above parliamentary process. They rejected the political arguments of their opponents by claiming for their movement a legitimacy based on religious (and not political) values. The ultimate value was that of Messianic Redemption. In this light the advent of the Jewish state was less the triumph of a particular "movement of national liberation," i.e., Zionism, than it was the beginnings of a divinely inspired and ordained redemptive process. This process depends on, among other things, the territorial integrity of Eretz Yisrael.2 Failure to settle The Land or the withdrawal from presently occupied territories would be only secondarily a military-political "blunder." Such failure or withdrawal would constitute man's (or his government's) direct contravention of God's will: this would cause the interruption, or worse, the cessation, of the redemptive process. In the national election of May 17, 1977, control of the government was voted away from Labour and passed to the right-of-center Likud party headed by Menachem Begin. The new prime minister chose as the site for his first postelection speech the Gush settlement Kaddum. There he proclaimed Judea and Samaria to be "a part" of Israel. By July, the government announced plans for 16 new towns to be built on the West Bank. Seven were listed as projects planned by Gush Emunim. Two related transformations had occurred: "political" and "religious" legitimacy, hitherto disjointed, appeared to be conjoined in a Likud government fostering a Gush Emunim program. And Zionism, it was claimed, had undergone a major and inevitable reorientation, finding at last its "true expression." By examining the roots of the Gush Emunim movement, this paper seeks to illuminate these transformations. What is important to understand is that they did not arise, de novo, with the replacement of a left-wing by a right-wing government. As with any