Greater Israel Movement

The Greater Israel Movement appears in the novel as a political organization that offered Michel Sommo a platform for propaganda and demonstrations after the Six-Day War. His departure in 1971 marks a clear limit to his direct involvement: later campaigns and land schemes belong to other organizations or political networks, even as they extend the territorial concerns associated with his earlier activism.

Political setting and Sommo’s background

Before joining the movement, Sommo had already participated in right-leaning politics. His eldest brother and other relatives were known activists in the Herut Bloc, and Sommo had intermittently held paid memberships in both that party and the National Religious Party. In 1964 he helped organize Moledet, a group of North African intellectuals and students in Jerusalem. It split over financial and ideological differences and ceased to exist in 1965, preceding his later activity in the Greater Israel Movement.

Sommo’s activism intensified on the eve of the Six-Day War. He campaigned against the Eshkol government’s wait-and-see policy and gathered signatures in support of taking military initiative against Egypt and other Arab countries. This earlier episode establishes his preference for active political intervention, while remaining distinct from the Greater Israel Movement itself.

Activity within the movement

Immediately after the Six-Day War, Sommo volunteered for an active role in what later became the Greater Israel Movement. His work centered on propaganda and demonstrations. The account identifies him as an energetic participant, but does not specify a formal office, internal hierarchy, or detailed program for the movement; its concrete organizational presence is conveyed through his campaigning rather than through descriptions of its structure.

Sommo left the movement suddenly in 1971. Soon afterward, he made a public display of surrendering his National Religious Party membership card. These departures distinguish his successive affiliations: the evidence records a period of active work in the Greater Israel Movement, followed by withdrawal from it and a shift toward other political associations.

Later political networks and land advocacy

In 1972 Sommo was among the founders of the Jewish Fellowship Movement and remained on its executive committee. After the Yom Kippur War, that separate organization demonstrated against troop disengagements in the Sinai and the Golan Heights and attempted to buy land illegally from Arabs near Bethlehem. Sommo was interviewed by police twice in connection with the group, in October 1974 and April 1975, but was not charged. The report states that it could not establish his personal involvement in violent lawbreaking. These activities illuminate the political milieu in which a former Greater Israel Movement activist continued to operate, but they should not be attributed to the Greater Israel Movement.

Other episodes likewise show territorial advocacy taking different organizational and financial forms. A prospectus Sommo sent to Alexander Gideon proposed paying Arabs for land and property and financing their departure; Gideon’s reply questioned the practical cost of compensating and relocating a population on that scale. Separately, Sommo’s family requested money from Gideon toward purchasing and renovating Alkalai House in Hebron, describing the effort as recovering property through payment rather than violence. These were distinct proposals and transactions, not documented programs of the Greater Israel Movement.

Significance and limits of the evidence

The movement’s place in the novel is defined most securely by its brief, campaign-oriented record: Sommo joined after the Six-Day War, worked in propaganda and demonstrations, and left in 1971. The subsequent shift to the Jewish Fellowship Movement shows continuity in Sommo’s political engagement, but also a change in organizational setting and methods. The distinction matters because the narrative connects political advocacy to land transactions and public campaigning without treating every later initiative as the work of the Greater Israel Movement.