This is a poster demanding that Israel should build settlements all over the Greater Land of Israel: in the West Bank, on the Golan Heights, and in the Sinai desert. The poster shows the geographic area of the Land of Israel (including Sinai and Jordan) in blue and the rest of the land in another colour. The highlighted letters in the centre spell out: "Settlements Immediately." The words cover almost the entire map.
This poster was created by an Israeli graphic designer called Eli Gross. It was designed for the Movement for Greater Israel to celebrate Independence Day in 1969. This was two years after the Six Day War during which land in Judea and Samaria, the Greater Land of Israel (or the West Bank) was captured. Following the war, the public discourse about settlements in those areas became more intense.
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Settlements - The term "settlements" usually refers to the towns and villages established by Jews in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) since the Six Day War. Following the war, strategic concerns led both of Israel's major political parties to support and establish settlements at different times. The first settlements from 1968 to 1977 were built by Labour governments with the explicit objective of securing a Jewish majority in the key strategic regions of the West Bank that had seen heavy fighting in several wars.
The second wave of settlement construction began when Menachem Begin was elected prime minister in 1977. Begin's government, as well as subsequent Likud-led governments, provided financial incentives for Jews to move to parts of Judea and Samaria that did not necessarily have any strategic value in order to solidify Israel's hold on territory that was part of biblical and historical Israel and thus pre-empt the creation of a Palestinian state. This type of settlement had previously been seen in Hebron, a city with a long Jewish history dating back to biblical times that had only been interrupted by a massacre of Jewish residents by Arabs in 1929. Those who came to Hebron in 1968 were the first of the ideological settlers who believed that the historic Land of Israel should be restored to the Jewish people.
When Arab-Israeli peace talks began in late 1991, more than 80 percent of the West Bank contained no settlements or only sparsely populated ones. Currently, more than 60 percent of Israelis living in the West Bank live in just five blocs which all lie within only a few miles of the 1967 border.
The West Bank remains an area of conflict, and most countries in the world, including many that support Israel, oppose Israeli presence in the occupied territories. There are, however, many Israelis who support some kind of Israeli presence there for either ideological and security reasons.
