Yair Margolis, an army reservist who was called up from his yeshiva studies last year to fight in Gaza, said during a recent break from battle that the war had a clear spiritual dimension.

"Going back to that land is returning home," he said. "This is where we are from, and this is what we are fighting for."

It's a vision starkly at odds with Israel's mainstream, even as the country's political center has shifted discernibly to the right in recent years. A January poll by Israel's Channel 12 broadcaster found that 51% of Israelis oppose building Jewish settlements in Gaza, compared with 38% who support doing so.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing populist, has called settling Gaza "unrealistic." But in 2022, as his ongoing corruption trials left him isolated, Netanyahu made a deal with several religious Zionist parties to form a coalition government, and his political future is now closely tied to theirs.

Beyond a pledge to maintain indefinite military control over Gaza and eventually turn over administrative duties to Palestinians, Netanyahu's postwar strategy remains murky, leaving a vacuum, political analysts say, that the religious right is eager to fill.

In a recent video from Gaza circulated on social media, an Israeli soldier dressed in camouflage stands smiling with a machine gun in front of a bombed-out building. He directly addresses Netanyahu, who is widely known by his nickname "Bibi."

"We are occupying, deporting and settling," the soldier says. "Do you hear that, Bibi?"

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During the war in 1967, Israel captured a wide swath of Palestinian land that included the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Almost immediately, Jewish settlers began establishing communities in each of them, displacing Palestinians who lived there.

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