For many years, religious Zionist families were hesitant for their sons to fulfill Israel's mandatory three-year army service, worried that exposure to secular peers would erode their faith. This school, Bnei David, promised to minimize that risk, offering teenage boys a chance to fortify their religious beliefs before entering the military. Its website boasts of starting a "quiet revolution in the Israel Defense Forces."

Students are taught that God "wants a people of Israel, and there is no state of Israel if there isn't a strong army," said Rabbi Eli Sadan, the school's founder. They're also taught by instructors who oppose the presence of women in the military and who have described gay people as "sick and perverted."

Speaking from behind a large desk strewn with rabbinical texts, Sadan said he supports a scorched-earth military strategy in Gaza, "so Israel's enemies will see the ruins and think: 'I don't want to mess with the Jews.'"

He is against the rebuilding of Palestinian society in Gaza, where at least half of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed during Israel's fierce bombing campaign. "We must eliminate the possibility of Gazans returning," he said, arguing that displaced civilians should be forced to live in tents for many years until they decide "to emigrate willingly."

Sadan said his school, which recently hosted events with both Netanyahu and Israel's defense minister, has produced 3,000 soldiers, more than 50% of whom have risen to the rank of officer or higher. Since the conflict broke out, 18 alumni have died in Gaza.

The rise of religious military academies like this one has dramatically changed the makeup of the army, said Levy, the sociologist. Religious Zionists made up about 3% of officer school graduates in 1990, Levy's research shows; in 2018, they accounted for over a third.

Levy, who has written about what he calls the "theocratization of the Israeli military," said the trend has caused conflicts, with some religious soldiers refusing to serve alongside women.

A pressing question, he said, is whether religious soldiers would comply with orders to forcibly remove Jewish residents from a settlement — a scenario that could play out under the creation of a Palestinian state.

Sadan said he teaches his students to always heed commands from military superiors. But during the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, other rabbis called on soldiers to refuse orders, and some did.

"What we see is growing resistance in the ranks," Levy said. "They're trying to challenge the formal codes of the military."

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Those hoping to establish Jewish settlements in Gaza say they will model their strategy on the West Bank, where today 500,000 settlers live among 3 million Palestinians.

Since Oct. 7, tensions here have been simmering as the line between settlers and soldiers has become increasingly blurred.

After the Hamas attack in southern Israel killed around 1,200 people, hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists were called up for duty. Many reservists in the West Bank were instructed to don uniforms and guard their own communities.

Among them were Yosef Shalom Sheinman, 30, who is from Har Bracha, a mountain settlement overlooking the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Sheinman's parents helped found Har Bracha in 1987 amid protests from Jewish leftists and the Palestinians who once grazed sheep here. His younger brother, 27-year-old Yishai, belongs to a famously violent extremist group known as the Hilltop Youth, which is devoted to expanding Israeli control of the region. "These are kids who would eat Arabs for breakfast," their father says proudly.

For decades, Israeli soldiers have been deployed throughout the West Bank to protect existing settlements, which most of the world considers illegal under international law. But the soldiers are also often instructed to stop the building of illegal settlement outposts. In the past, they sometimes clashed with Yishai, tearing down new outposts he and his friends had erected.

Now many of the soldiers in the region are Yishai's friends — or, in the case of Yosef Shalom, his family.

The reservists are not curtailing settlement expansion, Yosef Shalom said. Instead, they're focused on patrolling nearby Palestinian villages — and making sure they aren't growing. His unit recently cut a new road through a stretch of hillside between a Palestinian hamlet and Har Bracha, effectively claiming the area for the settlement.

"This is our land," he said. "And God is with us."

On a recent afternoon, Yosef Shalom stood with his father, Avraham Sheinman, taking in views sweeping from the peaks of Jordan to the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv. Avraham clutched a well-worn Torah, which he consulted frequently to highlight passages he says show that Jews have a religious obligation to be here. "We have a commandment to conquer it," he said.

He spoke of a war with Palestinians, but also of "an inner war" within Israel.

"Who are we? What direction are we going?" he asked. "Are we going in the direction of our destiny as a chosen people in the Land of Israel — as a Jewish state according to Jewish law? Or are we a secular leftist copy of Europe or America?"

Many on the other side of the political divide view that question with the same urgency.

In an interview with Sky News this month, writer and historian Yuval Noah Harari said the biggest threat to Israel is not Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, but Jewish extremism: "There is really a battle for the soul of the Israeli nation between patriotism on the one side and ideals of Jewish supremacy on the other."

It is too early to say exactly how the Hamas attack and the Gaza war will shape that debate. But early indications suggest they have awakened new support for the right.

Protests near the Egyptian border to halt aid delivery into Gaza were first organized by religious Zionists, but now draw secular participants. And while much of the international community holds out hope that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza will one day be recognized as a Palestinian country, faith among Israelis in a two-state solution has dimmed.

A Tel Aviv University poll found that support for peace negotiations among Israeli Jews had fallen from 48% just before the Hamas attacks to 25% a few weeks after.

Leaders of the religious right, meanwhile, are using the war as an opportunity to push through extreme policies.

Ben-Gvir, the national security chief, leads the Jewish Power party and has helped arm thousands of Israeli civilians by relaxing restrictions on gun ownership. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, recently announced plans to expand settlements in the West Bank by more than 3,000 homes. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted of inciting racism and supporting terrorism, live in the West Bank.

Life for Palestinians there has gotten markedly worse since Oct. 7, with more than 600 settler attacks against Palestinians recorded since the war broke out, according to the United Nations, and more than 1,200 Palestinians displaced from their homes.

Palestinian activist Issa Amro lives in the historic center of Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, in the midst of a heavily guarded Jewish settlement.

On the day of the Hamas attack, he was returning from work when several neighbors surprised him in an olive grove and began assaulting him. Some, he said, wore army uniforms likely leftover from their military service.

Amro was then taken to a military base, where he says he was detained for 10 hours and beaten.

Amro said he lives in fear. Every day he passes former Palestinian businesses shuttered by settlers, as well as a sign that says: "We're occupying Gaza now."

"Every meter I walk, I think I may be shot," he said.

Amro said he doesn't blame the settlers themselves so much as the political leaders who have allowed the settlements to flourish. He pointed to Netanyahu, who allied with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and to Donald Trump, who as president abandoned Washington's long-held position that West Bank settlements violate international law. "Netanyahu made them mainstream," Amro said. "The Trump administration made them mainstream."

President Biden has since reversed the U.S. stance on West Bank settlements — and recently imposed sanctions on four Israeli settlers for carrying out violence against Palestinians. And Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken says Washington opposes the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel and any reduction of the Palestinian territory's size.

Joel Carmel, a former Israeli soldier who is now a peace activist, said the future of Jewish settlements in Gaza may depend on who wins the U.S. election in November.

"Probably the only thing holding back the resettlement of Gaza is the Biden administration," he said. "And who knows how long that's going to last."

Many Palestinians in the West Bank think its only matter of time before Israeli settlers move permanently into Gaza.

Areej Al Jaabari, a mother in Hebron, has watched as settlements have crept nearer and nearer to her family home. Ben-Gvir lives in a sprawling suburban community she can see from her living room window.

"They're gradually accomplishing their goals," she said of the settlers. "Eventually they will control everything in Gaza too."

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Linthicum reported from Jerusalem and Yitzar, Har Bracha and Hebron in the West Bank. Times staff photojournalist Marcus Yam contributed to this report.

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