Israel's religious right has a clear plan for Gaza: 'We are occupying, deporting and settling'

While the settler movement isn't composed just of religious people, and over the years it has received backing from both right-wing and left-wing Israeli governments, it is ideologically driven by practitioners of Orthodox Judaism who believe God gave what they call the Land of Israel exclusively to the Jews.

Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, some of whom oppose the Zionist project and decline to serve in the military, religious Zionists embrace the teachings of rabbis who say believers have a spiritual imperative to expand Israel's borders.

By 2005, around 8,000 mostly religious Zionists were living in Gaza, often in neighborhoods that resembled Southern California subdivisions, with their orderly rows of red-tile-roofed homes. The settlements were heavily guarded by the military, and residents frequently clashed with their Palestinian neighbors.

Amid growing concerns about high casualties among the troops tasked with protecting the settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered a complete Israeli withdrawal from the enclave. Sharon, who was a supporter of settlers in the West Bank, now instructed soldiers to forcibly remove them from Gaza.

The "disengagement" from Gaza, with its scenes of screaming settlers being pulled from their homes and synagogues, was transformative for religious Zionists. Many vowed to gain more influence in the traditionally secular institutions they felt had betrayed them.

"For them it was a traumatic event," said Yagil Levy, a professor of political sociology at the Open University of Israel. "They want to erase this trauma by any means."

That meant building a political movement that has sought "to push the government as far right as it can go" and "completely demolish any talk of a Palestinian state," said political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin. Over time, she said, ideas that once seemed extreme — like expanding settlements in the West Bank — became normalized.

Helping their cause were the country's changing demographics: Religious Zionists, like the ultra-Orthodox, were having children at a much higher rate than their secular peers.

At the same time, they were making new inroads in the army.

The military academy that has become the West Point for the religious right is built atop a wind-swept hill in the West Bank settlement of Eli. Here, young men wearing yarmulkes spend their days studying both the Torah and military strategy.

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