Haim Drukman, a prominent rabbi who was one of the founders of Israel’s settlement movement, has died at the age of 90.
Rabbi Drukman was a leading figure in the religious Zionist movement in Israel, and a major proponent of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula after Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Middle East war.
He was admitted to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Centre earlier this month and the hospital confirmed his death late on Sunday. It did not provide a cause.
Rabbi Drukman served several terms as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, with the forerunner of today’s Religious Zionism party, which is a key ally of prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu. He acted for a long time as spiritual leader to religious nationalist politicians on Israel’s far right.
Mr Netanyahu wrote on Twitter that “a great light of the love of Israel was extinguished” with the rabbi’s death.
Rabbi Drukman called for the annexation of the occupied West Bank and its approximately 2.5 million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation alongside around 500,000 Jewish settlers.
The Palestinians seek the territory, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, as a future independent state, while most of the international community considers Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace.
The rabbi called on Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to dismantle settlements during Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and made similar remarks about Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He advocated that Jewish religious law govern the state of Israel, a position shared by his followers.
“There’s no problem whatsoever with a state run by Jewish religious law,” he told Israel Hayom in one of his final interviews last month. “What you do in your home is your business, but outside — this is a Jewish state.”
Rabbi Drukman was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civil honour, for lifetime achievement in 2012.
He was buried on Monday in a cemetery near his hometown in southern Israel.
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