ABSTRACT
Introduction This study is part of a larger attempt to understand and explain the radicalization processes that have taken place within democratic societies in the last 25 years, and that led non-violent political movements to embark upon a violent course that finally produced terrorism. The study emerged from a specific interest in the radicalization of Gush Emunim (the block of the faithful), an Israeli messianic movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria). It was especially triggered by the exposure and arrest, in April 1984, of a terror group composed of highly respected members of the movement, who since 1980 had committed several stunning acts of antiArab terror in the West Bank. The fact that the 'underground' - as it was named in the press - had also developed a very elaborate plan to blow up the Muslim Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, for ideological-religious reasons, was of special significance. It showed that some prominent members of Gush Emunim, who started their careers as peaceful, idealistic settlers, had become extremely millenarian, radicalized to the point of considering catastrophe a means of achieving national and religious redemption.
