The Eyes of the Nation: Mt. Hermon in Zionist Territorial Discourse

This paper explores how Mt. Hermon was incorporated into Israel’s imagined landscape and analyses the attempts to integrate Mt. Hermon within Israeli territorial identity subsequent to the Yom Kippur War (1973) by discussing the concept of the gaze. Israel’s justification for holding Mt. Hermon developed within secular discourse based on geo-strategic (the mountain as a military outpost) or civilian (the mountain as a snowy “alpine” resort) considerations.  After the Yom Kippur War, Mt. Hermon was commemorated and almost sanctified in the Israeli Zionist public discourse as the “eyes of the nation”.  A paradoxical ambiguity remained, as it was interconnected with the territories considered to be un-lawfully occupied by parts of Israeli society.

The paper focuses on the cultural and political discourse of Mt. Hermon that developed after the Yom Kippur War; especially its organic image as “the eyes of the nation” which envisioned the mountain as a national observation post and transformed it into a major geopolitical landmark. I claim that Israel’s physical and cultural appropriation of Mt. Hermon is an important milestone in the development of the national discourse. As such, the mountain’s gaze is not only eastwards but can also be understood as a mirror that reflects important insights on the various patterns of Zionist geopolitical narratives.