Haim Drukman, a distinguished rabbi who was one of many founders of Israel’s settlement motion, has died on the age of 90.

Rabbi Drukman was a number one determine within the spiritual Zionist motion in Israel, and a serious proponent of Jewish settlements within the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula after Israel captured these territories within the 1967 Middle East struggle.

He was admitted to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Centre earlier this month and the hospital confirmed his dying late on Sunday. It didn’t present a trigger.

Rabbi Drukman served a number of phrases as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, with the forerunner of at the moment’s Religious Zionism celebration, which is a key ally of prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu. He acted for a very long time as non secular chief to non secular nationalist politicians on Israel’s far proper.

Mr Netanyahu wrote on Twitter that “a great light of the love of Israel was extinguished” with the rabbi’s dying.

Rabbi Drukman referred to as for the annexation of the occupied West Bank and its roughly 2.5 million Palestinians who dwell below Israeli occupation alongside round 500,000 Jewish settlers.

The Palestinians search the territory, together with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, as a future impartial state, whereas a lot of the worldwide group considers Israeli settlements unlawful and an impediment to peace.

The rabbi referred to as on Israeli troopers to refuse orders to dismantle settlements throughout Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and made related remarks about Jewish settlements within the occupied West Bank.

He advocated that Jewish spiritual regulation govern the state of Israel, a place shared by his followers.

“There’s no problem whatsoever with a state run by Jewish religious law,” he instructed Israel Hayom in one in all his closing interviews final 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 nation’s highest civil honour, for lifetime achievement in 2012.

He was buried on Monday in a cemetery close to his hometown in southern Israel.