Hamas/Israeli Conflict – A Christian Perspective and Historical Backdrop
Compiled & Collated By Rev George Ong (Dated 30 Oct 2023)
Excerpt of the Article:
Last, there is a critical need to intercede for Israel for this reason
– as you know, now that Israel is seen as the ‘aggressor’,
public opinion and the world of nations would gradually turn against her,
and it has already happened.
Finally, we must never forget to pray for the Palestinian civilians that God would be merciful to them in their sufferings.
Recently, I gave a decent amount (from my yardstick) as donation for relief work for the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza area.
More so, let’s pray for the Hamas terrorists,
that many would have an encounter with the Lord Jesus in their dreams and visions.
I have personally come across Hamas terrorists who came to the saving knowledge of Christ.
Any Christian watching such glorious testimonies will never fail to weep like I did
– tears of rejoicing,
being overcome by the fact that even the worst terrorist can be saved by the grace of God,
and that to God, nothing is impossible.
(This article was also sent to Rev Dr Ngoei Foong Nghian, General Secretary, National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) office, and for the attention of the Executive Committee Members.)
Preface
Religious militancy and terrorism have become a threat, not just to Israel, America and Europe but to every nation and every individual.
Most Americans lived in a naïve and complacent world, believing that religious extremism was mainly a Middle Eastern problem – until 9/11 hit.
I pray that people of this region will not be caught off guard in the same way that the Americans were.
In this part of the world, many radicalised individuals in Malaysia and Indonesia and even Singapore (much smaller extent) have joined the ISIS.
And with the arrest of a self-radicalised 19-year-old individual who was influenced by ISIS and harboured the sinister intention of assassinating our political leaders, including the President and the Prime Minister years ago, even Singapore is not spared.
The ISIS has publicly declared that it intends to establish an ISIS province in South East Asia, under the control of the ISIS Caliphate, posing a very serious threat to the whole of South East Asia.
The threat posed by Radical Islam in the ISIS and other extremist militants is stark and real, and is a grave concern of every country and every citizen in the world.
Be that as it may, people should learn to make a separation in their minds between the Muslim people and the Radical teachings of Islam of ISIS and Hamas.
A person can love and respect the Muslim people even if he rejects the Radical teachings of Islam.
Second, let’s remember that not all Muslims are radicals like ISIS and Hamas who are bent on killing the Jews and Christians.
There are many Muslims who are responsible, sensible and moderate and they don’t agree with these radicals at all.
Third, as Christians, there is no place for us to dislike or insult Muslims.
We must love and be compassionate towards the Arabs as much as we do to the Jews as they are all created peoples of God.
Fourth, even the Islamic radicals such as Hamas should not be denigrated or dehumanised.
They are victims of a cruel ideology.
They are dangerous now, but they are not beyond redemption.
Many have come to know Christ.
Let’s pray and hope that many more will be set free from the bondage of their radical and extreme beliefs.
Introduction
We live in a world which is building up to an apocalyptic crescendo where we cannot afford to be ill-informed.
What happens in the Middle East, Israel, and Jerusalem is critical and will profoundly impact every believer.
Our future is inextricably tied to these developments.
One can no longer be ignorant and uninformed about these apocalyptic events that are enveloping and shaping the world.
We need to make sense of what is really happening and where all the conflict in the Middle East is headed.
We need to be awakened from our slumber and be keenly aware about the momentous times that we are living in.
We need to have a thorough and a deeper understanding about how the Arab-Israeli conflict will lead to the emergence of the Antichrist and the second coming of Christ.
We need to know about the historical past of the Arab-Israeli conflict which has shaped the volatile present and which would
evolve into an apocalyptic future.
OUTLINE OF THE ARTICLE:
The Historical Perspective to the Arab-IsraelI Conflict
A. God’s Eternal Covenant is with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
B. HISTORICAL BACKDROP TO THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT
1. Biblical Roots to the Conflict
a. Ishmael & Isaac
b. God’s Promises to Ishmael
c. Why God Separated Ishmael and Isaac
d. ‘God Hears’ Ishmael
e. Ishmael’s Legacy
f. Jacob and Esau
g. Edom Becomes a Dominant Symbol of Arabs
2. From 3000 BC till 1880s
3. From the 1880s to 1948
4. The 1948 Independence War
5. The 1967 Six-Day War
6. The 1973 Yom Kippur War
7. From Mid 1970s to Early 1980s
8. The Intifadas
9. The Palestinians Today
10. The Israeli Plight
11. Will the United States turn against Israel?
C. Why The Conflict Remains Unsolvable
1. The Right to Exist
2. House of Peace – House of War
D. Replacement Theology
E. Jerusalem: Where the Final Battle will be Fought
F. The Time to Favour Zion Has Come: Israel and Jerusalem are back in Jewish hands
The Historical Perspective to the Arab-Israel Conflict
A. GOD’S ETERNAL COVENANT IS WITH ABRAHAM, ISAAC & JACOB
Without an understanding of the biblical story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was called Israel, you cannot possibly understand the modern miracle of the State of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In Genesis 17, God made what the Bible describes as an everlasting covenant with Abraham.
The fact that it is an everlasting covenant simply means that it is still in effect today and forevermore.
In this covenant, God promised to give the land of Canaan to Isaac (not Ishmael) and his descendants:
Genesis 17:7-8, 19-21 (NIV)
7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” 19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.”
God loves Ishmael as much as He loves Isaac.
He made a special covenant with Isaac, but Ishmael also received a blessing.
God made provisions for both sons, but He established His covenant with Isaac, not Ishmael.
God had different plans and purposes for Isaac and Ishmael as they would father different people groups.
Isaac fathered the Jews while Ishmael fathered the Arabs.
The God of the Bible loves the Arab people, but He has a different plan for them as He does for the Jews.
God will bless the Arabs if they will submit to His plans and purposes.
He will judge them if they do not submit to His plans as He had judged the Jews for their disobedience.
Christian and Jewish supporters of Israel are not anti-Arab.
We are pro-God.
And because God is pro-Israel in His covenantal dealings with them, we too are pro-Israel in their claim to the Promised Land.
Just because God has chosen Israel does not mean He is anti-Arab.
God loves the Arab people as much as He does the Jewish people.
His plan is a matter of His choice, not His love.
Even so, we must understand that God has different plans for the nations just as He has different plans for our individual lives.
When the Arab nations stop fighting Israel and recognise God’s plan for them, they will be greatly blessed, for God loves them as well and desires to bless them.
However, He cannot bless them as long as they oppose His purpose of choosing the Israelites to inherit Israel and the City of Jerusalem.
B. HISTORICAL BACKDROP TO THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT
1. Biblical Roots to the Conflict
a. Ishmael & Isaac
Genesis 16:1-16
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” 6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” 13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Ro; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
God promised Abraham a son.
But he couldn’t wait for God’s promise to be fulfilled.
With Sarah’s suggestion, they activated Plan B.
Plan B was to take Hagar as a wife and hopefully she can give birth to a son.
When Hagar was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress, Sarah.
Sarah blamed Abraham for following her idea:
“You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” (Gen 16:5 NIV)
Abraham ducks the problem and throws it back into Sarah’s lap.
He told her, in effect:
“She’s your maid, you deal with her. Do whatever you want with her.”
And of course, Sarah vented her frustration and anger on poor Hagar.
She treated her so harshly that Hagar ran away into the desert.
No doubt Hagar would have died in the desert had not the Lord in His great mercy sought her out and encouraged her.
The angel of the Lord also gave Hagar a great promise and a prophecy about the child, Ishmael she would bear.
The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur:
And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” (Gen 16:8-10 NIV)
The angel of the LORD also said to her: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Gen 16:11-12 NIV)
This was a marvellous manifestation of God’s mercy.
Hagar apparently was trying to follow the road across the Sinai back to Egypt.
But alone on foot with no provisions, she would have died enroute.
Hagar, the Egyptian maid, was subjected to an affair over which she had no choice.
But the LORD demonstrates that He loved her too, as He does anyone who calls out to Him and throws herself upon God’s mercy.
The very name that God gives her for the son she is carrying is a memorial that the LORD heard her prayer of distress.
He commanded her to name him ‘Ishmael,’ which means ‘God hears.’
A lone runaway female slave in that day was truly helpless and in danger.
The LORD therefore tells her to return and be submissive to Sarah with the promise that He would bless her with descendants beyond numbering through her son, Ishmael.
She is promised her own personal inheritance and blessing from the LORD through her son.
Because Ishmael is also a son of Abraham, God promises to bless him and make him into a great multitude of people and nations.
God loves Ishmael and his descendants, even though he foreknew his wild nature that would be multiplied in his descendants:
Genesis 21:8-21
8 The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” 11 The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. 12 But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 13 I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba. 15 When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. 17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” 19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. 20 God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. 21 While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.
God is so merciful.
He heard the cries of Hagar and Ishmael and provided water for them to drink.
But when Ishmael grew up, more trouble was on the horizon.
The seeds of enmity between the Jews and the Arabs are expressed in embryonic form on the occasion of Isaac’s weaning.
Abraham and Sarah threw a great feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning.
By this time, Ishmael was at least 16-years-old and accustomed to having most of his father’s attention.
So, when Isaac was born and so much attention was showered upon him, a great deal of resentment and jealousy must have sprung up in Ishmael.
All the ingredients for an envy-driven hatred were there.
During the celebration, the Bible reports,
“But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking.” (Gen 21:9)
So, when Ishmael mocked at and made fun of Isaac, he did so with the knowledge that according to divine revelation, Isaac was the chosen one.
And that this was not merely a human choice based on carnal favouritism.
This is why in the eyes of God, Ishmael was not just mocking Isaac, but he was rejecting and ridiculing His sovereign choice.
This is surely the stuff of which Ishmael’s ‘enmity’ was born.
Enmity is hatred that has been nourished over a long period of time.
It was just beginning to take root here.
The German scholar Hengstenberg expressed the following insight,
“Unbelief, envy, pride of carnal superiority, were the causes of Ishmael’s conduct.”
Notably, these negative feelings of envy and rivalry did not die out with Ishmael or his immediate offspring.
But it would survive to be passed down through the centuries, becoming deeply ingrained into the consciousness of his descendants.
b. God’s Promises to Ishmael
The Bible makes it clear that despite the birth of Isaac, there was no lack of love for Ishmael on the part of Abraham or God.
Abraham even petitioned the Lord that Ishmael could be part of the divine choice, when he said,
“Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!”
And as a result, God made it clear that Ishmael would be given a great inheritance because he was also Abraham’s son:
20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” (Gen 17:20-21)
As a matter of fact, the Ishmaelites were given more land and ultimately more wealth than the Israelites.
This was true in their past history, not to mention the vast oil wealth of modern times.
As the late Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel once put it,
“Moses dragged us for 40 years through the desert to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil!”
And spiritual salvation has always been open to the Ishmaelites.
But God’s covenant, which concerned God’s spiritual purposes to provide salvation for all mankind, was only for Isaac and his descendants.
The physical blessings promised to Isaac were to facilitate God’s spiritual call for the nation that would descend from him.
c. Why God Separated Ishmael and Isaac
What happened as a result of Ishmael’s actions might seem too severe unless it is seen in the light of the divine perspective.
9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” (Gen 21:9-10 NIV)
This really grieved Abraham.
But in this case, God saw the spiritual necessity of separating the two.
Perhaps, if Ishmael had not yielded to the fleshly passions of envy and jealously, he and his mother could have stayed on with the family.
But this episode showed that Ishmael was not looking at this from the standpoint of God’s sovereign purpose and choice.
He was only focusing on the situation from his carnal human emotions that said,
“What God gave me is not enough – I want it all.”
And as we will see, today, the Ishmaelites (Radical Arab Muslims) are still saying,
“What God gave us is not enough, we want it all.”
And in our day, this feeling is being driven by centuries of cultivated enmity towards the Jews.
This is certainly a common human failure.
How often we have seen even Christian ministers become ungrateful for the spiritual gifts and blessings God has given them when they become jealous of the gifts God gives others.
That’s always a very costly yielding to the old nature of sin.
The Scriptures say,
“But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing (spiritual gifts) to each one individually as He wills.”
So, the greatly aggrieved Abraham gave Hagar her freedom with provisions for her and Ishmael and sent them away.
I am sure it took real faith on Abraham’s part to trust that God would take care of them – because he did love Ishmael very much.
d. ‘God Hears’ Ishmael
When the provisions and water ran out, Hagar and Ishmael despaired.
Remember the meaning of Ishmael’s name is ‘God hears.’
Ishmael cried out to God, and the LORD graciously heard his cry:
“God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.’ Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.” (Gen 21:17-19, NIV)
Hagar and Ishmael were given great privileges.
This makes twice that the LORD appeared to Hagar, spoke with her, and rescued her.
And this was also a gracious revelation to Ishmael.
If these two did not receive God’s redemption, it could never be said they had no light.
How many today could truly say that God appeared and spoke with them?
The LORD never abandoned Ishmael.
The Bible records,
“God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.” (Gen 21:20-21 NIV)
Ishmael is not mentioned again until the death of his father Abraham.
Then Isaac and Ishmael came together and buried their father.
Apparently, they then went their separate ways and did not see each other again.
e. Ishmael’s Legacy
Ishmael had 12 sons, each of whom became a great prince, and he founded 12 nations.
However, the second son, Kedar, became the most powerful and wealthy.
Remember that name, for his descendants figure prominently in Arab history.
God blessed Ishmael and caused him to live 137 years.
This is God’s obituary for him:
Altogether, Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people. His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt, as you go toward Asshur. And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers. (Gen 25:17-18 NIV)
Amazing!
Exactly the same thing is said about Ishmael’s descendants as was said of Ishmael himself.
It is exactly the same Hebrew clause, except instead of “he,” it is “they” who continued to live in “hostility toward all their brothers” and “dwelt to the east of them.”
And of course, the brothers, against whom this hostility is aimed, are the descendants of Isaac, who lived to the west.
How that hostility became a permanent enmity is the focus of the rest of this article.
This ancient family feud is going to directly affect our lives.
f. Jacob and Esau
From the enmity that Ishmael harboured against Isaac, this brings us to Esau who held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father, Isaac had given him.
He said to himself,
“The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” (Gen 27:41)
Never in history has there been a family feud that sustained such enmity over so long a period of time.
And no other ethnic violence has affected so many nations for so many centuries.
The enmity of Ishmael and Esau toward Isaac and Jacob respectively truly is supernatural.
And the worst is yet to come.
Indeed, the Bible predicts that the last war of the world will be triggered by a conflict over the issue of which descendants of these ancient families owns Jerusalem.
This is why it is so important to trace these peoples through history to the present day.
And it is of ultimate importance to understand the root cause of the enmity toward Israel.
This is probably the biggest single factor that is not understood by today’s Western political leaders, academics, and media.
And it is the reason all of their attempts to solve the Middle East conflict are destined to fail.
So, follow this section closely.
It will throw some very important light on today’s Middle East problems.
This hatred became an enmity that permeated Esau’s descendants.
They became primarily called the sons of Edom or the Edomites.
They later became known as the Idumaens that produced the Herodian dynasty spoken of in the New Testament.
King Herod the Great, who ordered the slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem in order to kill the Messiah, was a descendant of Esau.
His son, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, beheaded John the Baptist.
But perhaps the most important factor is this – that Esau’s descendants not only became part of the Ishmaelite/Arabian race but also joined with them against Israel.
They were certainly prominent among the warriors who first converted to Islam and helped spread it across the Mediterranean world.
The Bible records how Esau became part of the Arabs.
Throughout the history of Israel, the Edomites seized every opportunity to vent their hatred against them.
This is briefly illustrated by the following Biblical accounts of the Edomites’ actions.
When Israel came out of captivity from Egypt, the Edomites would not even let them pass through their land:
14 Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, saying: “This is what your brother Israel says: You know about all the hardships that have come on us. 15 Our ancestors went down into Egypt, and we lived there many years. The Egyptians mistreated us and our ancestors, 16 but when we cried out to the Lord, he heard our cry and sent an angel and brought us out of Egypt. “Now we are here at Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. 17 Please let us pass through your country. We will not go through any field or vineyard, or drink water from any well. We will travel along the King’s Highway and not turn to the right or to the left until we have passed through your territory.” 18 But Edom answered: “You may not pass through here; if you try, we will march out and attack you with the sword.” 19 The Israelites replied: “We will go along the main road, and if we or our livestock drink any of your water, we will pay for it. We only want to pass through on foot—nothing else.” 20 Again they answered: “You may not pass through.” Then Edom came out against them with a large and powerful army. 21 Since Edom refused to let them go through their territory, Israel turned away from them. (Num 20:14-21)
g. Edom Becomes a Dominant Symbol of Arabs.
Ezekiel predicts that God will judge ‘all Edom’ (referring here to all Arabs) for appropriating Israel’s land.
This judgment comes in the last days when God miraculously returns the Israelites from all the countries where He scattered them. This prophecy refers to our time.
God warns,
“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In my burning zeal I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, for with glee and with malice in their hearts they made my land their own possession so that they might plunder its pastureland.” (Ezek 36:5, NIV)
God warns Edom again about the judgment that will fall on all his descendants at the coming of the Messiah. The reason is clearly given here:
This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Edom, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Because he pursued his brother (Israel) with a sword, stifling all compassion, because his anger raged continually and his fury flamed unchecked, I will send fire upon Teman that will consume the fortresses of Bozrah.” (Amos 1:11-12 NIV)
A prophecy in the Psalms concerning the final attempt of the descendants of Abraham’s other sons to destroy Israel
show that Edom and Ishmael linked together and led the confederacy to wipe Israel off the earth.
Just look at the list of Israel’s enemies in the ‘Last Days.’ It reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of their ancient enemies.
Psalm 83:1-12
1 O God, do not remain silent;
do not turn a deaf ear,
do not stand aloof, O God.
2 See how your enemies growl,
how your foes rear their heads.
3 With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.
4 “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”
5 With one mind they plot together;
they form an alliance against you—
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
of Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Byblos, Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
8 Even Assyria has joined them
to reinforce Lot’s descendants.
9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
10 who perished at Endor
and became like dung on the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, “Let us take possession
of the pasturelands of God.”
All the usual suspects are in this predicted line up of ‘bad guys’.
Edomites and the Ishmaelites are the primary Arab people.
The descendants of Moab, the Hagrites, Gebal, Ammon, Amalek, and Philistia melted in the mixed group that were absorbed by the Arab culture and then later became converted to Islam.
Today, these people make up the nations of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar.
The other places named are: Tyre, which is now Lebanon, Assyria, which is modern Syria, Persia, which is modern Iran.
All of these people are linked together by their common continuous enmity toward Israel.
The battle cry of all these people in five previous wars with Israel (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982)
has been to wipe Israel off the map and to slaughter its people
but God enabled Israel to defeat them in all these wars.
But now Iran (Persia) is on the verge of producing nuclear weapons.
The Ayatollah Khomeini and the former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both declared that they will soon obliterate the state of Israel.
We will examine how this ancient enmity became to be connected to a religion founded by a direct descendant of Ishmael, Muhammad.
We will see how the spread of hatred toward Israel became to be linked with the spread of this religion – Radical Islam.
The root cause of the conflict in the Middle East is due to the fact that radical Islamic Arab leaders are seeking to establish and extend themselves beyond the limits God has set for them and in opposition to the One True God.
This is the background to the conflict between these two sons of Abraham and their descendants that continues to this day.
It is a story of conquest and conflict.
While the Bible says that God made the covenant promise to Isaac and his descendants,
the Quran says the promise was to Ishmael and his descendants.
Both versions cannot be correct.
These descendants of Abraham through Ishmael are the fathers of the modern Arab people.
We learn from the Bible and from secular history that animosity has continued between the two groups of family members from generation to generation.
We learn also that because of their thirst for blood, the Arabs would have a history of violence and bloodshed which finds its religious expression in Radical Islam:
“‘Because you harbored an ancient hostility and delivered the Israelites over to the sword at the time of their calamity, the time their punishment reached its climax, 6 therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.” (Ezek 35:5-6)
Psalm 83 clearly reveals the sinister attitudes and purposes of the descendants of Ishmael and Esau (the Arab countries of our time) regarding their cousins, the present-day descendants of Isaac and Jacob, who now make up the modern nation of Israel.
This alarming Scripture sounds strangely familiar to the covenant made by the terrorists and the radical Islamic nations concerning Israel.
It reads as follows:
“.…Come, and let us cut them (Israel) off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more. For they have consulted together with one consent; they form a confederacy against You (God). Who said, Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession.” (Psalm 83:4-5, 12, NKJV)
Both Jews and Christians believe the land of Israel was given to the Jewish people by God Himself.
All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. (Gen 13:15 NIV)
2. From 3000 BC till 1880s
For over 3,000 years, since Israel first became a nation around 1200 BC, Jews have regarded the Land of Israel as their homeland.
The Arab world would have us to naively believe that the Palestinians have been in ‘Palestine’ from ‘time immemorial’ but were displaced by the Jews when Israel became a state in 1948.
While we are not certain of the exact dates, it is a historical fact that Joshua conquered the Land God promised the Jews at around 1,400 BC.
King David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel around 1,000 BC.
This means that Israel, with Jerusalem as her capital, existed almost 1,000 years before the beginning of Christianity and 1,600 years before the rise of Islam.
When King David died, he was succeeded by his son, Solomon.
When Solomon became king, he built the Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah about 960 BC.
Mount Moriah is the location of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem today.
So, we see that the Jewish Temple was built on the present Temple Mount about 1,600 years before Muhammad established Islam.
This was almost 1,000 years before the beginning of Christianity and 1,600 years before the rise of Islam.
But after the death of Solomon, the kingdom was divided.
The Northern Kingdom ─ made up of 10 of the Tribes became known as the Kingdom of Israel,
and the Southern Kingdom (which included Jerusalem) ─ made up of the Tribes of Judah and Benjamin, became known as the Kingdom of Judah.
The northern nation of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the population was dispersed through the empire.
There is no record of them ever returning.
This is the origin of the great mystery of the “lost tribes of Israel.”
In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians defeated the southern kingdom of Judah and took most of the population to Babylon.
The people remained there until 70 years passed, then in 516 BC they returned to Jerusalem.
Solomon’s Temple had been destroyed when the Holy City was captured, and those who returned built a new temple, known as the Second Temple.
The Jewish People lived in the land but under the control of other nations for most of the remaining years before the birth of the Messiah.
After Alexander the Great defeated Persia, control of Israel passed to the Greeks.
After Alexander’s death, the empire was then divided to the Seleucids in Syria.
The Maccabean revolt briefly gave Israel self-determination again, but soon the Romans conquered the land as part of the expansion of their empire.
In early New Testament times, two Jewish-Roman wars devastated the land of Israel.
The First Jewish-Roman War in 66-73 AD left the Temple destroyed and the land in ruins.
This was the fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (Matt 24:2).
60 years later (132-136 AD), the Romans again conquered Israel in a two-year war known as Bar Kokhba’s revolt.
After Bar Kokhba’s revolt, Jerusalem was razed, most Jews were forbidden to live there, and a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, was constructed on the ruins.
In order to humiliate and spite what was left of the Jewish population, the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea (the Roman name of the province) to Syria Palaestina in 135 AD.
He didn’t do this for love of the Palestinians – there were no ‘Palestinians.’
Syria Palaestina was name for the Philistines, an ancient enemy of the Jews, as a deliberate anti-Semitic gesture.
Over the years, the word “Palaestina” eventually became “Palestine.”
The land was known by this name until the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948.
Throughout history, Israel was ruled by many empires.
However, it is important to understand that none of these empires ever established a sovereign state in the land and Jerusalem has never been the capital of any country since the time of King David.
The final uprising was the Bar Kochba Revolt, after which the Romans crushed the rebellion, and the Jews were forcibly dispersed throughout the empire.
They were forbidden from entering Jerusalem and for the next nearly 1,900 years, the Jewish People became a wandering nation, separated from their homeland.
During the centuries that followed, grave persecutions followed the Jews wherever they went.
The ones who persecuted them are ironically the Church.
The Jews were unreasonably blamed, for example, for causing plagues, falsely accused of using the blood of Christian babies to celebrate Passover, and often referred to as “Christ-killers.”
Waves of persecution during the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Russian pogroms killed untold thousands.
In the 4,000 years since God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, they had only occupied the land for approximately 1,400 years.
For the other 2,600 years, they wandered the earth as outcasts and sojourners, without a land to call their own.
Yet, throughout that time, the Jewish People never lost hope that one day they would return.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” was their heart’s cry through the centuries.
The dream of returning to their homeland and rebuilding it again one day remained through the years of their wandering.
3. From the 1880s to 1948
From the 1880s, because of severe persecution, Russian Jews began immigrating to Israel.
A second wave of immigration, also from Russia, was in 1905.
This was followed by later immigrations resulting in a growing Jewish population in Israel.
Other Jews primarily came from Eastern Europe and settled in the land of Palestine as farmers.
Known as the First Aliyah, these early settlers struggled for survival in a hostile environment.
In 1914, some 85,000 Jews lived in Palestine, alongside some 6,000 Arabs.
At that time, Palestinian Jews outnumbered Palestinian Arabs 14 to 1.
This population figure is often overlooked when Westerners discuss the Jewish-Arab conflict in Israel.
The land of Israel has continuously been the Jewish homeland from the time of Abraham through the centuries of the Diaspora (Dispersion) and right up to the present day.
Since biblical times, far more Jews than Arabs have lived in Palestine, and this was true long before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
So, it is only reasonable that the Jews should have a homeland of their own on the land they have continuously occupied since Old Testament times.
Again, according to the PLO (and the Western Media), the Palestinian Arabs have lived in ‘Palestine’ from time immemorial.
They were forced to flee by the ‘Jewish Zionists’ when the modern state of Israel was created.
However, let’s look at the facts.
Although the Jews were scattered among the nations by the Romans in AD 70, there has always been a Jewish presence in the land.
The dream of the Jews in exile since their dispersion has been, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
So, from 1880s onwards, the Jewish pioneers did not steal the land from Arabs.
During Arab domination of Palestine, the land was a neglected waste-land.
It was sparsely populated by Jews and Arab peasants.
They settled on land that was unoccupied, deserted, or purchased.
The Jews owned the land, if for no other reason, because they bought it.
When the Jews arrived, they were greeted by a harsh land that had been neglected for centuries by its non-Arab Islamic rulers.
Yet, these zealous Jewish immigrants were determined to redeem the soil.
As the Jews worked the land of Israel, it began to prosper.
While both Jews and Arabs lived in pre-Israel Palestine, there were many poor migrant Arab farm workers who lived in the neighbouring countries and needed work.
When the Arabs heard that the land was prospering, hundreds of thousands of them migrated to Israel to benefit.
Many of the Palestinian Arabs today are the descendants of these same migrant workers from Israel’s neighbouring countries.
These migrant farm workers are the ‘Palestinians.’
They have not been in the land from ‘time immemorial.’
They were late arrivals who came to the land after it began to prosper as a result of Jewish blood and toil.
Over time, the population of this group of Arabs increased.
We certainly understand the needs of Palestinian Arabs.
Those who want to live in peace with Israel should have that opportunity.
But they simply do not have a valid historical claim and bonding to the land as do the Jews.
In spite of what many assume to be true, there has never been a sovereign land called Palestine.
Jerusalem has never been a Palestinian capital.
As a matter of fact, Arab leaders themselves denied the existence of an Arab country called Palestine.
It simply did not exist.
Professor Phillip Hitti, a very distinguished Princeton professor and Arab historian said in a speech in 1946,
“There is no such thing as Palestine in Arab history, absolutely not.”
When foreign powers ruled the land, Israel was just a ‘province’ of their empire.
These rulers never established a sovereign state in the land, and Jerusalem was never a capital of any country other than the Jews.
After the Romans, the land that became modern-day Israel was ruled by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire, and finally by the British Empire.
The British defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and occupied and ruled Palestine until the end of World War I.
After the war, the Allied powers chose Britain as the administrator of Palestine in an arrangement known as the Palestine Mandate.
That same year, British Foreign Secretary Arthur J Balfour, writing on behalf of the British Cabinet, issued a statement known as the Balfour Declaration, the most important part of which read as follows:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”
British foreign minister, James Balfour believed that England had a responsibility to assist the Jews in establishing their home in Israel in payment of Christianity’s great debt to the Jewish people.
In 1917, he issued the famous ‘Balfour Declaration’ acknowledging the national rights of the Jews to a homeland in Israel.
But under pressure from the Arabs, the then-British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, in 1922, took the land east of the Jordan River that was promised to the Jews and created a new state they called Transjordan (present-day Jordan, west of the Jordan River).
This was approximately 77% of the land that was originally promised to the Jews.
The British then appointed Abdullah, the King of Transjordan (Jordan).
The British made Transjordan an ‘Arab Palestinian state’, while Palestine, later Israel, was to be the ‘Jewish Palestinian state’.
Transjordan was granted independence in 1946 and renamed Jordan.
In 1939, the British, in their White Paper of 1939, limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over the next five years and made it contingent on Arab consent thereafter.
It also restricted land purchases by Jews.
It said in part that
“His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.”
The Jewish community saw this as a betrayal – and one that came at a time when European Jews desperately needed a homeland they could flee to at the beginnings of the Holocaust.
However, the White Paper guided British policy throughout World War II and even afterwards.
In 1947 the British government decided to withdraw from the mandate, and the UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would divide the Palestinian territory into two states – Israel and Jordan.
The Jews reluctantly accepted the partition which gave them much less than originally promised in the Balfour Declaration.
The Arabs rejected the resolution.
On May 14, 1948, just before the 30 years of British rule and the British Mandate was to expire at midnight on May 15, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.
With the establishment of the State of Israel, Jewish independence, lost 2,000 years earlier, was renewed.
The new State of Israel was recognised immediately by the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and it was admitted as a voting member of the UN.
Against the backdrop of all these events was the rise of a dictator named Adolf Hitler, who exterminated more than six million of the world’s nearly 18 million Jews in a span of just nine years.
Two out of every three Jews living in Europe were wiped off the face of the earth.
This resulted in an international urgency to relocate the Jews to Israel.
Even though this horrible act against the Jews caused sympathy toward the Jews in much of the world, including America,
the British government, which still controlled the region known as Palestine, seemed to continue in a spirit of persecution against the Jews who sought to return to their homeland.
During World War II, Britain greatly curtailed Jewish immigration to Israel even while Jews were desperately seeking to escape Nazi Germany.
Due in part to pressure from Arab countries and Middle Eastern Muslims, Britain passed laws limiting the immigration of Jews to Palestine to only a few thousand a year.
For example, in 1939, Britain issued a decree which established a quota limiting Jewish immigration to 10,000 refugees.
Ships filled with Jewish refugees were intercepted and forced to divert to Cyprus.
Thousands of Jews were placed in detention camps while the British government tried to figure out what to do with them.
The camps operated from August 1946 to January 1949 and in total held about 51,000 persons.
Many who survived the Holocaust ended up dying in these camps.
How ironic that those who had been liberated from Nazi death camps were again behind guard towers and barbed wire, this time imprisoned by the British and many of them perished in these camps!
4. The 1948 Independence War
In May 1948, the British withdrew and the State of Israel was proclaimed.
The following day, Israel was invaded by five Arab states that surrounded it – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
Surrounded by enemies who wanted to wipe them off the map, the tiny State of Israel was outnumbered sixty to one.
Not only were the enemy armies much larger, but they also had vastly superior weapons and supplies.
Yet, the God of Israel – the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psa 121:4) – kept Israel.
Against all human odds, the infant nation prevailed.
The war concluded with the 1949 armistice agreement, which gave Egypt control of the Gaza area.
The West Bank region of Samaria and Judea came under Jordanian supervision.
The remainder of the land was declared to belong to Israel.
Jerusalem became a divided city – east Jerusalem was apportioned to the Arabs, west Jerusalem to the Jews.
Jordan controlled the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and many of the most revered Christian sites.
Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on May 11, 1949.
It must be put on record that when Israel became a nation, 800,000 Jewish refugees fled from the neighbouring Arab and Muslim states to Israel.
Most of them were chased out of these countries with nothing but their clothings.
They were all assimilated in the new state and became citizens of Israel.
The growing Arab Palestinian population was not as fortunate.
Arab leaders from the neighbouring countries declared war against Israel.
They then instructed the Arab Palestinians to flee the Jewish state until the Jews were annihilated.
They could then return and possess the land.
The Jews encouraged the Arabs to stay.
The hated ‘Jewish Zionists’ did not force the Arab Palestinians to leave.
Their own Arab leaders forced them to leave the land.
This created the Palestinian refugee problem.
The Arab countries have refused to assimilate the Palestinians and care for their needs.
Instead, they continue to use them as political pawns in their struggle against Israel.
5. The 1967 Six-Day War
In May 1967, Egypt sent troops into the Sinai Peninsula, ordered United Nations troops out of the area, and formed a military alliance with Jordan.
In June, forces from Syria, Jordan and Egypt moved simultaneously against Israel.
However, within 24 hours, the Israeli Air Force launched a pre-emptive aerial assault and almost completely destroyed the Egyptian Air Force.
The Arab invasion quickly collapsed.
With this resounding victory, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip (from Egypt), the West Bank, East Jerusalem (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria).
Syria had controlled the Golan Heights for many years and had used the land to launch attacks into Israel’s Galilee region.
The world was astounded.
After six days of war, the Arab coalition was utterly defeated.
Jerusalem was unified under Israeli control.
The results of Israel’s victory in this 1967 Six-Day war affected the geopolitics of the region to this day.
This stunning defeat was nothing short of miraculous.
In fact, the handprint of God was all over this war.
Countless stories of divine interventions that took place during this war have been described in detail.
The most significant prophetic fulfilment to come out of the Six-Day War was the re-establishment of the Old City of Jerusalem under Jewish control.
For the first time in more than 2,000 years, the city and the Temple Mount were again controlled by the Jewish people.
Since the New Testament times, there were no Palestinians.
The ‘Palestinians’ are a made-up people.
The ‘Palestinians’ are simply Arabs, pure and simple.
Nobody mentioned Palestinians during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948
– Jews and Arabs, yes;
Palestine, yes;
but not Palestinians.
‘Palestinians’ weren’t spoken of until 1967, when the Israelis gained control of the West Bank and Old Jerusalem.
Isn’t it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland?
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.
But they didn’t capture these territories from Yasser Arafat.
They captured them from Jordan’s King Hussein.
We can’t help but wonder why all these Palestinians suddenly discovered their national identity after Israel won the war.
No matter what the news media would have us believe, the Palestinians are not now – and never have been – a distinct people.
There is no language known as Palestinian.
There is no distinct Palestinian culture.
There has never been a land known as Palestine government by Palestinians.
Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Palestinians are Arabs, and until Yasser Arafat came along in the 1970s, no one had heard of a Palestinian ‘nation.’
There has never been a sovereign, independent Palestinian or Arab state in the holy land from the time the Jews were dispersed until they declared their statehood in 1948.
In all the commotion over Israel versus the Palestinians, people forget that the Arabs already have a Palestinian state – that would be Jordan – that has already been carved out of the original mandate for Palestine.
It was from Jordan that Israel captured the West Bank, part of the so-called ‘occupied Arab territories’, but you never hear the ‘Palestinians’ asking Israel to return the West Bank to Jordan.
Nor do they suggest that Israel return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
Walid Shoebat said:
“The world condemns Israel for taking over the ‘Palestinian nation.’ However, there is not and never was a nation called Palestine.
Prior to 1967, we in the West Bank were Jordanians and we lived under Jordanian rule, acknowledging King Abdullah, then King Hussein, as our country’s leaders.
Until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then suddenly, we were ‘Palestinians!’ The Arab leaders removed the star from the Jordanian flag and instantly, we had a Palestinian flag!
The same is true of Gaza which was part of Egypt and whose people accepted Nasser, and then Anwar Sadat, as their leader.
Until the Jews formed the state of Israel. Magically, the people were no longer Egyptians, but Palestinians!
The Palestinian Charter never included Judea, which was in Jordan, as part of Palestine.
The ‘Palestinian nation’ is a fiction of the Islamists.
We never wanted a Palestinian state.
Yet Arafat made it his battle cry and it became a successful political strategy.
So now, while the territorial tug-of-war distracts Western attention, the real issue, the destruction of the Jews, is what consumes the fanatics.
It’s a religious holy war, not a political one. It’s in the culture, the tradition, the religion, the music, and in every other aspect of the Arab life. Destroy the Jews.
This was Arafat’s game plan, and he was a chip off the same block as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Ahmed Yassin – different names, same goals.”
6. The 1973 Yom Kippur War
The next war began on Saturday, October 6, 1973.
Yom Kippur, also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people.
Jewish people traditionally observe this holy day with an approximate 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services.
In 1973, while most Jewish civilians and soldiers were at Yom Kippur services, Egypt and Syria, with participation from Jordan and help from at least nine Arab states, coordinated a massive surprise and simultaneous attack on Israel ─ from Sinai on the south and the Golan Heights in the north.
Egyptian tanks crossed the Suez. Syrian tanks rolled into the Golan.
Israel was not prepared for the coordinated surprise attack undertaken by Egypt and Syria.
The tiny nation was caught off guard.
On the Golan Heights, less than 200 Israeli tanks faced an invasion of 1,400 tanks from Syria.
Along the Suez Canal, some 436 Israeli soldiers were tasked with holding off an estimated 80,000 Egyptian troops.
At least nine Arab countries were actively engaged in the assault on Israel, contributing troops, weapons and/or money.
The official ruler of Libya at the time, Muammar Gaddafi, sent one billion dollars in military aid to Egypt.
The Israel Defence Force (IDF) was initially caught off guard with heavy casualties but ultimately repulsed the attack.
Israeli forces in the south crossed the Suez Canal and drove deep into Egypt, at one point reaching a position some 60 miles from Cairo.
In the north, IDF forces advanced to within about 20 miles of Damascus in Syria.
Tensions between the Soviet Union, which supplied and backed the Arab armies, and the United States, which did the same for Israel, escalated.
Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev threatened to join the war on behalf of Egypt if the Americans did not pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire, which they did on October 25, 1973.
A ceasefire was brokered that required Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, making no claim to the new territories it had taken in Egypt and Syria.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel agreed to return the Suez Canal to Egyptian control.
Both Israeli and Arab forces suffered heavy casualties.
Israel had narrowly survived the gravest threat she had faced since declaring statehood in 1948.
7. From Mid 1970s to Early 1980s
From then on, Israel had faced the constant threat of war from her neighbours.
Outbreaks of actual fighting were punctuated by ceasefires, but there was no real peace.
That began to change in the late 1970s when Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat made a trip to Israel in 1977.
After months of negotiations, and the 1978 Camp David meetings of US President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Sadat, and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin,
Egypt became the first Arab nation to formally recognise Israel’s existence and a peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979.
Israel agreed to completely withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which they had captured in 1967 and return it to Egypt.
Israel gave up settlements and oil drilling rigs and the millions of dollars of investment they had put in place to develop the Sinai.
In return, Israel received free right of passage for ships through the Suez Canal.
The Sinai was kept as a demilitarized zone to prevent it from being used to launch future attacks against Israel.
Sadat and Begin would share the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
The peace treaty normalised relations between Israel and Egypt, and the two countries exchanged ambassadors and became economic and trading partners.
Reaction in the Arab world to the treaty was bitter and malicious.
The Arab League expelled Egypt from its membership.
Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat said the “false peace will not last.”
In October of 1981, soldiers linked to the radical Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Anwar Sadat.
His vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who was wounded in the assassination attempt, succeeded him.
Mubarak ruled Egypt as a military dictator (despite being referred to as president) for 30 years, until his oust early in 2011.
In 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty.
To date, only one other Arab country is officially at peace with Israel, and that is Jordan.
The treaty established the Jordan River as the border between the nations, and covered other issues such as water rights and mutual efforts to prevent terrorism.
The Clinton Administration promised Jordan billions of dollars in debt forgiveness in exchange for their agreement to the treaty.
With the exception of Egypt, the Arab world responded to Jordan with contempt and anger.
Hezbollah terrorists launched mortar and rocket attacks against Jewish civilian targets on the day the treaty was to be signed, hoping to disrupt the move toward peace.
It is believed that Israel’s Mossad intelligence service saved the life of King Hussein from at least one terrorist assassination attempt.
On the death of King Hussein from cancer in 1999, his son King Abdullah II took the throne in Amman.
He has continued to build trade and economic ties to Israel in the intervening years.
The governments of other Arab nations have had a complicated relationship with Israel over the years.
Some, such as Syria and Iraq, have been extremely hostile.
Others such as Saudi Arabia, while internally expressing anger toward the ‘Zionists’ find Israel useful in restraining the same terrorists who threaten their own rule.
Perhaps the most intriguing case study in the shifting nature of relationships in the Middle East is Iran.
Under the Shah, Iran was very friendly to Israel.
After 1979, when the Islamic Revolution came into power and deposed the Shah, Iran, till today, represents Israel’s greatest threat.
8. The Intifadas
Late in 1987, tensions between the Palestinians and the Israelis boiled over in what became known as the first intifada ─ the uprising.
Two days after a Jewish worker was stabbed and killed in Gaza, an Israeli tank transport killed four Palestinians in a traffic accident.
Palestinians declared the collision an intentional act of revenge for the earlier murder, which sparked mass rioting as the false rumour spread among the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem.
Violent mobs filled the streets, burning tires, destroying vehicles and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers trying to maintain order.
Rioters also bombed the US Consulate in Jerusalem.
It is impossible to get an accurate count of the dead, but it is believed that as many as 2,000 may have died during the six years of sporadic fighting and violence.
The second intifada began in 2000 and was much more deadly.
It featured more full-scale military conflicts, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 6,500 Palestinians and more than 1,100 Jews.
During the following six years, off-and-on fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants continued, along with suicide bombing and missile and mortar attacks against Jewish civilian populations.
Palestinian claims of Israeli atrocities were found to be baseless, but they helped continue the unrest and violence.
An uneasy truce was declared in 2006, which is generally considered to mark the end of the second intifada.
9. The Palestinians Today
The two Palestinian land areas, Gaza and the West Bank, have never been part of a single nation.
Prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, they were governed separately by Egypt and Jordan.
There are a little over 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and approximately 2.5 million in the West Bank.
They have been technically under a democratic government since the Oslo Accords in 2003.
The Palestinian political scene is splintered, but the two main political parties are Fatah and Hamas.
Fatah is the party more closely aligned with Yasser Arafat’s ideology (ironically, they are considered to be the ‘moderate’ party)
while Hamas is linked to the radical Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad groups.
Bitter fighting between the two parties has been common, and it is believed that at least several hundred Palestinians have been killed in disputes between the two.
In the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council held in 2006, Hamas gained a large majority in the body, holding 74 seats compared to 45 for Fatah.
The fact that the Palestinians had elected a terrorist organisation that continues to insist on the destruction of the Jewish State to head their government made it impossible for Israel, to consider any further concessions or negotiations with them.
In 2007, the Gaza War between Hamas and Fatah factions broke out.
Hamas fighters drove out all Fatah officials from Gaza, killed more than 100, and wounded at least 500 others.
Since then, Hamas effectively rules Gaza, from which Israel completely withdrew in 2005, and Fatah rules the West Bank.
A reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas took place in April 2011 in Egypt.
This agreement between the two rival groups will likely strengthen their position in the EU, UN, and perhaps even in the US.
Netanyahu has stated this represents a setback for Israel since a Hamas-led government now supported by the Palestinian Authority (present name for PLO) is not a viable partner for negotiation.
In order for any negotiations to go forward, the Palestinian Authority must disassociate themselves from Hamas, a terrorist organisation and sworn enemy of Israel.
10. The Israeli Plight
This has been the plight of Israelis since 1948.
They are either at war or constantly being threatened by war.
The frequent rocket attacks from Gaza threaten this country at all times.
Thousands of their young soldiers have been killed in this struggle for their survival and thousands more civilians have perished in terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.
Despite decades of negotiations and numerous accords and agreements, things have not changed all that much between Israel and the Palestinians over the years.
In fact, the prospect of peace today seems further away than ever.
Israel presently has no viable partner with whom they can seriously negotiate with.
A Hamas-led Palestinian government is certainly not an option.
The people in America, Europe and the rest of the world cannot fathom this reality.
Although America experienced a quick taste of this on September 11, 2001, the state of high alert and anxiety lasted only a short period of time, and everything returned to the status quo.
Israel, however, does not have this luxury.
Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was constantly ranting and raving against Israel.
He has declared openly that as soon as they accomplish their ambition of building a nuclear weapon, they will launch it against Israel without hesitation.
In addition, Hezbollah forces in Lebanon have amassed a stockpile of weapons to use against Israel, pledging themselves to Israel’s destruction,
not to mention that Israeli citizens are constantly enduring attacks from Hamas, now based in Gaza,
the land that Israel returned to the Palestinians in hopes of peace.
Incidentally, the 1988 Hamas Charter, which they at one time promised to amend,
continues to call for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state.
A once moderate Egypt which was under the control of the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood for a short while, as a result of the Arab Spring, had wanted to terminate the fragile peace treaty that has been in effect with Israel since Sadat was president in 1979.
Syria and Iraq are in upheaval and may eventually be replaced with regimes that are more fanatic and less restrained in their hatred of Israel.
Although Israel has built one of the greatest armies in the world, her survival through the millennia and her re-establishment back to the land and her survival since declaring statehood in 1948 are nothing short of miracles of God.
There simply is no explanation other than a faithful God who has promised that as long as the sun shines by day and the stars shine by night, Israel will continue to be preserved (Jer 31:35-37).
As you hear and see Israel being pressed to make concessions of land for peace,
keep in mind that all of the concessions made to date have only been met with demands for more,
and have resulted not in peace but in continued hostility.
If the Palestinians truly wanted to live in peaceful coexistence with Israel,
then Gaza turned over to them in 2005 would today be engaged in trade with Israel and living in friendship side by side.
Instead, Gaza has become a stage ground for the frequent missile attacks launched against nearby Israeli towns.
Why would we expect anything different if Israel gives over the entire West Bank?
The lessons of the last century should have taught us that appeasement to the Palestinians never works,
but it appears that our generation is intent on relearning that lesson at Israel’s expense.
Truth be told, it is highly unlikely if not impossible that any plan for peace engineered or imposed by man will succeed.
The only viable plan for peace that will succeed is God’s peace plan, and that plan is through the Prince of Peace, Jesus the Messiah.
Only when He is invited in and hearts are changed can Arab and Jew, Israeli and Palestinian live in true peace with one another.
11. Will the United States turn against Israel?
Since becoming a nation in 1948, the United States has been Israel’s closest ally.
The United States has recognised that, as the only true democracy in the Middle East, this tiny nation is an important friend.
Responsible for billions of dollars of financial aid, the US has been the key provider of defensive weapons for the Israeli military.
Although Richard Nixon’s reputation in America is not the best, the former president remains a hero in Israel.
Nixon provided critical weapons and supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that helped turn the tide and ultimately secured an Israeli victory.
America has provided strong support to Israel over the many years since Israel’s independence in 1948.
But from the Nixon years until now, American support has increasingly waned.
When it comes to the Middle East, America needs to know that it is playing a game of chess with the devil and, in this case, every time they make a move, the costs are tremendous.
In Afghanistan, the shortcomings of the US/Pakistan/Saudi-sponsored war against the Soviet-backed government eventually resulted in the Taliban coming to power.
The US had thought that Communism was the enemy, so they aided jihadist movements in Afghanistan, and when they defeated Communism, the jihadist confidence that victory comes from Allah and Islam is the answer grew tremendously.
To remove one – Communism – seems to only give birth to another – Islamic fundamentalism.
Yet, the American government still hasn’t learned.
They continue to carry out policies of tolerance towards Islamic fundamentalism.
By ignoring the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, partly because of these policies in the Middle East, they will end up discovering that they’ve been aiding and abetting the Radical Islamist enemy.
The dire situation reached a new level when Israel’s arm was twisted by the United States to force Israel to allow the Arabs in Jerusalem to vote – after all, democracy and free elections must prevail.
Then, after the elections were over, Hamas received the victory, democracy was thrown out, and Radical Islamism entered in.
Still, the US did not learn.
When it came to the withdrawal of Jews from Gaza, the United States insisted on establishing peace by dismantling Jewish communities in Gaza.
Israel complied with the requests and removed all Jewish residents from Gaza.
The results were catastrophic – the destruction of a vibrant Jewish community by mobs intent on mayhem and violence.
Gaza is the capital headquarters of Hamas.
Islamists in the Hamas movement had always argued – “We can never re-take Palestine unless we revert to Islam” totally.
They acquired Gaza, and as a result, their argument that Radical Islam is the solution prevailed.
This gave Hamas the victory in the elections, which, in turn, caused the Radical Islamist confidence to swell.
The rapid transformation of Gaza into the most active terror base in the Arab world has not led to any calls by the international community for Israel to take military measures necessary to destroy the emerging threat.
The Obama administration is clearly not able to play the role of ‘impartial’ mediator in this conflict now that a demand to return to the pre-1967 borders has been publicly announced by him.
Long-time allies such as Great Britain and the United States have recently shifted position and taken a more adversarial role toward Israel,
indicating a willingness to accept a Hamas-led Palestinian government and overlooking that they are a terrorist organisation.
The post 9/11 days of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” seem to be fading.
Sadly, Zechariah prophesied the day when all the nations of the earth would turn their backs on Israel:
2“I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. 3 On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves. (Zech 12:2-3 NIV)
‘All nations’ turning against Israel may well include the United States.
There is always the fear that one day even America may turn her back on Israel.
Sadly, the relationship between America and Israel has been strained over the years as America continues to try to force Israel’s hand to give up her God-given land in exchange for an empty peace.
A two-state solution on the land that God gave as an eternal inheritance to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not in keeping with God’s will.
It is likely that America will continue to exert more pressure on Israel, and ultimately the wonderful relationship experienced for these past many years since 1948 may dissolve.
The declaration by President Obama that Israel needed to return to pre-1967 borders, which is indefensible given her demographic realities, was a significant step in that direction.
C. WHY THE CONFLICT REMAINS UNSOLVABLE
1. The Right to Exist
In reality, someone said, the Middle East conflict is amazingly simple.
In a nutshell, it is this: One side wants the other side dead.
Israel wants to exist as a Jewish state and to live in peace.
Israel also recognises the right of Palestinians to have their own state and to live in peace.
The problem, however, is that Hamas do not recognise the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist.
I think Israel is the only country in the world whose very existence is in question.
Its right to exist is in question.
I mean, nobody says about Zimbabwe or North Korea:
“Hey, should that country exist?”
Israel is the only country in the world that people say,
“Should that country exist?”
It is very hard to bargain with people who are bent on killing you.
As Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, once said,
“We are going to win because they (the Jews) love life and we love death.”
That is the essence of the Middle East Conflict.
That is why the Middle East conflict is simple to understand and seemingly impossible to solve.
The present territorial concessions Israel is being pressured into making have absolutely no chance of appeasing the Radical Muslims.
2. House of Peace ─ House of War
The entire world in Islam is divided into these two regions: the region of peace known as Dar al-Islam (under true Islamic rule) and the region of war, Dar al-harb (any area not under true Islamic rule).
The realm where Radical Islam is imposing itself on non-Islamic societies is the realm of Jihad, or holy war.
This is why Jihad must continue nonstop until the entire world is under Islamic rule.
According to Radical Islam, all nations controlled by Muslims are part of the ‘House of War.’
Once Islam controlled a territory, Radical Muslims consider it to be Islamic permanently.
If the territory is lost to Islam, Allah has been diminished and the territory must be retaken.
Because the land of Israel was, at various times, ruled by Islam, Radical Muslims are adamant that it must be recovered for the glory of Allah.
This is the heart of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
In Radical Islamic tradition, Allah’s kingdom will not be established until the Muslims kill all the Jews and/or subject them to Muslim rule.
The same attitude exists toward Christianity.
The Radical Islamic ‘holy war’ is aimed at Christians as well as Jews and all other religions.
They also shout,
“Today we kill the Saturday people (Jews), and tomorrow we kill the Sunday people (Christians).”
This means that they first intend to destroy Israel and then establish Islamic rule over all the nations that subscribe to Christianity.
Failing to understand the nature of this conflict, the Western media paints Israel as unreasonable and stubborn.
They thought that if only Israel would relinquish the West Bank to the Palestinians for the purpose of establishing a Palestinian state, there would be peace.
It is terribly naïve for leaders of the west to think that such a concession would ever enable Israel and the Arab Islamic nations to settle their differences.
The Radical Muslims will never agree to a real peace as long as ‘one inch’ of territory is in Israeli hands and not in Allah’s control.
The then PLO has stated that the establishment of a Palestinian state is just the first stage of its plan to destroy Israel and recapture the entire territory for the glory of Allah.
History shows clearly that Israel will never be small enough to satisfy the Radical Arab Muslims.
Their real quarrel with Israel has never been about its size, but about its existence on what they believe is sacred Muslim land.
This is a blood feud that dates back to the tents of Abraham.
That blood feud became an integral part of Radical Islam.
The ancient hatred against Israel is now sanctified and nourished by Radical Islam.
D. REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY
Since the day God called Abraham to leave his parents and go to the land He would show him, the enemy has been hard at work to wipe out his offspring.
A major part of Satan’s strategy is to focus on the complete and total annihilation of the Jewish people.
He tries to accomplish this through the spread of anti-Semitism, and sadly, it seeped into Christianity early in its history.
Lamentably, the Church became one of the primary perpetrators of this evil plot as they turned against the very roots of their faith.
Proponents of Replacement Theology believe that the Christian Church has replaced the Jewish people and Israel in God’s plan of redemption.
In their view, the Church is the ‘New Israel and Zion.’
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Replacement Theology had its beginnings at the first Christian Seminary in Alexandria, Egypt.
Because of the Greek culture at Alexandria, the Christian school of learning used the Greek allegorical method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures.
The first head of the school was a man named Pantaenus.
He was succeeded by Clement who served as the head of the school and its chief instructor from about AD 180 to AD 202.
Clement laid the foundation built on by his successors which established Replacement Theology as the generally accepted teaching of the church for centuries.
Clement was succeeded by a man named Origen.
Origen was perhaps the greatest scholar of his day.
His knowledge of philosophy and theology were unparalleled.
His fame and influence were recognised throughout the Roman world.
Origen taught the allegorical method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures.
This method of interpretation denies the literal meaning of the text.
Origen’s views were accepted by his colleagues, and became the standard for the church.
It is this system that produced the teaching that the Church has replaced literal Israel in the plan and purposes of God.
Replacement Theology is the teaching that the Church has supplanted Israel as the apple of God’s eye
– that God’s promises to the Jews no longer apply to the physical descendants of Abraham, but rather to His spiritual descendants.
According to this way of thinking, the Jewish people have no special place in God’s plans, so there is no reason to make any special effort to reach them with the Gospel.
What was worse is that proponents of the Replacement Theology, because of their belief that the Jews now have no special in the purposes of God,
have thrown their support behind the Palestinians’ fight and claim to the Land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem against the Jews.
Replacement Theology became especially prominent in the fifth century when St Augustine (AD 354-430) wrote in his book The City of God that the Christian Church had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people.
In fact, Augustine considered unbelieving Jews to be the enemy of God’s people.
His teaching opened the door to more than 1,500 years of Jewish persecution at the hands of so-called Christians.
The allegorical method of interpretation laid the foundation for anti-Semitism in the Church that was built on by successive generations until the Puritan revival in the 1600s.
The fruit of Replacement Theology is a prideful arrogance and hatred toward the Jewish people that is clearly contrary to God’s Word and true Christian character.
Hitler plucked this fruit from the writings of church leaders and used it to justify the Holocaust.
We must never forget that the God of the Bible made a literal, binding, unconditional, everlasting covenant with Abraham and his descendants to give them the Promised Land, make them the head nation on the earth, and bless the world through the Jewish Messiah.
Although any one generation of Jews might miss the blessings and benefits of this covenant because of their sin, the covenant itself continues from one generation to the next until the time to favour Zion comes.
Let’s soberly review the systematic, calculated and deliberate attempts by the Church to wipe out the Jewish people over the last two millennia of Christianity (This is only a brief overview, not a full work of what took place):
(70 AD – As many as one million Jews died when the Roman army destroyed the Temple and burned the city of Jerusalem).
306 AD – Synod of Elvira prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, and prohibited them from eating together.
527-564 AD – The Justinian Code was an edict of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. A section of the code negated civil rights for Jews. Once the code was enforced, Jews in the Empire could not build synagogues, read the Bible in Hebrew, gather in public places, celebrate Passover before Easter, or give evidence in a judicial case in which a Christian was a party.
533-545 AD – Council of Orleans prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews, forbade the conversion to Judaism by Christians, banned contact with Jews, forbid the reading of the Torah exclusively in Hebrew. Confiscation of Jewish property and the prohibition of the sale of Christian property to Jews.
694 AD – Council of Toledo, Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated and their children forcibly baptised.
1010 AD – The Bishop of Limoges (France) had signs posted in the city; Jews who would not convert to Christianity must be expelled or killed.
1096 to 1270 AD – Thousands – possibly hundreds of thousands – of Jews were massacred during the Crusades, including the entire Jewish population of Prague and Cologne.
1182 AD – Jews were expelled from France and their property confiscated.
1215 AD – Fourth Lateran Council required Jews to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians.
1267 AD – Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated.
1290 AD – in Bohemia (Poland) 10,000 Jews were killed. Jews were expelled from England.
1294 AD – Jews were expelled from Bern, Switzerland.
1347 AD – Thousands of Jews were massacred after being charged that they started the Black Death by placing poison in wells.
1349 AD – In more than 350 towns in Germany, all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians had been in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians.)
1389 AD – In Prague 3,000 Jews were slaughtered.
1391 AD – Seville’s Jews killed led by Archbishop Martinez. 4000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. Their identification was made easy by the brightly coloured ‘badges of shame’ that all Jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
1429 AD – In the year that Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain; thousands died on their way.
1400s to 1800s AD – The Spanish Inquisition, in which many Jews were forced to convert to Christianity by the edge of the sword, deported, tortured or killed in the period that spanned 350 years.
1494 AD – All Jews in the city of Trent, in Northern Italy, were massacred after a rumour spread that they had murdered a Christian boy for religious purposes.
1497 AD – Jews were expelled from Portugal.
1826 AD – Pope Leo decreed that Jews were to be confined to ghettos and their property confiscated.
1881-1921 AD – During the late nineteenth century in Russia, so-called Christians massacred thousands of Jewish people in pogroms.
Pogrom is a Russian word designating an attack, accompanied by destruction, looting of property, murder and rape that is perpetrated by one section of a population against another.
The Jews of Russia were the victims of three large-scale waves of pogroms, each of which surpassed the preceding in scope and savagery.
The list of what the Jewish people have suffered could go on for pages and fill entire bookshelves.
But despite these horrible injustices, and even though the land of Israel disappeared from the world map for centuries, the Jewish people maintained their identity.
They did so despite threats by despots such as Pharaoh, Herod and Adolf Hitler, who was possibly the worst of them all.
With this action the idea of deicide was born – the accusation that the Jews were responsible for ‘killing the Son of God’ and God would have nothing more to do with them.
With the Church’s decision to place responsibility for the death of Jesus squarely on the Jewish people, we see the predominant basis for anti-Semitism within the Church and the emerging doctrine of Replacement Theology.
It is difficult to understand how so many Christians can think that God has turned His back on all the promises He made to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
God means what He says, and He does not change His mind.
Most Jewish people believe that Christians perpetrated the horrors of the Holocaust upon them.
After all, the Nazi uniform featured a cross – albeit a twisted one.
The Nazis claimed to be good Christians, and many of them truly believed what they were doing was in fulfilment of God’s plan.
In addition to believing that the Jews were an inferior race, the Nazis believed the Jews had rejected the Son of God, were guilty of deicide (killing the Son of God) and now were God’s archenemy.
All Jews were to be exterminated from the earth.
Of course, this is twisted thinking, but for many Jewish people, Christians were responsible for this horrific massacre in the name of their God, Jesus Christ.
There is a Holocaust survivor and now a Messianic Jew, who lost her entire family except for one sister in Auschwitz.
She related that the guards told her,
“We kill you because you killed our God, Jesus Christ.”
What began in Jewish-Christian relations as an attempt to convert the Jews to Christianity and later became forced conversion by the edge of the sword had now reached its climax: to destroy the Jewish people.
The progression had been described like this:
First it was: “Because you are Jews, you have no right to live among us as Jews.”
Next, it was, “Because you are Jews, you have no right to live among us.”
Finally, it was, “Because you are Jews, you have no right to live.”
E. JERUSALEM: WHERE THE FINAL BATTLE WILL BE FOUGHT
During Israel’s golden age, Jerusalem was the capital of the great, undivided kingdom of David and Solomon.
This was the place where the prophets and great heroes of the Bible worshipped the God of Israel.
This is the city where Messiah taught, laid down His life for the sins of mankind and resurrected, triumphing over death.
And it is to this city that Jesus will return.
Indeed, dignitaries and people of all nations still today go there to seek Him.
Interestingly, Jerusalem is not situated in a strategically important location.
Unlike places like the strategic Megiddo that controls and connects the continents of Europe and Asia with Africa, Jerusalem has never had any real military value.
The city is not on the ocean, so it has no ports, important for controlling sea trade routes.
From a human perspective, Jerusalem would not rank as one of the world’s most important cities.
She is not New York, Paris, London or Moscow.
Even during the days when biblical history was being written in Jerusalem’s streets, the city was not as significant as Alexandria, Rome or Athens.
She has no strategic military importance, is not home to an important seaport (or a seaport at all), does not sit on an important trade route and has no significant natural resources, such as oil.
Yet, Jerusalem has been one of the most sought-after land possessions in history.
Over the centuries, Jerusalem has been conquered, rebuilt and conquered again.
Like the phoenix, Jerusalem has arisen from the ashes after being destroyed time and time again – first by the Babylonians in 586 BC and again by the Romans in AD 70.
After the Romans came the Arabs (sixth century), then the Crusaders (1099), then the Arabs again (fourteenth century), followed by the British (1917), who then gave it to King Abdullah of Jordan.
Finally, in 1967 it came back under control of the Jewish people after almost 2,000 years.
Jerusalem will no doubt be an important focal point of end-times prophecy.
Yet today, the land of Israel and, in particular, the city of Jerusalem is in the news on a regular basis.
World attention has focused on this tiny nation and city?
Why?
What is all the fuss about?
It has to do with a very specific spiritual destiny that ties together God’s purposes for a specific city with a specific people.
Jerusalem is the centre of God’s prophetic plan.
God has chosen this city as His own.
Jesus was crucified there, resurrected there, and will return and rule from there.
In His sovereignty, He chose Jerusalem as the place to establish His Kingdom, reveal His glory and bring final deliverance and redemption to the world.
The enemy, Satan, understands this better than most of us, and so he has targeted his attacks there.
‘Oceans’ of blood have been shed over this city for the last 3,000 years.
And today, 3,000 years after the reign of King David, a majority of the world’s population still believes that Jerusalem is the most important city on earth.
There is only one possible reason for Jerusalem’s importance.
This city is important to God.
Indeed, this is the city of the Great King.
Because Jerusalem is important to God and to His plans for the redemption of Israel and the nations,
Satan has done everything within his power to keep Jerusalem out of Jewish hands and in a state of conflict.
Both Sunni and Shia Muslims share a belief in the return of their Islamic Messiah, the Mahdi, and see Jerusalem as their destination.
Jerusalem will be the location of the rightly-guided caliphate and the centre of Islamic rule, which will be headed by Imam al-Mahdi.
For Radical Muslims, the Israeli capture of the Temple Mount in 1967 (Harem al-Sharif to them) stands as a nakba, Arabic for ‘catastrophe.’
The dream of Jerusalem’s conquest stirs the hearts of many Radical Muslims worldwide.
The rallying cry, increasingly used to fan Muslim fervour, is: “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger.”
Now with the Radical Muslims’ fierce, full-throated cry to take Jerusalem back, it appears the stage could be set for an apocalyptic showdown on this fault line between Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilisations.
Could this erupt into a showdown of Biblical proportions?
For example, what would happen if the United Nations recognises a Palestinian state, and Israel refuses to divide Jerusalem or allow international troops – of whatever nationality – to enter?
The diplomatic pressure might be enormous on Israel to divide its eternal capital between a Jewish and a Palestinian state.
Israel will never give up her eternal capital, and Palestinians will never accept a peace agreement without the city they want as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Now the City of Jerusalem has blazed its way back onto the world’s centre stage.
Politically, diplomatically, evangelistically, and even militarily, Jerusalem lies at the epicentre of world’s attention.
While all roads may have one day led to Rome, history’s relentless march ends in Jerusalem.
The fate of this city, the diplomatic discussions over its future, and the political tempests it creates show the prophet Zechariah had it right; there will be a rendezvous of the nations coming to Jerusalem.
He knew one day the nations of the world would focus on Jerusalem, and he prophesied that the city would be propelled back to the forefront of the world’s agenda.
Here’s how he put it:
“The Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares: 2 “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. 3 On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.” (Zech 12:1-3 NIV)
The Bible speaks of a day when the nations of the world will gather around Jerusalem and that the city itself will become “a burdensome stone.”
Jesus spoke of this when He told His disciples,
“Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Lk 21:24b NIV)
The battle over Jerusalem will be the last, final, and great battle of history.
In the meantime, the nations of the world are ‘in the valley of decision’ over Jerusalem.
How they decide may well determine the fate and future of their own nations.
This is the place where prophecies are going to be fulfilled.
Jerusalem is going to be the focus of the attention of the world.
The world has a date with destiny in Jerusalem, a rendezvous for the ages.
History’s final chapter will be written here.
F. THE TIME TO FAVOUR ZION HAS COME: ISRAEL & JERUSALEM ARE BACK IN JEWISH HANDS
The people of Israel, who have been scattered throughout the world, are returning to their land, and perhaps most importantly, they are returning to their God.
This is great news for the Church and something to which every true follower of Jesus should be paying attention to.
Indeed, we should be rejoicing, because this is a clear sign that we are in the last days and that Jesus is about to return.
The sign of Israel’s restoration means that both the Church and the world are about to experience the resurrection of life from the dead.
And every believer is to play a role in this prophetic shift.
We are living in ever-changing times.
As the time of the Gentiles comes to a close, it is God’s time to return to Israel – just as He promised.
The time to favour Zion has come!
“You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favour to her; the appointed time has come.” (Psa 102:13 NIV)
This raises an important question that is often asked:
Do you believe then, that as a Christian I am unequivocally obligated to support every action taken by the State of Israel?
Absolutely not!
The reality is that the vast majority of Israel’s citizens are secular and have little belief in God.
The government of Israel does not act as God’s infallible agent.
The Israeli government can and does make decisions that should be criticised.
Now, the Hamas/Israel war has begun.
In a war, where killings take place on a regular basis, it is difficult to pin down who is right and who is wrong.
For example, it is common knowledge that Hamas have deliberately positioned their weaponry near the civilian population.
So, when Israel returns fire because Hamas had fired first, many of the Palestinian civilians would also be killed.
And Hamas would then tell the world that Israel had killed their civilians.
But one thing is clear, if Israel starts to kidnap innocent civilians and kill helpless babies like what Hamas did to them,
then Christians must be the first to condemn these acts.
Those Israelites who perpetrated these cruel acts would never escape the judgement of God on the day of reckoning.
Nevertheless, the restoration of the Jewish people to their land is a divine fulfilment of biblical prophecy, and we must support this divine venture.
Despite the fact that most Israelis are living outside of a relationship with their God and, of course, His Messiah, God has kept his word to Abraham that this land was to be an eternal possession.
Israel’s right to the land is a divine land grant that we, as believers in the Bible, must support.
This does not mean that God loves the Jews more than the Arabs, the Israelis more than the Palestinians.
It is not about the preference of loving one and hating the other.
God loves everyone equally and desires that none should perish, but that all should find everlasting life (see Jn 3:16).
He is not a respecter of persons.
So, this whole issue is not about God’s love but about God’s faithfulness to an everlasting covenant that He made with Abraham and his descendants.
And God remains faithful to that promise and to His Word.
Moses prayed to God and asked Him to keep His promise:
“Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” (Ex 32:13 NIV)
Thank God that the Land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem are now in the hands of God’s covenantal people.
And we must go on to pray for the Spiritual Revival in the Nation of Israel.
Immediately following the Six-Day War and reestablishment of Jerusalem into Jewish hands in 1967, the Spirit of God began to pour out on the Church and a revival sprang up.
Historians label this the Jesus Movement.
Others call it the Charismatic Renewal.
A little known fact is that during this period of 1967-1980, thousands of Jewish youths who were searching for greater meaning and purpose in their lives began to embrace Jesus and were saved.
This is no coincidence.
God’s appointed time had arrived for Jerusalem to come back under Jewish control and for the blindness to begin to lift from the eyes of the Jewish people.
Over 40 years later, this transition continues as more and more Jewish people can see who Jesus really was and is.
With this newfound faith and purpose, these young Jewish believers also began to reconnect with their Jewish heritage and upbringing.
This eventually led to the establishment of the modern Messianic Jewish movement.
From then on, this movement has continued to grow.
The rapid growth of Messianic Judaism has been remarkable.
In 1967, before the Jewish people regained control of Jerusalem, there was probably not a single Messianic Jewish congregation in the world, and only several thousand Messianic Jews worldwide.
Today, more than 350 Messianic Jewish congregations – 50 in Israel alone – dot the globe.
There are well over one million Jews in the United States who express some sort of faith in Jesus.
The Messianic Jewish movement certainly has flourished.
Not only are such congregations in the United States and Israel, but Messianic congregations also are flourishing throughout Western Europe, the former Soviet Union and South America.
In fact, Messianic Jewish congregations exist in almost every city of the world that has a significant Jewish population.
Right now, more Jews believe in Jesus than at any other time in history.
It is probably that more Jewish people have come to faith in Jesus since the reestablishment of Jerusalem in 1967 than in any period of time in the past 2,000 years.
This clearly establishes a direct connection between Jesus’ words in Luke 21:24 and Paul’s words in Romans 11:25.
This direct correlation indicates that God’s restoration of the Jewish people physically back to the land is connected to his restoration of them spiritually back to Himself through His Messiah.
Not only should we be praying for the salvation of the Jewish people scattered around the world, but we are also exhorted in Scripture to pray specifically for the land of Israel, and even more specifically, for the city of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital.
How should we pray for Israel?
The answer is found in the Hebrew language.
The word translated ‘peace’ is the Hebrew word shalom.
Not only does it mean ‘peace,’ but more accurately it means ‘wholeness and completion.’
When we are exhorted to pray for the shalom of Jerusalem (as representative of the entire nation), this means that God wants us to pray for His fullness to come to the land and to the people of Israel.
In other words, God wants to bring to completion His plan for Israel, destined before the foundation of the world, and when we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we are praying for the revelation of the Prince of Peace – Christ Jesus.
We are praying for God’s ultimate fulfilment to come to that region.
We are setting ourselves in agreement with what God has already promised in His Word.
No peace plan of man will ever succeed.
No initiative orchestrated by the United States, Europe or the UN will succeed.
The only plan that will ever succeed is God’s peace plan, and that peace is found in a relationship with the Prince of Peace, Jesus the Messiah.
Only when a person finds this true peace in his or her heart can unity between Jew and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian, be accomplished.
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch….I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” (Isa 62:1, 6-7 NIV)
This is an amazing exhortation!
All of us who know the Lord are watchmen, and we are instructed not to be silent, to take no rest and to give God no rest until He accomplishes His plan and His purposes for Israel and the Jewish people.
It is talking about prayer, the weapon that God has placed into our hands.
Prayer is powerful to the pulling down of strongholds.
Prayer changes things.
Prayer moves the hand of God.
If you wish to fulfil your role as a lover of Israel and the Jewish people, then make prayer for Israel and Jerusalem a priority.
We could make a commitment to pray for God’s shalom.
As you do, you can address some specific prayer points:
Pray that the Jewish people – the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – around the world will come to know Jesus as their Messiah and King.
Pray that the Lord will open the eyes of those who hate Israel and the Jewish people and bring them into the truth.
Pray against the spirit of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.
Pray for the protection over the nation of Israel.
Pray for the Israeli government, as well as American and world leaders, to stand with God’s agenda for Israel.
Pray for believers in the land who struggle daily with persecution and the reality of maintaining their faith and spreading the Good News to their brethren.
Last, there is a critical need to intercede for Israel for this reason
– as you know, now that Israel is seen as the ‘aggressor’,
public opinion and the world of nations would gradually turn against her,
and it has already happened.
Finally, we must never forget to pray for the Palestinian civilians that God would be merciful to them in their sufferings.
Recently, I gave a decent amount (from my yardstick) as donation for relief work for the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza area.
More so, let’s pray for the Hamas terrorists,
that many would have an encounter with the Lord Jesus in their dreams and visions.
I have personally come across Hamas terrorists who came to the saving knowledge of Christ.
Any Christian watching such glorious testimonies will never fail to weep like I did
– tears of rejoicing,
being overcome by the fact that even the worst terrorist can be saved by the grace of God,
and that to God, nothing is impossible.