The continuing Crisis Over Israel and Palestine by Colin Chapman (c) Lion Publishing plc

CONTENTS:

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PART 1. UNDERSTANDING THE HISTORY

1. BASIC FACTS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

1.1. The Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (c 2000 – 1700 BC)

1.2. The Exodus and the Conquest of the land under Joshua (c 1280 – 1050 BC)

1.3. The Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon (1050-931 BC)

1.4. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (931-587 BC)

1.5. The Babylonian Exile (597-539 BC)

1.6. Palestine under the Babylonians, Persians and Greeks (597-63 BC)

1.7. Palestine under the Romans (63 BC – 330 AD)

1.8. Palestine under the Byzantine Empire (330-632)

1.9. Palestine under the Arabs and Seljuk Turks (632-1096)

1.10. Palestine under the Crusaders and the Mamluks (1096-1517)

1.11. Palestine under the Ottoman Turks (1517-1918)

1.12. Palestine under the Mandate (1922-1948 1.13. The UN Partition Plan (1947)

1.14. The Founding of the State of Israel (1948)

1.15. Conflicts since 1948 1.16. The Peace Process since Madrid (1991) and Oslo (1993)

1.17. Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967 1.18. Different interpretations of the facts

2. THE SEEDS OF CONFLICT: call the next witness

2.1. Anti-Semitism 2.2. Zionism 2.3. Jewish Settlement in the land 2.4. Arab Reactions to Jewish Settlement 2.5. The Role of Britain 2.6. The UN Partition Plan (1947)

2.7. Partition and War (1948-49)

2.8. The Voice of Israel 2.9. Other Jewish Voices 2.10. The Different Voices of the Palestinians 2.11. Conclusions

PART 2. INTERPRETING THE BIBLE

3. THE LAND BEFORE CHRIST: ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’

3.1. The Promise of the Land 3.2. The Boundaries of the land 3.3. The Conquest of the Land 3.4.The Land and the Temple 3.5. Exile from the Land 3.6. The Return to the Land 3.7. The Land and the Hopes of Israel 3.8. Conclusions

3. THE LAND AFTER CHRIST: ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’

4.1. The Birth of Jesus the Messiah 4.2. Jesus and the Land 4.3. Jesus and Jerusalem 4.4. The Redemption of Israel 4.5. The Land in the teaching of the Apostles the Hopes of Israel 4.6. John’s vision of the final fulfilment of th covenant 4.7. The Land and the Milennium 4.8. Conclusions

5. OTHER BIBLICAL THEMES: ‘is there any word from the Lord?’

5.1. A Passion for Truth 5.2. The Problem of Prejudice 5.3. The Demands of the Law 5.4. The Prophetic Concern for Justice 5.5. God’s Judgement in History 5.6. Suffering Injustice 5.7. Re-thinking and Repentance through Disaster 5.8.Jew and Gentile in the Old Testament 5.9. Jews and Gentile after Jesus the Messiah 5.10. The Condemnatation of Anti-Semitism 5.11. The Possibility of Reconciliation 5.12. Conclusions

PART 3. APPRECIATING THE ISSUES TODAY

6. REALITIES TODAY

6.1. A crisis for Zionism 6.2. The power equation in the world today 6.3. Christian Zionism and Dispensationalism 6.4. Zionism and Islam 6.5. Conclusions: the options for Israel and questions for the Palestinians

CONCLUSION: Whose land?

APPENDICES: 1. Christian Interpretation of Old Testament Prophecy 2. Examples

Index of Biblical passages General Index

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Order

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Two peoples – Jews and Palestinian Arabs – lay claim to the same piece of land. But who does it really belong to?

Does it belong to the Jews because Abraham and his descendants lived in it for many centuries before Christ, and believed that God has promised it to them ‘for ever’? Does it belong to them because, even after their expulsion from Jerusalem by the Romans in 135 AD, groups of Jews lived on in several centres until steady immigration began in the 1880s? Does it belong to them because it was offered to them by the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947?

Does it belong to the Palestinian Arabs because they and their ancestors have been living continuously in the land for many centuries – since even before the Arabs came to rule in the seventh century AD? Does it belong to them because of the special place of this land in the religion of Islam?

What do we do when claims of this kind are based on both rights derived from previous occupation and on divinely – given scripture? Do we ignore the scripture and concentrate on the history, or leave aside the history and focus on the scripture?

Should the land be called ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine’? Or ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’? If there is already a Jewish state of ‘Israel’, should there also be a state of ‘Palestine’? Is it possible to limit ourselves to scripture and theology and ignore politics? And if we do venture into contemporary politics, is it realistic to believe that the conflict over the land can be resolved?

If the heart of the problem we are dealing with is that two peoples are claiming the same piece of land for different reasons, how do we begin to answer the question ‘Whose Promised Land?’ Because we’re not dealing with a single issue, but with a number of issues which are inter-related, we need to resist the temptation to reduce everything to a single dimension – ‘the conflict is nothing but .’ or ‘the problem is nothing more than .’ If we can do this, we’re then free to recognize the wide variety of major ingredients like the following, which contribute to the conflict:

1. Jewish links with the land over centuries

‘An unbroken tie between our people and our land has persisted through all these centuries in full force.’ David Ben-Gurion

These words of the first prime minister of Israel when it was created in 1948 remind us of the feeling of many Jews that they have been bound – as if by an umbilical cord – to this piece of land for many centuries.

2. Biblical grounds for Jewish claims

‘For Jews, the creation of Israel is a modern miracle, the consummation of God’s promise, long in coming, but here at last. The covenant with Abraham remains eternally valid.’ Anton La Guardia

Jewish claims to the land are based not only on history, but also on the Hebrew Bible, and in particular the promise of God to give the land to Abraham and his descendants ‘as an everlasting possession’ (Genesis 17:8). Jews can therefore point to their own scriptures as the title deeds which prove their claim of ownership.

3. Support for Jewish claims from many Christians

‘If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you . it is God’s will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue for ever and ever.’ Bill Clinton’s pastor

These words addressed to Clinton by his American pastor in 1980, thirteen years before he became President of the USA, sum up the conviction of many Christians, especially in Europe and the USA, who believe that the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 has real significance in God’s plan for the world. While this view is not shared by all Christians and is open to question, it continues to encourage many Christians to give moral and political support to the state of Israel.

4. The question of Palestine and the Palestinians

‘. the Jewish Question may have been solved by the creation of Israel. The Question of Palestine remains an open sore.’ Anton La Guardia

This comment by a British journalist pin-points a basic issue at the heart of the conflict. Having missed the opportunity to establish a Palestinian state in 1948 (which they could have done at the time that Israel was created) the Palestinians have struggled ever since to find appropriate ways of establishing their own political identity and expressing their desire to be a nation.

5. Palestinian perceptions of Zionism and Israel

‘I see no way of evading the fact that in 1948 one people displaced another, thereby committing a grace injustice.’ Edward Said

‘We are the aggressors, and they defend themselves . Palestine is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.’ David Ben-Gurion

Edward Said, a Palestinian American who is one of the most articulate advocates of the Palestinian cause in the West, doesn’t hesitate to describe what happened in 1948 in terms of ‘displacement’. David Ben-Gurion’s words represent an admission that (at least at certain moments) he understood very well how the whole Zionist enterprise was perceived by the Palestinian Arabs.

6. Israel’s policies concerning the West Bank since 1967

‘I do think that Israel should stay for ever and ever and ever and ever in the West Bank, because this is Judaea and Samaria. This is our homeland.’ Moshe Dayan, 14 May, 1967

Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967 and, on the grounds of security, has continued its occupation against the wishes of the Palestinian Arabs. The second Intifada, which began in October 2000, has led to a prolonged crisis and brought into sharp focus the conflicting aspirations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Does Israel want to make peace with the Palestinian Arabs? Will Israel ever be willing to withdraw from the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to establish their own state? Is it possible to find any political formula which would enable the two peoples to live peacefully side by side as equals?

7. Political realities today

‘There is no certainty that Israeli good-will or ill-will, flexibility or inflexibility, will decisively temper or resolve this century-old conflict. Islamic fundamentalism, Great Power rivalry or intervention, and nuclear weapons may prove far more telling.’ Benny Morris

These final sentences of Morris’s Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999 draw attention to some of the other factors which enter into the equation. The escalating conflict has unleashed new forces which cannot easily be predicted or controlled.

8. World involvement in the conflict

‘Ever since Herzl lobbied the chanceries of Europe to secure a charter for the Jewish colonization of Palestine, the Jewish and Palestinian questions have been in large part in the hands of the nations of the world.’ Anton La Guardia

‘Only a miracle or a catastrophe will change the situation. If you don’t believe in the first and fear the latter, you realise that the only practical hope for saving Israel and the Palestinians from mutual slaughter is heavy international pressure on both of them.’ David Grossman

The state if Israel owes its existence first to Britain and the USA, and then to the United Nations which called for its creation in 1947. Since Jews and Arabs are at present locked in a conflict that they cannot resolve by themselves and that affects most of the rest of the world, intervention from outside becomes more important than ever. The second quotation from an Israeli writer, written in June 2001, underlines the stark choices that face the world.

These different issues are explored in the book in the following way. We begin with history rather than with the Bible, since it is important to have at least a basic understanding of the history before we turn to the Bible to attempt to find meaning in historical events.

Thus Part I, Understanding History, seeks to explain the historical claims of both Jews and Arabs that are based on previous occupation of the land, and to understand the events leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel and the most significant developments in its first fifty or so years of its existence.

Chapter 1, Basic Facts and their Interpretation, is a brief historical survey of the different people who have ruled the land from the twentieth century BC to the present day, noting in particular the resurgence of the conflict in recent years.

Chapter 2. The Seeds of Conflict: call the next witness, attempts to explain in greater detail the nature of the conflict, using quotations from a wide variety of sources to allow individuals who have been involved in the conflict to speak in their own words.

Part II, Interpreting the Bible, explores what the Bible has to say on the theme of the land.

Chapter 3, The Land before Christ, focuses on the land in the Old Testament, while Chapter 4, The Land after Christ, explores how Jesus understood the idea of the land, and how his disciples believed that he had redefined Jewish ideas about the land. This survey challenges the idea that the recent return of Jews to the land and the establishment of the state of Israel should be seen by Christians as the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham and the predictions of a return.

Chapter 5, Other Biblical Themes: ‘is there any word from the Lord?’ explores other themes in the Bible which are relevant to our understanding of the conflict today.

Part III, Appreciating the Issues Today, builds on the analysis of the history in Part I and the study of the Bible in Part II, and discusses some of the major forces that seem to be determining the outcome of the conflict today.

The Conclusion outlines a personal answer to the question ‘Whose Promised Land?’

The Appendices discuss in more detail the Christian interpretation of prophecy in the Old Testament.