t really makes you wonder. How can such a little piece of real estate (only 60 miles wide and 140 miles long) be the source of so much trouble? Some people refer to it as "Israel", and others call it "Occupied Palestine." But whatever you call it, not a week has gone by in my lifetime but that it doesn't appear in the news. And unfortunately, whenever the modern evangelical church has turned her attention to the topic of God's purposes for Palestine, brains and Bibles always seem to be in short supply. As the readers of Credenda/Agenda should not be short of either, let us take up the issue.
The "Problem of Palestine" is sort of like that old college roommate of yours. You know, the one whose occasional nail-biting used to drive you crazy. Then you went home with him at Thanksgiving and discovered that his parents were pathological nail-chewers and thumb-suckers to boot. Suddenly your roommate's behavior seemed quite understandable, or even laudable, in light of his personal history. Well, the Problem of Palestine is very similar, so let's consider its historical context.
Our brief history of the region begins in April of 2020 B.C. when Abraham, son of Terah, is told to pull up stakes and move to the territory of the Canaanites, where he will be given land and family. Abraham obeys, and the family fortunes rise and fall through the following years until 1405 B.C., when Abraham's family, now numbered in the millions, invades Canaan under the leadership of General Joshua ben Nun. The conquest more or less succeeds, and after several hundred years of instability the Hebrew monarchy is established in 1043. First Saul, then David, and finally Solomon take the nation of Israel to its political and cultural zenith. There is nowhere to go from a zenith but down, and after the death of Solomon the nation splits into a northern kingdom (Israel) and a southern kingdom (Judah). In 722 B.C. the northern ten tribes are defeated by the Assyrians, and scattered to the four winds through an aggressive deportation policy. In 586 B.C. the Babylonians destroy the city of Jerusalem, capitol of the southern kingdom, and finish deporting the inhabitants off to Babylon, thus ending over 800 years of Jewish control over Palestine. After the Babylonians come the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, and in 63 B.C. Palestine is annexed to the Roman Empire, which explains why a Roman census is taken in Bethlehem some 60 years later. Palestine remains under the rule of the Roman Empire until 638 A.D. when it is taken from the Eastern Roman Empire by the Arabs in a jihad or holy war. The Crusades aside, Islam would not yield control of the territory for another 1280 years. It was not until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I that someone other than Turkish or Arabic Muslims were calling the shots in Jerusalem. As part of the settlement at the end of World War I, Britain was given guardianship of Palestine. For a number of reasons A.J. Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, had committed his nation to working for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. During the following years Jewish immigration rapidly increased, so that by 1939 one-third of the population and 12% of the land of Palestine were Jewish. From 1920 to 1947 the British tried to work out a partition of the land between the Jewish Agency(an unofficial government) and the Arab League. In 1948 the Brits threw up their hands, pulled out their troops, and gave the problem to the United Nations. The U.N. promptly partitioned the land, the result being open hostilities and the assassination of the U.N. mediator. The warring parties agreed to an armistice in 1949 which left half of Jerusalem and the West Bank in the control of Jordan, and the Gaza Strip in the control of Egypt. In June of 1967 Israel went to war against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, with the result of a united Jerusalem under Israeli control, Israeli conquest of the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, and the West Bank. Although the Israelis have given the Sinai back to Egypt, things have remained little changed since then.
The "Problem of Palestine" is sort of like that old college roommate of yours.
There are a few terms here which could probably bear defining. You might want to pull out your world atlas.
Israeli: For the most part, Israelis are eastern European immigrants who are at least culturally Jewish. If you are Jewish you have automatic Israeli citizenship.
Palestinian: The Palestinians are not racially distinct from Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, or Lebanese. They are the descendants of people who fled when Palestine was partitioned by the United Nations, and who were resettled in refugee camps.
West Bank: The West Bank is just that, a piece of land separating Jerusalem from the west bank of the Jordan River. This territory was given, by the British, to Jordan. It was taken by the Israelis in the Six-Day War.
Gaza Strip: The Gaza Strip is a piece of land on the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Israel. It was taken from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
Golan Heights: The Golan Heights is a piece of high ground on the border of Syria and Israel nicely situated for artillery placement. Syria thought so too, and Israel took it away in the Six-Day War.
Middle East Peace Process: A figment of the media's imagination.
Terrorist: A terrorist is someone who engages in covert military operations for the other side. If he works for your side he is a covert military operative.
By this time you should have at least a thumbnail sketch of what the fighting is all about. The historical data give us that. What we haven't considered yet are the biblical data bearing on God's purposes for Palestine and the ethnic descendants of our father Abraham. Is Palestine a problem for God? We will take that up next month. Stay tuned.
