Topics Menu
We are a Christian Fellowship meeting in North London with a strong interest in teaching the Bible and understanding our time in
the light of Bible prophecy
In the Land of Israel
On the Mountains of Israel
June 9th 1996. - Two weeks after the Israeli election gave a narrow victory
to Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party over Shimon Peres of the
Labour Party, Nikki and I were standing at Alfei Menashe, just over the
Green Line (pre 1967 border of Israel and Jordan) in the hills of Samaria.
Below us a magnificent view of the coastal strip of Israel, taking in the
cities of Tel Aviv, Netanya and Hadera, Israel's most populated region. Not
just a beautiful view. A strategic high place. One of the reasons Peres lost
the election? Whoever controls this place has a bird's eye view of the heart
of Israel.
The following week we visited Kiryat Shemona in the north of Israel, where
over 500 katyusha rockets fired from southern Lebanon fell earlier in the
year, prompting 'Operation Grapes of Wrath.' Suffering and destruction for
people on both sides of the border.
If Israel hands Alfei Menashe to the Palestinian Authority will katyushas
fall on Tel Aviv?
Even as we were visiting Israel, Arab leaders were gathering in Akaba,
Jordan for an emergency summit to discuss Israel's change of government.
They made their demands, backed apparently by the world powers, the United
States, Europe, Japan, Russia. Israel must continue down the road of the
'peace process', withdraw from the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria (the
West Bank) and east Jerusalem. Arafat announced that he is ready to proclaim
the Palestinian State with east Jerusalem as its capital. Behind the demands
there lies a hardly veiled threat, made by Nabil Shaath, leading negotiator
for the Palestinian Authority: 'If and when Israel will say, "That's it, we
won't talk about Jerusalem, we won't return the refugees, we won't dismantle
the settlements and we won't retreat from the borders", then all the acts of
violence will return. Except that this time we'll have 30,000 armed
Palestinian soldiers who will operate in areas in which we have
unprecedented elements of freedom.' (NB Under the Oslo accord the
Palestinians were allowed 9,000 armed police, not 30,000 armed soldiers).
Nor were they allowed to 'proclaim a Palestinian State.')
If Israel does not hand Alfei Menashe to the Palestinian Authority will Arab
missiles fall on Tel Aviv?
In the land with Amos Oz
We were staying with friends in Kfar Sava, an Israeli town right on the
border with the Palestinian Authority town of Kalkilya. I picked up a book
on my friend's bookshelf, 'In the Land of Israel', written by Amos Oz in
1982 after the Lebanon war. The book is a series of interviews with various
people living in the land, mainly about the issue, 'Should Israel give up
land for peace?' There are ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews who say they are
'laying the groundwork for the days to come, God willing, after the State
(of Israel).' There are Gush Emunim settlers in Tekoa and Ofra, believing
that the Jewish return to these biblical sites in Judea and Samaria is the
beginning of the dawn of Messianic redemption for Israel and that therefore
there are no circumstances in which it would be right to leave these
territories.
There are Palestinian intellectuals working for a Palestinian state, which
they hope will be 'a model State, open, enlightened, democratic,
progressive', 'A Light unto the Arabs.' I wonder how they feel now that
another repressive Arab police state is being set up by Yasser Arafat. The
Director of the Gaza Mental Health Programme has recently stated: 'I say
this with sadness, but during the Israeli occupation I was 100 times freer.
There are so many arbitrary arrests now, without charge, without reason. The
Authority (PLO) has nine security organisations each with its own detention
centre. And people are systematically tortured. We are oppressed by our own
Authority.'
No one should really be surprised at this. Yasser Arafat applauded Saddam
Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the Chinese Communist Party's massacre of
students in Tianamen Square, the attempt of hard line Soviet Communists to
overthrow Gorbachev's regime. And when he had control of areas of southern
Lebanon from 1975-1982, the civilian population, especially the Christians,
were subjected to indiscriminate murder, rape and the plunder of their
property. But people have short memories.
What about Amos Oz, the writer of 'In the Land of Israel', himself? He has
been a leading spokesman of 'Peace Now', advocating 'land for peace'. In the
book he pleaded with Jewish settlers in Ofra not to 'drag the people of
Israel into Judea and Samaria against its will. ... If the price of a
Greater Land of Israel is a split in the nation, a split so deep that people
will go to the battlefield with the feeling that they were being dragged
into giving up their lives for an issue on which at least half of this
nation sees, unlike you, a possibility of compromise - if the price of a
Greater Land of Israel is to tear this nation apart and create a life and
death issue, is it worth this price, in your terms?'
However Oz himself saw the other side of the question. He interviewed the
Palestinian intellectuals who produced the East Jerusalem newspaper, 'Al
Fajr' ('The Dawn'). They appeared moderate in their demands and prepared to
live in a Palestinian State alongside Israel. However Oz noted that behind
them stand the PLO 'and behind the PLO, the mighty resources of Libya and
Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the power of the Islamic bloc, the resources of the
Soviet alliance, the masses of the third world. Behind them stand the
phalanxes, the mouthpieces of the simplistic New Left and of the reactionary
old right, as well as of humanitarian do-good liberalism aching for symmetry
and light.' Some of those alliances may have shifted since 1982, but they
have been replaced by a New World Order determined to impose a settlement on
Israel, which for the most part fails to address the core of Arab rejection
of Israel's fundamental right to exist.
If the PLO control Alfei Menashe, how long before they seek to push the Jews
into the sea?
Comfort My People
Back in the Old City of Jerusalem Nikki and I found ourselves in the Hurva
synagogue, partly sheltering from the heat, partly praying for the peace of
Jerusalem. A Jewish group came in and the guide explained how this ancient
synagogue was destroyed by the Jordanians when they expelled the Jews from
the Jewish Quarter after the 1948 War. He pointed out how Israel never
expelled Arabs or touched Muslim or Christian holy places after they
regained the city in 1967. He told of the visit to the synagogue in 1922
(when it was still a regular house of prayer) of Sir Herbert Samuel, the
British Consul in the city. Many saw the appointment of a Jewish official
representing a Great Power as a sign of divine favour. Herbert Samuel was
given the Haftorah reading in the synagogue service. (Every week in the
synagogue there is a Torah reading, a portion of the five books of Moses,
and a Haftorah reading, which is taken from selections from the Prophets.)
Nikki asked the guide if he knew what the Haftorah reading was.
'Nachmu, nachmu ami,' he replied. 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says
the Lord.' (Isaiah 40:1)
What message of comfort can we give Israel today? Surely not that her
warfare is accomplished and her iniquity pardoned. We see the approaching
time which Jesus spoke of, 'the distress of nations in perplexity', 'the
great tribulation', which will have its focal point right here in Jerusalem.
We see the suffering of people on both sides of the conflict and can only
look to the one of whom Isaiah spoke in that chapter for the answer:
"He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs with his
arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those who are with young."
Isaiah 40.11
We know also that 'The word of our God stands for ever.' Nations may come
and go, but Israel remains and today the return of the Jewish people to the
land of their fathers is a sign to all who have eyes to see of the
faithfulness of God to his word and the soon coming return of the Messiah
Jesus to sort out the mess which humanity has made of this planet. As the
United Nations try to resolve the problems of the Middle East they would do
well to heed the ancient prophecies of the Bible:
"Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the isles afar off,
and say, 'He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a
shepherd does his flock.'" Jeremiah 31.10
"And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy
stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in
pieces, though all the nations of the earth are gathered against it."
Zechariah 12.3
The one who will finally resolve this problem is one who has been here
before, laying down his life as a sacrifice for sins in fulfilment of Isaiah
53, Psalm 22 and Daniel 9.26, Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah. The current focus
of world attention on this little strip of land is a sign of his soon return
and the coming day when the Jewish people will look to him for deliverance:
"And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem
the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on me whom they
have pierced; they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son, and
grieve for him as one grieves for a first born." Zechariah 12.10
