Israel Proposed & Offered Arabs Rejected all

 

Arabs Only Reject Palestinian 

 PEEL COMMISION: 1937 Rejected By Arab

The Commission was established at a time of increased violence; serious clashes between Arabs and Jews broke out in 1936 and were to last three years. On 11 November 1936, the commission arrived in Palestine to investigate the reasons behind the uprising. The Commission was charged with determining the cause of the riots, and judging the grievances of both sides.

 Chaim Weizmann made a speech on behalf of the Jews. On 25 November 1936, testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said that there are in Europe 6,000,000 Jews . "for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter."

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, testified in front of the commission, opposing any partition of Arab lands with the Jews. He demanded full cessation of Jewish immigration. Although the Arabs continued to boycott the Commission officially, there was a sense of urgency to respond to Weizmann's appeal to restore calm. 

JERUSALEM 70 AD: NOT ONE STONE LEFT UPON ANOTHER

Jerusalem 70 AD: Not One Stone Left upon Another

In 70 AD the land of Judea was plunged into chaos and turmoil. Bands of Zealots and other Jewish rebels groups roved the countryside attacking Roman garrisons and even their own Jewish brethren they accused of sympathizing or appeasing the Romans. The Romans reacted with brutality, showing no mercy as they indiscriminately killed men, women, and children. Scores of Jews throughout the land fleeing the Romans made their way to Jerusalem where the Zealots had successfully ousted the Roman garrison from the city in 66 AD. In April of 70 AD, the Roman General, Titus, who would later become Caesar, besieged the city of Jerusalem with over 100,000 people trapped inside. As the Romans tightened their strangle hold upon the city, the Zealots and groups opposing them began fighting each other within the city, even burning each other’s food supplies. Anarchy, fear, and starvation reigned within Jerusalem’s city walls. Outside the city camped the Romans who would crucify any man, woman, or child caught fleeing the city. So many crosses were being made to crucify those fleeing that the woods in the surrounding area were almost completely deforested.

Israel—God Chosen People

The study of biblical prophecy has been my daily bread. My father was an evangelist who specialized in the area of Israel and Bible prophecy. Every night of the week, my  sister and I were in a church somewhere hearing our father expound on world events in the light of Bible prophecy. He would often sit us down and read from the newspaper and then say, “Girls, this is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy…let’s read the Bible and you will see.” We watched the entire 1967 Six Day War on television with the knowledge that we were witnessing something significant. Only afterwards did we realize that, at that time, we were watching the fulfillment of Luke 21:24b, which says, “And Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (NASB). June of 1967 was the first time since the dispersion in AD 70 that Jerusalem was under Jewish sovereignty.

We often heard my father talk about future events the Bible foretold. Little did we know that we would live to see many of them literally fulfilled in our lifetime. At Bridges for Peace, we have a little saying: “Why just read about Bible prophecy when you can be a part of it?” I consider it an awesome privilege to be alive today and even more so to be called to be an active participant
in the fulfillment of God’s prophetic Word. I am sure the prophets who recorded the Word of God would have loved to be in our shoes, but God in His infinite wisdom chose us to be the ones to partner with Him in these last days.

Frequently I meet with Christian groups visiting Israel. A number of times, a pilgrim has said to me, “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to be here when Jesus and His disciples were here, in the days of the Bible?” I chuckle and think to myself, “Oh, but these are Bible days—these are the days when God is fulfilling His promises, written in the Bible for the nation of Israel, while the world watches.”

Israel is God’s object lesson to the world. It is on this small piece of ocean-front real estate that God is showing the world that He can be trusted to keep His Word. Think of the statistical improbabilities of all the following coming together to fulfill ancient prophecies.

The Ingathering after
a 2,000-Year Dispersion

There has never, in the known history of the world, been another people group who were dispersed to multiple locations for over 2,000 years and came back to their ancient homeland. Yet, in the late 1880s, we saw the stirrings of the Spirit of God, as the Jewish people began to arrive in what was then known as Palestine. It was as if God had placed a homing instinct in them set to go off at a certain time in history, and they were compelled to come home. God dispersed the people because of their sin, and now He is bringing them back, not because they have proved themselves holy, but because He is proving His faithful character to the nations of the world. (See Ezekiel 36:19–24).

Photo by Adherent My family became involved in this effort before the Iron Curtain fell. In those days, many Jewish people were refused permission to immigrate to Israel, and some were imprisoned. They were called refusniks or prisoners of conscience. One Christmas, my father came home a few days before the holiday and told my sister Sandy and I that this Christmas was going to be different. This year we were going to think about others instead of just thinking about our presents. He presented us with gaudy, cheap, star-of-David necklaces each with the name of a refusnik on it. It was a takeoff on the Vietnam POW (prisoner of war) bracelets that everyone was wearing in the United States in the early 70s. We prayed for our person regularly. My sister really took the project to heart and prayed diligently for the person on her necklace as well as the others. One of the names was Silva Zalmonson.

Some time later, while reading The Jerusalem Post International Edition, we saw a small story about her, saying that by a miracle, she had been released from prison and was now living in Israel. We were over the moon with excitement as we realized that our prayers had been answered. Later on a trip to Israel, my sister was able to meet with Silva and tell how she had prayed every day for her release. Silva cried and said that she had always wondered why she, one of the infamous Leningrad 11, was released and none of the others were. Now she knew why—it was the power of prayer. Since 1990, over 1,112,000 Jewish people have come home to Israel from the nations of their dispersion, and they are still coming. As of 2010, of the 5,700,000 Jews in Israel, around 1,720,000 came as immigrants, most of the remainder being children or grandchildren of immigrants.

National Identity

Rishon LeZion
Amos Meron/wikipedia.org The Jewish people were dispersed to over 100 nations throughout the world, and yet they maintained their Jewish identity and their heart connection to the Land of Israel. If you visit the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel, you will see exhibits that show common elements of Jewish practice, which could be found in every Jewish home, regardless of whether that home was in Europe, Asia, or Africa. I grew up in the United States. In comparison to the ancient world, the US is a youngster. My family’s ancestors (on my father’s side) have been in the US since before the Civil War, some since the days of independence—more than 200 years. But, when you ask my father what
nationality he is descended from, he will tell you that he is a mixed-breed. It is hard to find a European country from which he doesn’t have an ancestor. The United Sates has been called a melting pot, and my father is proof.

Compare our experience in the United States with the Jewish experience. For over 2,000 years, the Jewish people have resisted the melting pot temptation and remained a unique people. Over the long centuries of dispersion, they were not forgotten by God; He preserved them as a people.

A Nation Born in a Day

In spite of overwhelming odds against her, Israel became a nation on May 14, 1948. The next day, five hostile Arab armies attacked the fledgling state. With little ammunition, soldiers (many of whom were refugees just off the ships from Nazi-torn Europe), and an air force that consisted of a few small planes, Israel defeated her enemies. The Arab world was stunned, and the nations looked on in amazement. God was not surprised! This moment in history was foretold over 3,000 years earlier: “Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons” (Isa. 66:8, NASB). On May 13, the State of Israel did not exist, and then the next day, she was a reality!

Dead Language Revived

The Jewish people came from over 100 nations and spoke a wide variety of languages. How do you create a nation when you can’t even communicate in a common language? Hebrew was nearly a dead language, only used for prayers and Bible reading. A visionary by the name of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, upon arriving on the shores of Palestine, refused to speak anything but Hebrew. His child was the first child in nearly 2,000 years whose native tongue was Hebrew. Eliezer was instrumental in Hebrew becoming a living language once again. Today, Hebrew is the native tongue to millions. A language that was only used for religious purposes is now used for the sacred and the mundane.

A Depleted, Tired Land Restored

Mark Twain visited the Land in the 1800s and described it in his book Innocents Abroad. He called it a “blistering, naked, treeless land.” He called the villages “ugly, cramped, squalid, uncomfortable and filthy.” Other descriptive phrases say “solitude to make one dreary; unpeopled deserts, rusty mounds of barrenness that never, never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines; this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down into the sea and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a place.”

Nachmanides, a Talmudic scholar, visited in 1267 and described Jerusalem as “deserted and laid waste and Judea was more destitute than Galilee.” George Sandys reported in 1610 that the “land is bare of trees. The country is a vast empty ruin.” Colonel C. R. Condor wrote in 1877 that “Palestine is empty. The population is not large enough to till the land.” In 1831, Michael Russell wrote in his book Palestine or the Holy Land that “Jericho, once famous for its palm and balsam trees, is treeless and almost deserted.”

Today, as you visit Israel, you will see a far different reality. The Land is being restored to its former beauty as prophesied:

•     “On that day I raised My hand in an oath to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands” (Ezek. 20:6).

•     “I will open rivers in desolate heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the acacia tree; the myrtle and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the cypress tree and the pine and the box tree together, that they may see and know, and consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it” (Isa. 41:18–20).

•     “The desert and the wasteland will be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellence of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the excellency of our God” (Isa. 35:1–2).

gkuma/shutterstock.com There is a special connection between the fruitfulness of the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. The Land flourishes when the Jewish people live here and falls into desolation when they are gone. I believe that this land/people connection is a direct result of the special covenant that God made with the Jewish people.

God claims in Leviticus 25:23 that He is the owner of this Land. “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine…” God chose to give the Land to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as an everlasting inheritance. “‘I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,’ says the LORD your God” (Amos 9:15, NIV).

www.wikipedia.org Why did God make this unusual covenant between a people and a land? There is a good answer! God placed the Jewish people in Israel to be a witness of His character. In the ancient world, all the peoples had gods who they looked to for fertility, rain, crops, etc. Most of the peoples were polytheistic, praying to multiple gods, but God had revealed Himself as the One True God to Abraham and his descendants. Their presence in the Land of Israel as His worshippers was a constant witness to the peoples round about. Israel was the highway of the ancient world, forming a natural land bridge between three major continents. If you wanted to travel from Africa to Europe or Asia, you had to pass through Israel. To the east, the treacherous deserts made travel extremely difficult, and to the west was the Mediterranean Sea. Traders, armies and travelers all passed through Israel, and on their way, they heard about the miracle-working God of the Israelites. In this way, God caused His fame to spread throughout the ancient world. Only when the Land and covenant people are together in combination, do both flourish in accordance with God’s divine plan. The prophet Ezekiel confirms it is the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel that triggers the restoration of the Land. “But you, O mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come” (36:8, NASB).

The Bible contains many beautiful prophecies concerning the Land that have seen their fulfillment in modern times:

The desert shall blossom as the rose (Isa. 35:1–2). Today, millions of flowers grown in the deserts of Israel are exported to Europe. Holland even imports tulips from Israel!

Israel will fill the earth with fruit (Isa. 27:6). Millions of fruit trees have been planted in Israel, reaping a huge export harvest every year. Around the world, people eat the juicy “Jaffa” orange.

Israel will become like the garden of Eden (Isa. 51:3).

Christians all over the world have become involved in the restoration of the Land of Israel through planting trees, praying for abundant early and latter rains and eating the produce of Israel.

Miracles in Battle

Israeli soldiers leave Lebanon
Photo by Ashernet There are many stories of miracles on the battlefield. Let me tell you one of them that we heard firsthand from a young Israeli man. My husband and I volunteered on a kibbutz (a collective community) for nearly a year when we first came to Israel. During that year, we met a young Israeli man named Ari. He was thoroughly secular in his lifestyle and was a difficult person to be around. One day, Tom asked him why he didn’t believe in God. Ari became indignant and protested, saying, “Of course I believe in God.” So, Tom asked him to explain.

Ari told a fascinating story of God’s miraculous protection of a group of soldiers. Ari was a commander of a group of 10 soldiers. They were in a canyon doing reconnaissance in southern Lebanon, when suddenly an enemy soldier popped from behind a rock and began to fire with a Kalashnikov automatic weapon. He was at point blank range, and there was no place to run. He emptied a clip into the group and started a second clip before one of the soldiers managed to shoot him. Shaken, the soldiers looked around, expecting to see their comrades lying dead on the ground. Instead, to their utter amazement, they were all standing, and not one had been hit by a single bullet. That is an absolute miracle! “So, how do you explain that, Ari?” Tom asked. “It was like angels were standing in front of each of us, batting the bullets out of the way. We all felt them whizzing by.” Ari went on to say, “How can I not believe in God after an experience like that?”

Future Miracles

I hope I have whetted your appetite a little. If God fulfilled all of these promises in the life of modern Israel, surely we can trust Him to fulfill the rest! There is more to come! It is God’s plan that the people of Israel know Him, love Him, and put their trust in Him. We have the awesome privilege to be part of what God is doing now and in the days to come. Consider a few marvelous prophecies to come:

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; in the habitation of jackals, where each lay, there shall be grass with reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the highway of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for others. Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it. It shall not be found there. But the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isa. 35:5–10).

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you: I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezek. 36:26–28).

“‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ says the LORD: ‘I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD.” For they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ says the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more’” (Jer. 31:33–34).

“And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written; ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob [Paul quoting Isa. 59:20]; for this is My Covenant with them, when I take away their sins [Paul quoting Isa. 27:9]’”(Rom. 11:26–27).

Israel—God’s Miracle in the Making

Bridges for Peace blessing Israel for more than 50 years God’s Word resounds down through the ages with the promises for the restoration of Israel. God is bringing the people back from the nations of their dispersion, establishing the State of Israel, and restoring the Land. I am confident He will finish His work in such a way that the nations of the world will know that He is God.

Isaiah 62:10 is part of my own call from God. “Go through, go through the gates! Prepare the way for the people; Build up, build up the highway! Take out the stones. Lift up a banner for the peoples!” Truly God is using Christians today to assist in His great plans for Israel. No one knows at what speed the Lord will move to finish His plans. But this I know, there will be Christians ready and willing to assist in any way He asks. James said that faith without works is dead. My father paraphrased that statement and said, “Belief without action is deception.” We see God at work, and we believe He will finish what He started, so let’s partner with God in prayer and action to see His name glorified throughout the world.

The Mystery of the Lost Jubilee: Part II – The Six-Day War.

In part one of our series we invited you to join us as we work together like detectives in a mystery novel to solve the Mystery of the Lost Jubilee. Solving the mystery means finding a treasure, not hidden in the earth, but hidden in time, finding when this mysterious year might have occurred in the past, present and the future.

We said we hoped that we might be able to solve this mystery together sometime in 2016 or at least by the end of 2017, and we asked you to write the comment “Count me in” if you wanted to jump into the detective story with us, no prior Jubilee experience required!

Why are people getting excited about the years 2016 and 2017 in connection with the Jubilee?

The answer has to do with certain events of the past.

Let us go back to spring of 1967 in Israel. Fear was mounting within the nation as enemy forces gathered against the tiny country. Jordan, Egypt and Syria were preparing to attack. Jordan controlled the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem and everything up to the green line drawn in thick magic marker in the armistice agreements of 1949; Egypt controlled the Sinai Peninsula; and Syria held the Golan Heights. Then, between June 5 and June 10, Israel waged the famous and miraculous Six-Day War, taking these territories from these belligerent Arab states.

The victory was unexpected by everyone, not only in territory gained but by the relatively light casualties incurred by Israel versus the Arabs they fought. Twenty Arab soldiers died for every Israeli, uncommon especially because the IDF was the army gaining territory, not the other way around.

And besides the massive land gains in the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and Sinai, the most important result was the reunification of the entire city of Jerusalem into Israel’s hands, which would soon be declared its “Eternal Capital.” This war changed so many things, and set so many wheels in motion which still spin today — not only the rise of a more stable and defendable Israel with the reclamation of critically important lands for its own defense and the restoration of the Western Wall as a place of prayer, but the rise of opposition to Israel and the seed of the narrative of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the popularization of the term “Palestinian” to replace “Arab”, the beginning of opposition to international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the beginning of the withdrawal of each and every national embassy previously present in Jerusalem, and many more.

Jerusalem: The Eternal Capital of Israel. (Photo: Bob O’Dell)

Of course we, Gidon and Bob, see all this as the having the fingerprints of God/Hashem. God sought to make good on His covenant to bring the Jews back into the Land of Israel. And this leads to an extremely important assumption we make: this detective series assumes that God is in control and is an active participant in world affairs, and that we, together are trying to search out and discover God’s intentions, to understand His future actions. While we will try to keep an open mind about many things in this series, that is one major assumption that must we expose for your comment right away!

Although the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel occurred on May 14, 1948, as the world witnessed a “nation born in a day” literally fulfilling Isaiah 66:8, the Six-Day War in 1967 marked the beginning of a new era for the nation of Israel. Those events in 1967 were and still are so significant, that this first historical clue of our series, even without any additional supporting facts (of which there are many), is enough to compel us all to watch carefully the events that might happen 49 or 50 years later to see if God will “do it again!”

Even without explaining the significance of the Hebrew Calendar and the Shemitah cycles (which we will examine in future series articles), a simple calculation follows. Knowing that there is a debate regarding whether Jubilee years might occur every 49 years or every 50 years, and given the importance of the events of the Six-Day War when the nation of Israel doubled in size in a week, it behooves us to add 49 and 50 to 1967.

And the answers are: 1967+49 = 2016 and 1967+50 = 2017.

So there you have it! This simple observation of the monumental importance of the Six-Day War in Israel’s history

Israel Beautiful and Holy Land ( Video)

Israel -Tiny strip of Land miraculous survive !!

Israeli's Land Rights Historical

Israel’s Historical Rights to the Land

Aliyah!

Jews lived in their Land virtually uninterrupted for 1,700 years until Rome destroyed Israel’s polity in CE 70 and CE 135. The archeological discovery of the Merneptah Stela which describes an attack on ancient Israel confirms Israel’s ancient presence in the Land. By CE 70, Josephus, the Roman Emperor’s official historian, observed that 4-7 million Jews dwelt in Israel. (Wars VI, 420, 425). Roman slaughter and expulsion decimated these Jewish inhabitants. Then Christian, Persian, Arab, Crusader, Mameluke and Turkish armies devastated the Holy Land and ruled temporarily. Still some Jews clung to their Land. Jews have been the continuous indigenous people of the Holy Land for about 3,600 years. Arabs ruled the Holy Land for only 22 years during the period C E 633-1099. (Syrian Delegation to Paris Peace Conference, Feb. 1919.) The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun observed that as late as CE 1400 the Land was permeated with Jewish culture. Over 300 years after Arab rule ended, there was still no evidence of Arab Palestinian roots or established culture. T hus, the noted Arab historian denies the false claim of an uninterrupted Palestinian culture dating back to CE 636. James Parkes in his Whose Land? states, “It is not until the Turkish period, CE 1517-1917, that in the ethnic sense it [the Holy Land] acquired a substantial Arab, [though] not majority, population….” How? By immigration, not by natural population growth. At the same time (CE 1561) Sultan Suleiman, a Muslim, granted Joseph Nasi the right to found the “kernel of a JewishState” in Tiberias and seven villages surrounded by a wall (Germany, Turkey, Zionism, 1897-1918 p.22). As a result thousands of Jews immigrated to the Land in a wave of Messianic fervor. In the 1700s and 1800s noted travelers observed the Holy Land was a barren waste. Its greatest lack was a “body of population.” Finally, the Biblical ingathering of the Jewish exiles began. (Jeremiah 16:14,15) This triggered a large Arab immigration hoping to benefit from the growing Jewish economy. Both British Prime Minister MacDonald and President Roosevelt confirmed that this was the reason for the flood of Arab immigration since 1918. To defend British policy, the not overly-Jewish-friendly British Secretary of State for the colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, declared in the House of Commons (November 24, 1938): “The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of the country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe the Arab population of Palestine would still have been around 600,000....” Jewish contributions and Jewish immigration continued to flow into the Land. The Jews created industry, agriculture, hospitals—a complete socio-economic infrastructure. As job opportunities increased, so did Arab immigration. In fact, in 1939 President Roosevelt observed that “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during this whole period.” For one specific example, i n 1934 between 30,000 and 36,000 Arabs from the Hauran Province in Syria left for “the better life” in Palestine. The flood continued until 1948. Some writers claim that 75 percent of the Arab population was either immigrants into the Holy Land after 1882 or their descendants (Justice For My People, 1943, p. 130). Tens of thousands of Arabs were entering to obtain a better life. Town Names Betray Their True History Yoram Ettinger, a former liaison for Congressional affairs in Israel’s Washington embassy, lists evidence showing that Judea and Samaria has Jewish, not Arab, roots. He says almost all Arab localities in Judea and Samaria have retained Biblical Jewish names, reaffirming their Jewish roots. Examples include the following:

• A Anata is the biblical and contemporary Anatot, the dwelling of the Prophet Jeremiah.
•  A Batir is the biblical and contemporary Beitar, the headquarters of Bar Kochba, the leader of the Great Rebellion against the Roman Empire, which was suppressed in 135 CE.
•  A Beit-Hur is the biblical and contemporary Beit Horon, site of Judah the Maccabee’s victory over the Assyrians.
• A Beitin is the biblical and contemporary Beit El, a site of the Holy Ark and Prophet Samuel’s court. A Bethlehem is mentioned 44 times in the Bible and is the birth place of King David.
•  A Beit Jalla is the biblical and contemporary Gilo, in southern Jerusalem, where Sennacherib set his camp while besieging Jerusalem. A El-Jib is the biblical and contemporary Gibeon, Joshua’s battleground known for his command to stop the sun and moon (Joshua 10:12).
•  A Jaba’ is the biblical and contemporary Geva, site of King Saul’s son Jonathan’s victory over the Philistines. A Jenin is the biblical and contemporary Ein Ganim, a Levite town within the tribe of Issachar.
•  A Mukhmas is the biblical and contemporary Mikhmash, residence of Jonathan the Maccabee and site of King Saul’s fortress. 
• A Seilun is the biblical and contemporary Shilo, a site of Joshua’s tabernacle and the Holy Ark and Samuel’s youth.
•  A Tequa is the biblical and contemporary Tekoa, hometow n of the Prophet Amos.

The Palestinian Claim The Palestinian claim that the Land for centuries sustained a thriving Palestinian culture is not authorized by the facts of histor y. Yet the world community has given this claim a receptive hearing. PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat in his speech before the U.N. in 1974 declared, “The Jewish invasion began in 1881... Palestine was then a verdant area, inhabited mainly by an Arab people in the course of building its life and dynamically enrichin g its indigenous culture.” What happens when this claim is compared with the personal observations of the following recognized authorities? In 1738 Thomas Shaw observed a land of “barrenness...from want of inhabitants.” In 1785 Constantine Francois de Volney recorded the population of the three main cities. Jerusalem had a population of 12,000 to 14,000. Bethlehem had about 600 able-bodied men. Hebron had 800 to 900 men. In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound... a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country....the tomb of a whole people.” In 1857 the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.” This historic observation is a remarkable confirmation of the Biblical predictions that during Israel’s “double” period of punishment and dispersion, the Lord would cause the Land to become desolate of man and beast (Jeremiah 33:10; Zechariah 9:12; Jeremiah 16:14-18). No wonder by 1857 it was just waiting for “a body of population”! In the Lord’s providence this needed body of population —the Jewish people—began to return after 1878 at the end of their Scriptural period of God’s disfavor. (See the following wasteland pictures from 1862-1920.) The most popular quote on the desolation of the Land is from Mark Twain’s THE INNOCENTS ABROAD (1867):

Esdraelon Valley—1894

 

  

Tel Aviv—1909

Genneseret—1890

“Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies....Palestine is desolate and unlovely....It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.” The records of history confirm the Biblical predictions that during the Jewish dispersion and “double” of God’s disfavor, the Land of Israel would become desolate awaiting the return of the Jewish people when its period of disfavor ended in 1878. The records of history simply do not confirm today’s Palestinian claim of Palestinian roots and culture in a “verdant area” since the Arab rule of the Land (CE 640-1099). Southern Syria vs. “Palestine” The Romans changed the name of the Land of Israel to “Palestine.” But from CE 640 until the 1960s, Arabs referred to this same Land as “Southern Syria.” Arabs only began calling the Land “Palestine” in the 1960s. Until about the eighteenth century, the Christian world called this same Land, “The Holy Land.” Thereafter, they used two names: “The Holy Land” and “Palestine.” In 1922 when the League of Nations gave Great Britain the mandate to prepare Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, the official name of the Land became “Palestine” and remained so until the rebirth of the Israeli State in 1948. However, during this very period, the leaders of the Arabs in the Land called themselves Southern Syrians and clamored that the Land become a part of a “Greater Syria.” This “Arab Nation” would include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Transjordan as well as Palestine. An observation in Time magazine well articulated how the Palestinian identity was born so belatedly in the 1960s: Golda Meir once argued that there was no such thing as a Palestinian; at the time, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Before Arafat began his proselytizing, most of the Arabs from the territory of Palestine thought of themselves as members of an all-embracing Arab nation. It was Arafat who madethe intellectual leap to a definition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it, fought for it and brought it to the world’s attention. . . . If there had been an Arab Palestinian culture, a normal population increase over the centuries would have been expected. But, with the exception of a relatively few families, the Arabs had no attachment to the Land. If Arabs from southern Syria drifted into Palestine for economic reasons, within a generation or so the cultural tug of Syria or other Arab lands would pull them back. This factor is why the Arab population average remained low until the influx of Jewish financial investments and Jewish people in the late 1800s made the Land economically attractive. Then sometime between 1850 and 1918, the Arab population shot up to 560,000. On the other hand, Great Britain’s White Paper of 1939 closed the doors of Jewish immigration to their Land. Simultaneously, there was a large-scale Arab immigration to the new Land of opportunity during World War II. In 1946 Bartley C. Crum, a United States Government observer, noted that tens of thousands of Arabs had entered Palestine “because of this better life—and they were still coming.” The Testimony of Arabs and Christians Because Arabs until the 1960s spoke of Palestine as Southern Syria or part of Greater Syria, in 1919 the General Syrian Congress stated, “We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine.” In 1939 George Antonius noted the Arab view of Palestine in 1918: Faisal’s views about the future of Palestine did not differ from those of his father and were identical with those held then by the great majority of politically-minded Arabs. The representative Arab view was substantially that which King Husain [Grand Sherif of Mecca, the great grandfather of the current King Hussein of Jordan]had expressed to the British Government...in January 1918. In the Arab view, Palestine was an Arab territory forming an integral part of Syria. Referring to the same Arab view of Palestine in 1939, George Antonius spoke of “the whole of the country of that name [Syria] which is now split up into mandated territories....” His lament was that France’s mandate over Syria did not include Palestine which was under Britain’s mandate. As late as May 1947, Arab representatives reminded the United Nations in a formal statement, “Palestine is a...part of the Province of Syria....Politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.” On May 31, 1956, Ahmed Shukairy had no hesitation, as current head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in announcing to the Security Council the observation, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” Syrian President Hafez Assad once told PLO leader Yassir Arafat: You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian People, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people. Assad stated on March 8, 1974, “Palestine is a principal part of Southern Syria, and we consider that it is our right and duty to insist that it be a liberated partner of our Arab homeland and of Syria.” In the words of the late military commander of the PLO as well as member of the PLO Executive Council, Zuhair Muhsin:There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity….yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel [emphasis ours]. The most authoritative Arab statement, however, as to whom the Holy Land belongs is found in the Koran, the Islamic Scriptures. The fact is that the Koran agrees with the Bible that God (Allah) made a covenant with the Sons of Israel and assigned the Holy Land to the Jews (see the Koran, Sura V, “The Table”). The Koran also describes the Land given to the Jews as “blessed” and foresees a return of Israel to their Land at the end of days. These testimonies confirm the Christian Scriptures that God gave the Land to the Jewish people as an everlasting possession. The relatively few Arabs who wandered into the Land between CE 670-1878 were but temporary dwellers. The truer perspective of history reveals that the large recent influx of Arabs that paralleled the regathering of Jews has no historic roots in the Land. The Verdict of History: Land Rights Before Jewish immigration and Jewish investments spawned massive Arab immigration, Arabs were actually leaving Palestine. Then the flow of traffic reversed. “...Palestine changed from a country of Arab emigration to one of Arab immigration. Arabs from the Hauran in Syria as well as other neighboring lands poured into Palestine to profit from the higher standard of living and fresh opportunities provided by the Zionist pioneers.” This phenomenon is confirmed by the Palestine Royal Commission Report which observed that in the period between the Balfour Declaration and the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947, Palestine became a land of Arab immigration. As further documented by Ernst Frankenstein, substantial Arab immigration was a recent phenomenon: The early “lovers of Zion” began the stimulation of Arab immigration. Some writers have come out with the conclusion that in 1942, 75 percent of the Arab population were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants into Palestine during the preceding one hundred years, mainly after 1882. WHOSE LAND? The Arabs ruled the Land for less than 100 years. The Jews ruled the Land of Israel for over 1,700 years. The testimony of history proves the Jewish people are the historic people of the land, therefore the Land still belongs to them. Regardless of the peace process, the Judeo-Christian Bible (Isaiah 2:2,3) and Muslim Koran (Sura 17:104), predict the Jewish people will yet peacefully enjoy the right to all their Land.