Israel and Their Land

Who owns the land of Israel? Arab or Jew? Is it Israel or is it Palestine? These questions have been debated for many years in the Middle East as the land changed hands many times. But today this question is more hotly debated than at any other time, as both Palestinians and Israelis lay claim to the land.

Israel maintains that the land is hers on several counts: the fact that the U.N. allotted her the land; that she rightfully purchased the land, parcel by parcel; that she won the land in wars to maintain her existence, and that God, from days of old promised her the land and has now given it to her.
On the other hand, the Palestinians argue that the entire state of Israel is historically theirs and that they had a continued presence in the area for some 1,700 year. Therefore, they will not be content until the Jews are driven out and the land again is known as Palestine.

The surrounding Arab nations, in agreement with the Palestinian struggle to gain the land of Palestine and to be free of the so called “occupiers,” (Israel) want to see Israel disappear from the Middle Eastern map. They want to see her “driven into the sea” and literally “wiped off the map.” Many Arab leaders have directly stated this. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “If the leaders of the region do not have the guts, then the people of the region are capable of removing the Zionist regime from the world scene.” (AFP, September 3, 2010) And, recently Kamal al-Halbawi–a Muslim Brotherhood leader said, “Every night when I go to bed, I pray to wake up the next day to see Israel is wiped off the map.” (New York Post, March 5, 2011)

Interestingly enough, the Bible in Psalm 83, describes the very time we are living in when all the nations around Israel have as their goal, the complete destruction of the state of Israel:

For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; And those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, And consulted together against Your sheltered ones. They have said, “Come, and let us cut them 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: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them; They have helped the children of Lot. Selah

The ancient places mentioned here represent the modern names of the Arab nations surrounding Israel: Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and even the Palestinians.

Israel’s Historical Right to the Land
Even though the Palestinians claim that they had a continual presence in the land for 1,700 years, history does not bear this out. In actuality, Jews lived in their Land for 1700 years virtually uninterrupted. Then the Roman destruction of their polity in AD 70 marked God’s temporary rejection and chastening. The Jewish population of over 3 million was decimated by slaughter and expulsion. The Arabs conquered and dominated the Land for over 300 years beginning in AD 640, yet the Jews remained the largest minority.

The noted Arab historian Khaldun (called one of the greatest historians of all time by Arnold Toynbee) observed that as late as A.D. 1400 the Land still was permeated with Jewish culture and customs. Nearly 300 years after Arab rule ended, there was still no evidence of Palestinian roots or established culture.
Thus an Arab historian, who happens to be one of the greatest historians of all time, demolished the claim that there is an uninterrupted Palestinian culture dating back to AD 640.
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.”
The biblical prophets addressed the fact that Israel, after the dispersion of the Jews from Israel in AD135, would lie desolate and without inhabitants. (Jeremiah 33:10; Zechariah 10:12; Jeremiah 16:14-18).

History says that the land belongs to the Jew.

Israel’s Legal Rights to the Land

At the end of World War I, both Jews and Arabs asked for independent states. The world powers granted the Arabs twenty-two independent Arab states, approximately 5,400,000 square miles. The Jews asked for less than one percent of that vast territory, to which the Allies agreed. But in 1921 England reneged and cut off 77 percent of the land promised in the Balfour Declaration and set up the Arab Emirate of Transjordan. Then in 1922 the League of Nations gave Great Britain a Mandate to prepare the remaining 23 percent of Palestine (including Samaria, Judea, Gaza, Golan Heights and Eastern Jerusalem) for a Jewish National Home. But under French pressure, in 1923 the Golan Heights was ceded by the British to the French mandate of Syria.

The UN Partition Plan of 1947 further reduced the size of the new Israeli State. However, the Arab state of Transjordan captured East Jerusalem, expelled all Jews and desecrated all Jewish holy sites. In defiance of the UN mandate, Jordan also occupied the west bank of the Jordan River. No longer limited to being “Trans,” across the Jordan River on the east bank, Transjordan reduced its name simply to Jordan. It now occupied both banks of the Jordan River.
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 called for the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It was approved on November 29, 1947 with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one absent.
The resolution was accepted by the Jews in Palestine, yet rejected by the Arabs in Palestine and the Arab states. As a consequence of the United States resolution, the new state of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948.
The nations gave the land to the Jew.

Israel’s Wars

Since the birth of the nation of Israel, they have had to fight four major wars.

Israel declared its independence on May14, 1948. The next day seven Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen invaded the new state with the intention of wiping it out. Three more wars followed in which Israel gained the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula (later returned to Egypt), the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Israel obtained the land as the spoils of war.


Israel’s Biblical Land Rights

Many feel that since the Jews were driven out of their land in AD 70 and scattered throughout the earth that they no longer have a legitimate right to a homeland in the Middle East. But is this what the scriptures indicate? Listen to some of the prophets describe our day:

Twenty centuries ago God spoke to Abraham, telling him to leave his ancestral home and journey to an unknown place—the land of Canaan. Because of his obedience God spoke to him on the way to Canaan and said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” Once in the land, God again spoke to him concerning the land:

Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever…Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee. (Genesis 13:14-17)

During his life time Abraham never owned so much as a square foot of land in Canaan. God further told him in Genesis 22:17, 18:

…in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

Here is God’s promise to not only bless Abraham, but to bless “all the families of the earth.” This includes Jew, Arab and everyone else that has ever lived. Somehow the blessing of “all the families of the earth” is tied to the land that Abraham was to possess.

The prophet Amos speaks of the future time when God would again bring his ancient people back to the land, never to be removed again.
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And I will bring again the captivity of my people [from exile] of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God. (Amos 9:14-15)

The Prophet Jeremiah tells us that the Jews will be brought back to the land once given to their fathers and from whence they were scattered around the world. He will especially bring them back from the land of the North, where great numbers of modern day Jews have immigrated to Israel from Russia and her satellites.

Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers. (Jer. 16:14-15)

The prophet Joel gives a similar thought:

For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. (Joel 3:1, 2)

God gave the Jew the land.

Many more scriptures could be cited to prove that God would bring back Israel to her promised land, but space does not permit. For more information on the subject, see the booklet:

But one fact is sure, Israel will NEVER be removed from her land. God’s word is sure. God says through Jeremiah the prophet: “Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name; If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.” (Jeremiah 31:35, 36)

A Glorious Future for All

The return of Israel to their promised land will eventually bring peace, prosperity and life to all. God will use Israel, as he long ago promised Abraham, to bless all the families of the earth through his seed. (See Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-7; Zechariah 8:13, 20-23; Genesis 22:1-19.)

In God’s glorious kingdom no one will be forgotten. God will give the Palestinians an appropriate portion of land, as he will to all. And their portion will be a delight to them and they will be well pleased with it. At this time God has allotted to the Jew the land of Israel and that for the purpose of ultimately bringing a blessing to the rest of the world. Today we see the preliminary stages of bringing blessings to the world of mankind.

All nations and peoples would do well to remember the words of Psalm 122:6: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.”