History, Reality and Prophecy
History, Reality and Prophecy
By Jack Kinsella
Israel promised to respond to the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a state, in violation of the Oslo Agreement, by building an additional 3,000 settlement units on land claimed by the Palestinians.
This immediately prompted cries from the Arab League-dominated UN about Israel’s “expansionist” policies requiring immediate UN intervention. The UN General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine based on the pre-1967 borders.
If they are pre-1967 borders, then what does that mean? It means the borders which existed prior to the Six Days War, which means the borders as they existed in 1948.
Let’s fire up the WayBack Machine and revisit how the State of Israel came to be in the first place.
During the First World War, Turkey supported Germany against the Allies, so when Germany was defeated, so were the Turks. The Ottoman Empire was broken up via the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided up the former Empire into Western zones of influence.
Lebanon and Syria were mandated over to France. What is today known as Jordan and Israel (including the West Bank) was mandated to Great Britain.
Since no other people had established a homeland in the region since the Jews had been expelled by the Romans 2000 years earlier, the British government “looked favorably” upon the establishment of a Jewish homeland on their ancestral territory of Palestine. (Israel, West Bank, Gaza, Jordan).
In 1917, Lord Balfour issued what is known to history as “The Balfour Declaration”:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Everything would have probably proceeded forward from this point without a hitch…except there was one. A big one that neither the Europeans nor the Americans could ignore. As Winston Churchill wrote in 1922:
“In both Houses of Parliament there is growing movement of hostility, against Zionist policy in Palestine…”
“Zionist policy…” — what does that mean? What is a “Zionist?”
A Zionist is one that believes in a national homeland for the Jews. Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in response to the violent persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism in Western Europe.
Zionists recognize the historical reality of Jewish persecution and agree with the Jews that without a national homeland, there is nothing to prevent more pogroms, persecutions and genocidal terror being perpetrated against the Jewish people.
And more than that, a Zionist recognizes that the reason for the pogroms, persecutions and genocide is because they are Jews. Zionism recognizes that Jew-hatred is blind, unreasoning and deadly.
And so, the “Zionist policy” objected to by Churchill and the Parliament was the establishment of a homeland for the Jews as a defense against persecution.
In 1923, the British reneged on their promise and divided the Palestine portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts, with everything east of the Jordan going to the Arabs and everything west of the Jordan for the Jews.
In effect, the British had “chopped off” 75% of the originally proposed Jewish Palestinian homeland to form an Arab Palestinian nation called Trans-Jordan (meaning “across the Jordan River”).
The territory east of the Jordan River was given to Emir Abdullah (from Hejaz, now Saudi Arabia) who was not even a Palestinian”. This portion of Palestine was renamed Trans-Jordan. Trans-Jordan would later be renamed “Jordan”.
So the eastern 3/4 of Palestine would be renamed TWICE, in effect, erasing all connection to the name “Palestine”. The remaining 25% of Palestine (now WEST of the Jordan River) was to be the Jewish Palestinian homeland.
In 1947 the UN passed Resolution 181 partitioning the remaining 25% of the Jewish mandate into a Jewish partition and an Arab partition. The Jewish Palestinians accepted 12.5% of the Balfour Mandate gratefully. The Arabs rejected the 1947 Plan (which would have resulted in the creation of a Palestinian state sixty-five years ago).
Israel declared independence on its 12.5% of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948.
The next day, the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen attacked.
(It is worth noting that all of those Arab states were also created by the same British authority out of the Ottoman Empire following WWI, only years AFTER the 1917 Balfour Declaration.)
Arabs living inside the newly declared State of Israel were encouraged to leave by the invaders to keep them out of the crossfire.
Once the Arab Legions had eliminated the Jews, the displaced Arabs could return and reclaim their own property, plus whatever the Jews left behind.
(Similar to what actually did occur fifty-eight years later when Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005.)
Some 70% of the Arabs living in the new state of Israel fled. Not because they feared the Jewish army, but because it was a good deal. Avoid the war, stay out of the crossfire, and be rewarded with the spoils of war for staying safe.
Those that did not flee are today full citizens of the State of Israel, with the same civil rights as Jews, including Arab representation at the Knesset.
The borders as they existed in 1948 (essentially pre-1967) puts the Palestinians in possession of East Jerusalem, the Old City, all of Gaza, and all of the West Bank, leaving Israel almost cut in half at the center.
What would have been the Palestinian State under the UN Partition Plan was immediately occupied by Egypt and Jordan. Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip and Trans-Jordan occupied the land west of the Jordan River (Biblical Judea and Samaria) all the way to Jerusalem.
In 1950, Trans-Jordan formally annexed the West Bank and since it was no longer divided by the Jordan River, renamed itself Jordan and extended Jordanian citizenship to those Arabs living in the West Bank.
What about those Arabs that fled to neighboring Arab countries to await the destruction of the Jews? Their Arab brothers interned them in concentration camps that they renamed “refugee camps” and kept them there for sixty-five years.
The Jordanians that lived in the West Bank after 1950 never petitioned Jordan for a homeland — and Jordan never offered. Instead, they “discovered” in 1964 that they were really an ancient people called “Palestinians” rather than Jordanians.
(The total lack of evidence of any prior Palestinian indigenous people, Palestinian language, culture, history or unique national characteristics notwithstanding.)
Led by an Egyptian Arab named Yasser Arafat they formed the PLO, which was dedicated to creating a “Palestinian” homeland. Of course, at the time, they had one — they were Jordanians!
In 1967, the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria massed for another invasion of Israel aimed at driving the Jews into the sea. Instead, Israel soundly defeated the invaders, pushing Egypt out of Israel and back inside its own territory and pushing Jordan back across the Jordan River.
That left Israel in possession of Gaza and the West Bank. Now the Jews occupied 1/640 of the total land mass of the Arab world and were only outnumbered fifty to one.
Thus began Israel’s “brutal occupation” — an occupation so brutal that Israeli-Arabs in East Jerusalem voted against being ruled by the Palestinian Authority, preferring to stay under Israeli jurisdiction. Evidently, freedom trumps Arab nationalism.
There is a lesson in there, somewhere.
Assessment
Consider the situation as it actually exists, devoid of the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Arab world (and a significant portion of mainstream Western Christianity).
From 1948 to 1967, Egypt ruled Gaza, Syria ruled the Golan Heights, while Jordan ruled the West Bank. They could have set up independent Arab-Palestinian states in any or all of those territories, but they didn’t even consider it.
Instead, in 1967 they used the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West bank to launch a war that was unambiguously aimed at destroying Israel, which is how Israel came into possession of those territories in the first place.
The historical reality is that, if there is a Palestinian State, it would be Jordan, since Jordan accounts for 75% of the British Mandate of Palestine. The “Palestinians” living in the West Bank could have had an independent state sixty-five years ago, but their goal wasn’t independence.
It was NEVER independence. The goal was and is the destruction of the Jewish State. In every instance where they were offered some measure of independence, they used that independence to attack Israel.
The fact is, until Yasser Arafat invented a Palestinian people, the Palestinians were the Jews!
The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and “Palestinians”. The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick in the early 1970’s.
The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. The bulk of what are called “Palestinian Arabs” are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century.
Palestinian nationalism is a reinvented version of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians.
They were wars of annihilation launched against Israel by the Arabs; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. — not a ‘Palestinian’ in the woodpile.
Having been defeated in every instance, the Arab world focused on using the “Palestinians” as a fifth column inside Israel to facilitate the eventual annihilation of the Jewish State.
Returning to the present, Israel’s intention to build 3000 apartment units on land claimed by the “Palestinians” prompted UN Secretary Ban ki-Moon to declare the decision would deal “an almost fatal blow” to the peace process.
Is he kidding??
The fatal blow was dealt when the United Nations recognized Palestine, thereby CREATING a failed state where no state existed. Is Gaza part of Palestine? Is it not ruled by a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction?
The Palestinian Authority is led by Mahmoud Abbas, a co-founder of Arafat’s Fatah Party and the PLO. He was elected in 2005 for a four year term, which expired in 2009. The Palestinian Authority feared defeat by Hamas and so they simply canceled elections, allowing Abbas to rule by decree.
Consequently, based on the actual rules of democracy, Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, is the only legitimately elected leader of the newly recognized Palestinian State.
So, you see how insane all this is in the natural. It has no equal in modern history, and certainly no equal in the history of the United Nations.
Never has a failed non-state entity without a legitimate government and dedicated to the principles of terrorism been offered recognition of statehood without it having, A) an actual indigenous people, B) a functioning economy, C) a functioning legal system, and D) or one that was carved out of, and over the objections of, an existing member state.
It has never happened before, and it is unlikely to ever happen again. Why? Because there is only one Israel. There is no other place on earth more offensive to the god of this world or his followers and devotees at the UN.
And there is no more reliable measure of the accuracy of Bible prophecy in the last days than the battle between the nations of the earth and the tiny state of Israel.
Apart from Bible prophecy, there is absolutely no explanation that makes sense.
Viewed in the light of Bible prophecy, the situation, as bizarre as it actually is, is completely in harmony with the prophecies of Scripture for the last days. Strictly speaking, the restoration of Israel was the first fulfilled prophecy of the last days — a prophecy that is continuing to be fulfilled to this very day.
Its fulfillment began on May 14, 1948 when Israel declared her independence.
“Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.” (Isaiah 66:8)
The process of fulfillment continued, with the next high point coming in June, 1967.
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)
What comes next? The great mystery of which Paul wrote to the Romans:
“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Romans 11:25)
The mystery is explained further in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53)
And THEN what happens?
“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
We are eyewitnesses to Bible prophecy unfolding before our very eyes. Are you excited?
“Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonaians 4:18)
Are you comforted?
Originally Published: December 4, 2012.