Occupation Of Palestine?

[blessedhope]

And [SIZE=12pt]Over recent years, we have witnessed a shocking erosion of support for Israel among professing Christians. The issue of the rightful ownership of the West Bank has been used to confuse well-meaning believers who don’t fully understand how and why the Jewish claim to this land is more legitimate than the claims of the Palestinians. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]In some clarity to this question by examining two historical truths: God’s land-covenant with Abraham and the precedent of land reclamation which God has Himself has ordained and blessed.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Does modern-day Israel have the right to exist? Do they have the right to reclaim ownership of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights? Is there any precedent in history for a nation rightfully reclaiming its ancient homeland after hundreds of years in absentia? Yes, indeed there is, and that nation is Israel itself![/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]It was approximately 4,000 years ago that God appeared to Abraham in a vision and there (Genesis 15) made a unilateral covenant with him to give him the land of Israel. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…” (Genesis 15:18 NIV).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]This land covenant stretches from the modern-day nations of Egypt to Iraq and includes parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan! As previously stated, the covenant was not bi-lateral, but unilateral. This is a critical difference to understand. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]A bi-lateral covenant requires the faithful performance of both parties in order for its provisions to remain in force. A unilateral covenant requires only the faithful performance of the one party who established it in order for the covenant to remain in force. The land covenant of Genesis 15 was granted to Abraham unconditionally by Yahweh! [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]This was confirmed when God alone passed between the animal parts which the Lord had asked Abraham to provide. Has God remained faithful to that covenant? Of course, and He always will! That is why Israel’s disobedience and unbelief have often cost them their place in the land, but never their title to the land! Biblically speaking, their obedience to God was never a condition or a pre-requisite to that title.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Understanding these things, we can see that although Israel has been occupied throughout its history by various people groups, these groups were always “tenants”, not “title-holders”. Does a tenant have the right to remain in residence when the property-owner decides to return and reclaim his home? Not at all![/SIZE]

 

[blessedhope]

And
The History of Palestine
Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states, each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.
After the Exodus from Egypt — probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE but perhaps earlier — the Children of Israel settled in the land of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then the Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-Biblical kingdom of Judea.

Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River.

From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920s.)
After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".
In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.
In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter, Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject province first of the Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt, and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.
During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.
The Jewish National Home
Travellers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population — British consul in 1857
Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. — English pilgrim in 1590


There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction. . . . One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee . . . Nazareth is forlorn . . . Jericho lies a moldering ruin . . . Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation . . . untenanted by any living creature . . . .
A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds . . a silent, mournful expanse . . . a desolation . . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . . Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country . . . .
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely . . . . — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867




The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers. Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, both Arabs and others.

 

[keras]

[SIZE=11pt]Ezekiel 35:1-5 Look toward all the lands of the Edomites and pronounce judgement upon them. The Lord says: I shall stretch out My hand to strike your land, I will reduce it to a desolate waste and your towns will be ruined. Then you will know that I am the Lord, for you have kept up an ancient feud and shed the blood of the Israelites by warfare, during the time of their punishment.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Ezekiel 35:6-9 Therefore as I live, says the Lord: I shall make blood your destiny, since you do not hate killing and death, that will come upon you. Your land and cities will become desolate wastes forever and no one will travel there. I will cover the hills and valleys with the dead, your towns will not be inhabited.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Ezekiel 35:10-14 You say: the two nations and two countries [The ten tribes of Israel and the two tribes of Judah] will be our possession, even though the Lord has been there. Therefore your anger and jealousy will be repaid, for I will do to the whole of Edom what you have done in your hatred for My people. I shall be known among you - for the way I judge you, you will know that the Lord has punished you. [by the means of a CME sunstrike] I have heard all your blasphemous talk about the Land of Israel, saying: the Land is ours to occupy. You have boasted and spoken against Me without restraint. So now I will destroy you., while the whole world rejoices, As you rejoiced at the inheritance of the House of Israel, when it was desolated, so I will do to you, all your lands will be devastated. [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]Reference: REB, NIV, KJV. Some verse abridged[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The Edomites can be identified as those nations and entities - that hate My people and have kept up their ancient feud with the Israelites, - that currently occupy a large portion of the area promised to the Patriarchs and who now threaten the State of Israel with annihilation. Psalm 83:13-15, describes how the Lord Himself will deal to them, as they commence their attack on Israel. Isaiah 30:26, Psalm 7:12-16, Isaiah 8:9-10, Obadiah 1:15, Micah 4:11-12[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Psalm 83:12 informs us that the goal of this alliance is total possession of all the Land of Israel. This is exactly as the Charters of Hamas and Fatah state; they are not interested in a two State solution, all the Jews must either leave or be killed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Many people believe that the next prophesied event in our world will be the Gog/ Magog invasion. Others say it’s the tribulation – preceded by a rapture of the church. Some think the Return of Jesus will be next. That it will be none of these is told to us in the Book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapters 34, 36, 37, 38 & 39 they all speak about the Israelites being gathered out of the nations and settled back into the Holy Land of Israel. Those chapters are written in a fairly obvious sequence of events. Ezekiel 34:12-13 ‘I will rescue My people from where they were scattered in the Day of cloud and darkness, I will lead them out of the nations and bring them home to their own country’. Amos 5:18, Isaiah 13:9-10[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Then comes Ezekiel 35, where it is explained how this gathering and resettlement can take place. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]In conclusion, this attack by the peoples surrounding Israel will result in their destruction, but the Bible prophecies also say that Judah too, will be judged at this time and ‘only a holy remnant will survive’. The Land is not polluted by radiation and as the CME quickly passes, the vegetation soon regenerates.[Psalm 68:9] Ezekiel 36:8 You, Land of Israel, grow your trees and bear fruit, for the homecoming of My people is near. This opens the way for all the twelve tribes of Israel to return to their heritage. Later will come the invasion by Gog/Magog – a different list of peoples and nations. They attack the Israelites ‘gathered from the nations and living in a land recently recovered from ruin’. Ezekiel 38:8 Their total destruction is ‘to show Myself Holy and make Myself known to many peoples’. Ezekiel 38:23 The rest of the prophecies will then unfold – the rise of the Anti Christ, the Tribulation and then, the culmination of the age: the Return of Jesus for His 1000 year reign. [/SIZE]