Biblical Aspects of the Middle East Crisis

A POLITICAL CONCERN THAT HAS VERY IMPORTANT INTERNATIONAL RAMIFICATIONS. In Genesis 13:15 God tells Abraham "All the land that you see I will give you and your offspring, Forever" God never considered Ishmael (the founder of the Arabs) part of his offspring, because Ishmail came from Sarah's handmaiden, not his wife. In Genesis 17:8 it states "The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendents after you, and I will be their God" In Genesis 17:21 it states "But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you this time next year." Jacob, Isaac's youngest son, who stole the birthright from Esau, Isaac's eldest son, struggled with God and was thereafter called Israel (He struggled with God) Genesis 35:10. And after the Jews were led to Egypt to live, but eventually held in bondage, God spoke to Moses and said in Exodus 3:17 "And I have promised to bring you out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites". And when Joshua took over from Moses the leadership responsibilities, God spoke to Joshua and said in Joshua 3:10 "This is how you will know that the living God is among you, and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites-----". But you notice, even in Scripture, the Israelites were never constantly remaining on the land God gave them. This is because that possession of the land came with a condition-Obedience to God. (Duet 4:1-2 and Duet 30:1-5). And today, even though they have had their land for more than 50 years, it was founded on a secular, but cultural basis, and continues to be such with very little spirituality contained therein, so they continue to struggle for their land, because of economic jeolousies, or to put it another way, they continue to struggle with God. Now the permanent restoration of Israel is not specifically mentioned in Scripture, but Jerusalem (the most important city in Israel) is mentioned as being permanently restored. But this, is in reality the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21) coming out of heaven and this would be the true City of Peace, which the name Jerusalem actually means. For Christians the restoration of the Promised Land now refers to the Kingdom of God (a Spirirtual Realm), which comes only through Jesus Christ as stated in Galatians 3:29 "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the Promise". This promise is the Promised Land, and therefore, for a Christian, the Promised Land is really the Kingdom of God in the hearts of the Believers, regardless of where they lived. With this in mind, we should then recognize that Israel is only a Sovereign State, just like any other Sovereign State. Therefore, the negotiations are really taking place between a Sovereign State (Israel) and a potentially Sovereign People (the Palestines) and the negotiations should take place on an interest-interest basis (win-win situation), but unfortunately these negotiations are intermingled with religious dogma which do not lend themselves to a win-win situation because of the inflexibility of much of the dogma. Thus the problems between Israel and the Palestines which have to be resolved within this mixture are the current violence, the security for Israel, the Israeli settlements, the 2 state issue, the refugee problem, the Jerusalem situation, and the reconstruction of the Palestinian areas. But in order to do this, the religious dogma has to be toned down to make these negotiations much more of a win-win situation.