Africa-Press – Eswatini. Last week we talked about the formation of the present-day State of Israel.
We referred to the fact that the ‘children of Israel’ were stateless for more than 2 000 years. I have deliberately decided to use a biblical context for the second part of the Israel- Palestine conflict in an attempt to try and put the story of the Jewish nation in a Christian context so that emaSwati who are Christians can follow with a better understanding.
Palestinian narrative
In last week’s article, we explained the recent history of the formation of Israel according to the Palestinian narrative. We wrote about the famous 67-word letter known as the Balfour Declaration; which was written on November 2, 1917, to Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. It committed the British Government to ‘the establishment, in Palestine, of a national home for the Jewish people’ and to facilitate ‘the achievement of this object’. This would subsequently lead to May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, where Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel and he became the first Prime Minister (PM).
The Palestinian narrative goes on to state that there began an ethnic cleansing by the newly- formed State of Israel.
The killing of 100 Palestinians in April 1948 set the tone for the rest of the operation, and from 1947 to 1949, more than 500 Palestinian villages, towns and cities were destroyed in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’. It is alleged that an estimated 15 000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres. The Zionist movement captured 78 per cent of historic Palestine, with the remaining 22 per cent divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. An estimated 750 000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes then, and now millions are displaced. The Palestinians say they are fighting for their very survival against an occupier who has powerful allies in the West, including the United Nations (UN).
Jewish position
The position on present-day Palestine is mostly historic and the religious, making references to the Bible as they claim the land to be theirs historically. The early history of Israel starts with Abraham’s descendants who were enslaved by the Egyptians for many hundreds of years before settling in Canaan, which is the region of modern day Israel. The word Israel comes from Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, who was renamed ‘Israel’ by God in the Bible. Some Jews and even Christians say the Israelis are finally doing what God told their ancestors to do; get rid of the locals, the Canaanites on the Promised Land. In this case it’s the Palestinians. Some 4 000 years ago, God gave Abraham and his descendants all the land now known as Israel, Palestinian territories and parts of Jordan and Syria. The Bible, in Genesis 15: 18-21, seems to acknowledge that; “On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenites, Kenizzites and the Kadmonites, the Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaims, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and the Jebusites’.”
Promised Land
The Israelites were commanded to wipe out seven of the tribes in the land of Canaan the Promised Land. All of these nations were larger and mightier than the Israelites; some were giants. Deuteronomy 7: 1 says; ‘When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; (Deuteronomy 7:2) “and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.” When David was fighting the Philistines, he and his servants struck down four men ‘born to the Rephaim in Gath’. One of them was described as ‘a man of extraordinary size, whose fingers and toes were in sixes, 24’. Many wars would follow.
Palestinians, Ammon, Moab
Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites or the Philistines. When one hears the term ‘The West Bank’, what you are really hearing is ‘the mountains of Israel’ because they both describe nearly identical land. The mountains of Israel are biblically described as Samaria and Judea. West Bank simply means that region of Jordan lying west of the Jordan River. The original name of Palestine was Judea and the land of Israel. The Israelites were divided into two separate kingdoms: Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
Throughout the Bible, the Ammonites and Israelites, even though related, were enemies. During the Exodus, the Israelites were prohibited by the Ammonites from passing through their lands. In the Book of Judges, the Ammonites work with Eglon, King of the Moabites against Israel. Attacks by the Ammonites on Israelite communities were frequent under Saul (2 Samuel 8:12, 10). Nahash (means ‘snake’), the king of the Ammonites, agreed to spare the Israelites of Jabesh-Gilead only if they allowed Nahash to gouge out the right eye of every man. Saul came to their rescue and defeated the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11). Throughout his reign, Saul made war on the Ammonites (1 Samuel 14:47). According to the biblical account, Ammon and Moab were born to Lot and Lot’s younger and elder daughters. The Bible refers to both the Ammonites and Moabites as the ‘children of Lot’ born of incest. In Genesis 19: 37-38, Ammon is a reference to the northern third of the modern State of Jordan, bordered in the west by the Jordan River.
Present day war
Jews feel they have conquered what they believe is their original land and are willing to live with the Palestinians but on their terms. Unfortunately, Palestinians and the Arab world do not want to fully recognise the Jewish State of Israel. They continue to pose a danger to the citizens of Israel forcing the Zionist military powers to commit human rights violations against the weaker Palestinians. In the third and final part three we will talk about how the world is taking all this and the two-State solution.
Source: times
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