Who Cares About the Palestinians?

Who Cares About the Palestinians?

Jon Andersen

Published by Jon Andersen at Smashwords.

Copyright 2012 Jon Andersen

All scriptures are quotes from the New King James Version of the Bible, unless otherwise indicated.

Content

Preface

Chapter 1: Prosperity and Financial Growth

Chapter 2: The British Sow the Seeds of the Conflict

Chapter 3: The Arab World Creates a Disaster

Chapter 4: The Israeli Arabs

Chapter 5: Jordan and Egypt Occupy Land

Chapter 6: The Terror of the PLO

Chapter 7: Progess in the Administered Territories

Chapter 8: The Intifada

Chapter 9: A Government of Terrorists

Chapter 10: Chaos on the Gaza Strip

Chapter 11: Obama's Recycled Plan

Chapter 12: The International Activists

Chapter 13: The Hope of a Palestinian State

Conclusion

Endnotes

About the author

Preface

I will bless those who bless you,

And I will curse him who curses you.

Genesis 12:3

The Bible clearly informs us that God is good and compassionate towards us human beings. We are, after all, created in His image. And God's goodness is precisely the reason why He has advised us about how to live a prosperous life and about perils that we may face. This is the reason why we have received the Bible, which is His road map to peace in all areas of life.

One of the most important subjects in life is the question of your personal relationship to Israel. Several scriptures mention God's promises of blessings over those that bless Israel, and curses over those that will curse Israel and the Jewish people. In one scripture, God even informs us that the nation that will not serve the Jewish people, will be lost and completely annihilated.1

This is a powerful scripture, because this means that it is impossible to be neutral. Every single person will either be pro or con. There are no other alternatives. Either you are a servant of the Jewish people, or you are not a servant of the Jewish people.

The Word of God is always true, and it is valid for all people and all nations. In an age and time when many people doubt the veracity of the Word of God, taking a look at basic facts is more important than ever, for the truth will always confirm that the Word of God is 100 percent accurate. The modern Israel, the homecoming of the Jews, and the birth of the State of Israel are some of the most powerful examples of the veracity of biblical promises being fulfilled in our day and age.

When God called Abraham in Genesis 12, God said that Abraham and his descendants shall be a blessing … And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The Jewish people are called to be a blessing to the whole world. By paraphrasing the calling of God from Genesis 12, we could say that the Jewish people will be a blessing for all nations when God's plans with them are fulfilled.

This Jewish blessing has overtaken the world in several different ways. Many Jews have attained a prominent position in the world of science and medicine. Just read the list of Nobel prize winners, and you will discover a lot of Jewish names. Many medicines and medical cures are available to you and me because a Jewish doctor or professor made the discovery. Jews have also been pioneers in many other areas where their progress has made the world a better place.

But the Jewish people's calling to be a blessing is much deeper than scientific progress. When the Israelites came out of Egypt and God's plans for them were fulfilled at Mount Sinai, the prophet Moses received a revelation that became the foundation of the Bible, the Book of Books. When the Jews returned from Babylon, the Maccabees defeated the Greeks, and the Jews were free to live a Jewish life in the Land of Israel, Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem.

The entire Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, contain a range of promises that confirm that God will bless the whole world when the biblical prophecies are fulfilled in the end times. When God will bring the Jewish people back to their ancient homeland, and when God will reestablish the Jewish nation, the result will be that all families of the Earth will be blessed.

In this book, we will take a look at one nation2 that exists in the world today and look at their relationship to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. This book is dedicated to the Arabs that live within Israel and the disputed territories – a group of people which frequently are called Palestinians. We will take a look at whether these Arabs have any hope of being showered by the blessings of God, or whether they have any reason to fear the curse of the Almighty.

We will take a look at what the nations around the Holy Land and what the big players in world politics have done and ask whether they have helped to usher in a blessing or a curse upon the Arabs living in the land. We will see how the Arabs in the land have been blessed when God's plans for the Jews have been fulfilled, and how the Palestinian Arabs have been cursed when they have chosen or been compelled to go against the divine plan for the Jewish people.

When I talk about the Arabs of Palestine I refer to the Arabs who lived in this land – which in the New Testament was called the land of Israel – before 1948. Israeli Arabs are those Arabs that have received Israeli citizenship since 1948. The expression Palestinian Arabs means those Arabs that have lived in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip since 1948, and Palestinian refugees refers to those Arabs that have resided in various refugee camps in the Middle East since 1948. All of these terms encompass a group of people that the West often refers to as a nation called the Palestinians.

Many years ago the United Nations decided that the definition of a Palestinian refugee would be those Arabs that lived within the British Mandate for Palestine from June 1946 to May 1948, plus their descendants. Most modern authors and journalists refer to all Arabs that lived within the Mandate for Palestine within this time period, plus their descendants, as Palestinians.

You may be surprised to learn that the Arabs that lived within this area prior to 1948 did not consider themselves to be a nation, and they had no national history in common. The fact is that many of these Arabs had more in common with and had a greater bond to Egypt or Syria. Many of them considered Palestine to be a province of Greater Syria and considered themselves to be South Syrians, although they first and foremost were a part of the great Arab nation. Finally, many of them were immigrants from the other Arab countries round about Palestine.

After the Six Day War of 1967, these Arabs and their descendants have usually been called Palestinians, in spite of their own opinion of the question prior to 1948, in spite of the fact that some of them only resided in the land a mere two years, and in spite of the fact that the descendants possibly never set foot in the land at all.

Dr. Azmi Bishara, who himself is an Arab from Nazareth, and who has been a member of the Knesset for four periods, offered the following observation on this question: I don't think there's a Palestinian nation. There's an Arab nation. I don't think there's a Palestinian nation. That's a colonial invention. Since when were there Palestinians? I think there's only an Arab nation. Until the end of the 19th century, Palestine was the southern part of Greater Syria. 3

The purpose of this book is, however, not to discuss the question of whether the Palestinians constitute a nation or not. The book will rest upon the premise that the Palestinians are a group of people that received a separate identity in a process that started after World War I and continued until today, and we will discuss their relationship to Israel and the promises of God.

As we make this journey throughout the history of the Palestinian Arabs, we will come to realize that the words of the Apostle Paul from Romans chapter four indeed is the truth:

Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar.

Romans 3:4

Back to Contents

Chapter 1: Prosperity and Financial Growth

Throughout history the people of Jerusalem and other holy cities in the Holy Land had repeatedly witnessed how Jewish immigrants arrived in the land. In some cases a single Jew made the lonesome trek from Europe to the holy city in the Judean Hills, while at other occasions several hundred Jews immigrated together. But nothing could have prepared the Jerusalemites for the influx of immigrants that would arrive in the last half of the 19th century.

The dam keeping the Jews in Eastern Europe broke in 1882, and 35,000 Jews immigrated to the land in a couple of decades. Most of them arrived from harsh persecution in Russia, where Christian anti-Semitism was as bad as ever. Because of the Czarist persecution, many Jews elected to pack their bags in a quest for a better life in the ancient land of their forefathers, the Land of Israel.

But this time, the residents of the Holy Land were amazed to see a new type of newcomers. Most Jewish immigrants that had arrived in the Land of Israel during the past millennium had been religious Jews arriving to study the Word of God. Most of them had settled in the four Jewish holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Zefat. These cities were perfect locations for Jews wishing to study the Bible in the land where the greater