Jerusalem and Arab Lies

The Issue Behind the Israeli/Arab Conflict

Always, it comes down to Jerusalem. And when it does, it stops the peace process dead in its tracks. Why is this one, dusty little city in the middle of a tiny country so valuable to both sides? Jerusalem has none of the qualities that explain the founding of a great city. It isn't by a seaport. It isn't on a river. It isn't on a trade route or caravan trail. It isn't on a major natural source of fresh water. It isn't strategically located for military defense purposes. There has been only one reason for the centuries of passion that have been lavished upon it. Jerusalem's earliest history ties it to the realm of the spirit and God. It was first mentioned in Genesis 14:18-20, circa 2000 BC, as being the home of Melchizedek, the mysterious but great Priest of the Most High God to whom even Abraham bowed and gave tithes. The city was then called Salem (peace). After this, it was the home of a fierce people called the Jebusite. Many of these people were giants, standing more than eight feet tall. Even Joshua and Caleb could not drive them out. So until King David, the City was called Jebus and Israelites lived there under their rule. David finally defeated the Jebusites with an amazing victory in spite of their heavy fortifications and huge warriors. Psalm 24 records how the Jebusites taunted David and his army and mocked the God of Israel. That was their big mistake. David entreated Israel's God to enable him to defeat them and He did. So a little over 1000 years before the birth of Christ, David established it as the eternal capital of Israel by God's command. The city that had been called Jebus and Salem became Jerusalem, the City of Peace.

 

Jerusalem, the Historical Enigma

Jerusalem is often called the City of David. It was King David of Israel who, on instructions from God, bought a threshing-floor for 600 shekels of gold from Ornan the Jebusite. Ornan was willing to donate the land, but David insisted on paying the full price for a clear title for what is today the most strategic 35 acres on earth -- the Temple Mount. It was on this site David built an altar and offered burnt offerings. And it was on this same site that his son Solomon was directed to build God's Temple. Jerusalem became the one place on earth where God's manifest presence dwelt -- in the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple. This is why the City is much more than a plot of earth, or stones, or buildings, or culture, or ancestral traditions to the sons of Israel. Without Jerusalem, Judaism has no ultimate meaning. Without Jerusalem, Israel's God has no place for meeting with His people. Indeed, without Jerusalem, the Chosen People feel
there is no validity to their existence. This is almost an impossible burden for any city to bear, yet this burden is forever a part of the legacy of Jerusalem. And so it has remained for three thousand years since it's founding by Israel's greatest king. Love for this city and all it represents preserved the Israelites as a unique and peculiar people down through the centuries. Every year, in the homes of Diaspora Jews the world over, Passover ended with the prayer, "Next year, in Jerusalem." In 70 AD, the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple completely. The gold that decorated it melted down between the massive stones of the Temple itself. To get at the gold inside, the soldiers virtually dismantled it, piece by piece. Thus was Jesus prophecy of thirty-seven years earlier literally fulfilled. He said that "not one stone would be left standing on another." The Temple, the seat of God's earthly throne was lost to the Jews. It was now
the time of the Gentiles. All that remained was the hope of 'Next Year, in Jerusalem'.

Jerusalem - Prize of War

Ironically the City has experienced little of that for which it was named. Peace has been more of a prayer and a hope than a reality. What Jesus predicted about the interim condition of Jerusalem -- from its Roman destruction until its return to the Israelites at the time of His Second Coming -- became literally fulfilled. Listen to His prophecy, "And they [Israel] shall fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles UNTIL the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24) In Jerusalem's early history, it was caught between the conquest ambitions of the great empires of antiquity. Israel sits in the middle of a land bridge that connects three continents. Anyone who wants to build an empire that embraces Asia, Africa
and Europe, has to conquer the key span in the middle of that bridge -- Israel. And since its capital is Jerusalem, it came in for one siege after another. The Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans -- all in turn sounded their war trumpets at the gates of Jerusalem. God miraculously delivered Jerusalem many times. However, their greatest danger was never from without, but from within. Because of Israel's frequent departure from faith in their God, He brought upon Jerusalem a destruction about which His Prophets had long warned them. This happened twice in their history, exactly fulfilling the prophetic warnings they had been given. In the long period since Jerusalem's seconddestruction by the Romans, the battle for Jerusalem has become the flashpoint of a 4000 year-old conflict. The age-old family feud between two half brothers whose father was Abraham -- Ishmael and Isaac has exploded upon our current scene and drug the world into it. The Arabs are the descendents of Ishmael. They have always believed that the Israelites
cheated them out of their inheritance. About AD 622, this deep 4000 year-old resentment became part of a new religion that was started by one of Ishmael's sons, Mohammad. The religion of Islam is intensely woven around the Arab culture and passions. So wherever Islam has been embraced, Ishmael's passionate hatred toward the Jew has been embraced with it.

The Power Of Religious

Tradition Many years after Muhammad's death, some teachers of Islam began to claim something that would bind the passions of all Muslims to Jerusalem forever. A myth was created that Muhammad and his horse were miraculously flown to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the night of his death. Muhammad ascended to heaven on his horse from the rock on which Abraham had been willing to sacrifice his son. And of course they believe that the son was Ishmael, not Isaac. Based on this teaching, Jerusalem is the third Holiest Site in Islam. Only Mecca and Medina are seen as more important. The blood that has been spilled because of this teaching is beyond calculation. And yet the past is nothing compared to the blood that is soon to be spilled over this. According to the Prophet Zechariah, this ancient conflict between Ishmael and Isaac over Jerusalem will by the fuse that starts the last war of the world. Now that this issue has been made part of Islam and Judaism, solving it is impossible. Muslims believe that to give Israel Jerusalem, is to confess that the Qur'an and the Hadith, the holiest teachings of Islam, are wrong. Israelis believe that to give up Jerusalem is the same as saying their Holy Bible is wrong, and that all of their sufferings in exile were for nothing.

 

The Only City God Claims as His Own

To sum it up, this is what the Jew believes is at stake here. Jerusalem is part of being a Jew and part of being a Jew is Jerusalem. Without one, the other cannot exist. It is the city of the Promise. Isaiah predicts that Jerusalem will be the world's capital city during the Messiah's 1000 year reign on earth. The survival of Jerusalem is critical to the survival of Judaism. To the Jew, if Jerusalem ceased to be, then the Bible would be wrong. God Himself calls Jerusalem His holy city at least eleven times. And it is the only city on earth so designated. God declares, "it is the City called by my Name." As I previously mentioned, Jesus said that "Jerusalem would be trodden down by the Gentiles UNTIL the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled." Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Romans and Byzantines until 638 BC. The invading Muslims drove them out and held the city until the 11th century. It changed hands a number of times after
that. Then came the Crusaders. The City was passed back and forth between the Crusaders and the Muslims until the 13th Century. Saladin permanently drove out the Crusaders at that time. The Mamelukes of Egypt took over in the 14th century. Jerusalem fell to the Ottomon Turks in 1517. The city was ignored for the next five hundred years. Jerusalem was of no importance in the Muslim Turkish Empire. The final stages of Jerusalem's destiny was set up by the British take over in 1917. When the Britishterminated their Mandate over Palestine May 15th, 1948, the Israelites declared the State of Israel. After nearly twenty centuries of war, conquest and neglect, the city survived. And so did the Jews, confidently praying each Passover, "Next year, in Jerusalem". More than 2500 years ago, the Psalmist wrote of Jerusalem, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."

 

Who Owns Jerusalem?

The Israelis claim ownership of the city as their historical capital. In other words, they claim right of prior ownership. The Israelis have a legal claim to the city as the spoils of war. The Israelis captured the city in 1967 when they defeated the invading Arab armies, including Jordan. Israel also captured what was historically Judea and Samaria. Today, it's called the West Bank. The Jordanian citizens caught on the wrong side of the border at the end of the war were abandoned by their government. They were shoved into refugee camps and presented to the world as the Palestinian people. From one of these refugee camps in 1968 emerged Yasser Arafat and, overnight, Jordanian refugees were transformed into the 'Palestinian people'. President Clinton said the Camp David talks failed because of the two sides' refusal to compromise over Jerusalem. Jerusalem was founded by King David. God gave title deed to Jerusalem to only one people, the Jews. Jerusalem is the only city with a place in eternity. The Arabs say Jerusalem is their holy city, despite the shabby treatment it historically received at their hands and the lack of support for that designation in their Koran. By the mid-19th century, the city was a neglected backwater where Jews were in the majority. Israel refuses to divide the city, claiming it will remain their eternal, undivided capital forever. Yasser Arafat demands the city be divided and the half with the Temple Mount be given to him for his capital city. Both sides can't be right. King Solomon was once faced with a similarly perplexing dilemma. Two women both claimed the same baby. Solomon offered to divide the child in half. One woman agreed, the other refused. Solomon concluded the one
with the right to the child is the one who refused to divide it. It will take someone with the wisdom of Solomon to get these two sides to agree on anything where Jerusalem is concerned.

 

Dividing the Indivisible

At the Camp David meetings, the US and Israel supported a plan that would give Yasser Arafat his Palestinian state and his capital in Jerusalem. You'd think that finally, Arafat would have jumped at the offer, if peace was truly on his agenda. That solution would have expanded Jerusalem's borders, then redivide the city. The expansion would include West Bank Jewish settlements into the new Israeli city of Yerushalyim, Hebrew for Jerusalem. The new borders would also incorporate Arab villages into the city. That portion would become the Arab capital Al Quds. The Palestinian parliament would be in the Arab neighborhood of Abu Dis, in sight of the Dome on the Temple Mount. This sleight of hand with the borders of the city would give the Arabs everything they previously demanded. Arafat
turned it down. It was a good thing for Barak that he did. Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Olmert was furious. As he put it, "it's either a divided Jerusalem or its not." Any compromise involving Jerusalem would have failed in the Knesset anyway. Nearly a third of Israelis are ultra-Orthodox Jews. Without their support, Barak's government would collapse like a house of cards. If Arafat had accepted the compromise, it is unlikely he would have survived long enough to sign it. The prophet Zechariah said that in the last days, Jerusalem would become a "burdensome stone" and that all who try to shoulder that burden will be "cut to pieces." The warning is given to "all the people of the earth [gathered] against it." The prophet Daniel prophesied that someone would come up with a workable peace plan. Daniel 9:27 speaks of someone confirming a seven year covenant between Israel and her enemies. The covenant is broken mid-way through over an incursion intothe same holy places currently responsible for Camp David's failure. Do you see a pattern here? Today, the only path to peace involved dividing the indivisible. But a form of peace will come. Somebody will come up with a solution to the thorniest foreign policy problem in history. Hailed as agreat peacemaker, he will rise to global power.

 

The Modern Period of Western Interference

In 1917, the Balfour Declaration gave most of the land of the Middle East to the Jews. The grant was given in gratitude for the invention of an important new weapon by a Zionist Jew named Weizman. After World War One, the British realized the Arabs had all the oil. At the San Remo Conference in 1923, Churchill redrew the map of the Middle East - freehand - dividing whole tribes into different nations. In the process, Churchill gave away most of the land promised by the Balfour Declaration. In one stroke, Churchill set in motion most of the conflicts of the Middle East of the 20th century. In recent times, the balance of power in the Middle East has been shifting like the desert sands. Last week, the Pentagon announced a $900 million arms deal with Egypt to improve 35 Apache attack helicopters. The deal also includes advanced detection equipment for Egypt's air force of US built F16s. The Pentagon closed a $500 million deal with Saudi Arabia involving delivery of 5000 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. And we sold Kuwait $190 million worth of artillery and tanks. Thanks to the Soviets, and now to the US arms industry, the Middle East is a huge armed encampment, waiting to explode.

 

The "Peacemaker"

Jerusalem, the city of peace, has known only war for most of the last two thousand years. Between the wars, its various invaders occupied it. When not being contested in battle, its occupiers and the world at large largely ignored it. By the nineteenth century, few Americans even knew it still existed as a real city. Today, it is headline news on a daily basis. Most Americans know more about Jerusalem than they do about any other city on earth apart from Washington and their own hometown. Exactly the way the Bible predicted it would be, thousands of years in advance. The same prophets also predicted the coming peacemaker. Those prophecies were dependent on the fulfillment of Jerusalem's unlikely position on the world's center stage. Jerusalem is where it should be in the last days, a powder keg, both politically and spiritually. The powder keg of the Middle East is tailor made for Daniel's peacemaker. The Apostle John spoke of this coming peacemaker as the "rider on the white horse. " He's the first of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. John sees him with a bow, the symbol of war, but no arrows. Daniel says that "by peace [he shall] destroy many" before he is "broken without hand" by the Prince of peace. He is the antichrist, and the stage is set for his appearance.

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