The Pope Calls for a Palestinian State

While visiting Israel on his Middle East tour, Pope Benedict XVI suggested that implementation of a Palestinian State should come soon. His comment was met with the customary caution or outright objection of Israeli leaders who refuse this plan until law, order and respect for the existing Israeli State can be guaranteed.

One of the most tangled issues of the modern world eludes solution because of misunderstood history and ignorance of the prophetic Scriptures.

There has never been a "Palestinian people" of ethnic or religious solidarity. Palestinians, if they ever existed, would hark back to the Philistines of Old Testament Bible times. They occupied the general area we now call the Gaza Strip and also encompassed the geographic locales of the five Philistine cities listed in the Bible: Gaza, Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron. The names "Palestine" and "Palestinians" evidently derive from "Philistines." From the 1500s to 1917, the entire region was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, which was centered in Turkey and was the last vestige of Muslim dominance until its resurgence in our day.

As a settlement of World War I, which saw the Ottomans’ demise since they had sided with the Germans who were defeated by the British and French, Palestine came to be known as the area comprising all of modern Israel and Jordan. Various ethnic and religious groups (Arabs, Jews, Christians and Muslims, etc.) were scattered across the region, contradicting the notion of a "Palestinian" people, much less a nation.

From 1948, when a two-state settlement was offered to Jews and Arabs, Egypt occupied Gaza, Syria occupied Golan, and Jordan occupied the West Bank (Biblical Judea and Samaria). In the ’67 and ’73 wars, these areas were captured by Israel. Not one of the previous Arab occupiers ever remotely planned a Palestinian State anywhere. The current calls for a Palestinian State are based on the fantasy of a Palestinian people but are a desirable political whipping boy against Israel.

Will there be a Palestinian State despite all this? Yes. Should Israel presently have all the land God promised her in the Old Testament? No, not now.

In the original conquest of the Promised Land, Philistia was never under complete Israelite control (Judges 1-3) since they failed to completely drive out the inhabitants in disobedience to God’s command (Numbers 33:51 & 52). As a consequence, any Philistines not driven out by the time of Joshua’s death would be left to try Israel as Judges 2:21-23 clearly teaches.

Israel evacuated the Gaza strip area three years ago. Isaiah 11:14 predicts a Palestinian entity toward the end of prophetic time ("the shoulder of the Philistines"). Israel is predicted to retake the Gaza area in the future, probably when national repentance and acceptance of Christ at His return gives them full access to what they lost through disobedience. That great day of national restoration and deliverance is outlined in Zechariah 12-14.

Read these passages and read the newspapers, for the curtain is about to rise on these final prophetic dramas.

Dave Virkler