Israel: Whose land is it?
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[edit] Ownership
Ownership appears to be a straightforward concept. For example: I own a pen. Because I own it, I can do with it as I choose. I can write, I can draw, I can ever break it in little pieces and throw it out if I choose. If you take it from me through force or guile, you are considered a thief! Thus my ownership is protected by society and indeed by the laws of God. (Ex 20:15)
However, when the concept of ownership gets applied to my house and the land it is on, things start to get murky. While I might have a title to the land, arguably you could say that the bank 'owns' the house. After all, I have only really paid for a fraction of its cost. And I must pay the bank thousands of dollars every year, in order to retain the so called ‘ownership’ of my house. If I fail to make that payment, they will take my land, and my house, and no law will protect me. However, This is not the case for everyone. Some of you may have paid off your mortgages and have no obligation to the bank. Surely you own your land and house?
Even though you may not owe the bank any money, what you build on your land is subject to local laws and regulations. While you might technically ‘own’ the land, you actually cannot do with it as you please. If your land happens to be above an oil reserve or a coal seam you don’t actually own the oil or the coal. So your ownership is limited to a certain depth. Likewise, you do not own the air above your house. All manner of aerial vehicles are free to navigate through your air-space and there is nothing you can do about it. So we pay all this money for a strip of dirt and a few meters of air above it, and have to be subject to all sorts of regulations as to what you can build on it and where you can built it. And then there’s property tax. If you don’t pay the city every year a certain amount (which they choose), you will lose your land.
So what kind of ownership is it where you have to continually pay in order to retain your 'ownership'? Yet even if you pay your property taxes, and remain subject to the myriads of rules and regulation governing what you can do on 'your' land... what happens if the government decides to put a highway through the area, and your house and land happen to be in the way? You get kicked out, and your house gets demolished. in our enlightened Western societies they will generally pay you a token amount for it. What kind of ownership is it when an entity can force you to sell at any point, and can decide on your behalf what they will pay you for it?
Our ownership of land seems very tenuous. Somebody in an office at the department of highways, poring over a map, can uproot you at will. Subject to their boss, of course. And that boss is subject to another boss, all the way to the prime minister of Canada, I suppose. So while we are slaving away to get 'ownership' of some small piece of land, its ultimate fate lies in the hand of some government official.
[edit] Where did the land come from?
Where did they get the land? After all, the land you have was probably bought from someone who bought from someone who bought from someone who bought it from the government. Who gave them the land?
Well, they took it, generally by force, from its prior owners, the Canadian Aboriginal Peoples. What moral right did they have to claim the land as their own?
None that I know of.
So here we live, in houses built on land sold to us by government which generally took it by force from its previous owners.
The concept of ownership has gotten terribly complicated when talking about land, and we have ended up in a bit of an ethical mine-field. After all, if someone steals a stereo and sells it you, and then you find the original owner, are you not obliged to return the stereo? Yet Canadians are not willing to do this with their land.
[edit] Canada vs Israel
So what does this have to do with Israel... The situation in Canada is simple compared with the complications of land ownership in Israel. Israel consists of a small strip of land conquered by the Jews under Joshua, thousands of years ago. The land was subsequently inhabited by the Jews for thousands of years. They were kicked out by the Babylonians, restored by the Persians. After the Romans finally annihilated the resident Jews in AD 70, the land was occupied by Ottomans, Arabs and others. After WWI the British took control of it under the auspices of the League of Nations (precursor to the UN). The UN then split the land between the Jews and the Palestinians in 1948 and the British withdrew. The Jews declared independence and established the state of Israel, and were immediately invaded by five Arab armies. Over the next 50 years they endured five major wars and continual terrorism; and the extent of their control of the land has increased with each war.
So relative to the Middle East the Canadian situation is relatively simple. The land has basically changed hands but once, and that in the last few hundred years. In Israel, the land has changed hands almost too many times to count, and the process goes back thousands of years. So this brings us to perhaps the thorniest question in the Middle East today: Whose land is it?
[edit] Ownership Formulas
There are many ways to see to answer this question. For instance we could say: Whoever has control of the land now. (which is how the Canadian government largely deals with the issue locally) But of course that would mean that most of Israel should belong to the Jews, and should they control more land, that land would belong to them too. Hardly a popular opinion these days...
You could say: Whoever had it before the current owners took it. This would give a good chunk of the Middle East back to the Arabs. Of course, it would also give practically all of Canada back to the native population. It is popular for world government to hold this position in regard to Israel, but not in regard to their own lands.
But even then the problem is: How far back do you go? For ultimately it was Ottoman land before it was Palestinian, and Roman before that; so should ownership go back to Italy? Or do we go back further and give it all back to the Jews. Of course if you go back to specific moments of history, you could argue the land all belonged to Babylon, so perhaps Iraq should have it? Clear as mud isn't it.
Or we could take the democratic approach: Give the land to the largest ethnic group of people that inhabit it (if they want their own country). Sounds fairly reasonable, and indeed most promising talks center on this concept. Unless you’re talking about Quebec. Or California. Or certain ethnic districts of many large world metropolises. The Canadian government, for instance, has clearly stated that even if a majority of people in Quebec want to secede, they will not be permitted to do so. What if the Mexican population which has moved to California were to try to break apart and join Mexico? There is no way that would be permitted. When the southern American states tried to break away from the North it precipitated the bloodiest war in history up to that point, all in the name of preventing secession. Then you have Chechnya, Tibet, Kashmir, Kosovo, and the list goes on.
So the more we examine it the more we can see that there really isn't a clear universal formula on determining who owns (or has the moral right to own) a certain piece of land.
[edit] Biblical Answers?
If we are believers in the Bible we should try to determine the answers to these questions based on Godly principles and scriptural passages, not the political whims of the world. So even if what we find is in contradiction with the current perspectives of society, or even if every world leader disagrees with our conclusion, we are obligated to accept God's perspective over man's.
Rom 3:4 Let God be true and every man a liar.
[edit] Promises to Jacob and Abraham
What does the Bible tells us about land ownership and the Middle East? There are many passages that deal with the issue but we will present a few:
Jacob is the father of the Jewish nation. God promised Jacob that the lands on which he lay God would give to him and to his descendants. A similar promise was made to Abraham which introduces another concept:
"Forever". In these passages the locations and dimensions are a little vague. For Abraham we have all the land he could see, and for Jacob we have the land where he lay. But in Genesis 15 God makes it clear what the boundaries of the land are going to be:
Genesis 15:18 (More complete border description can be found in Numbers 34)
Here are few other verses on the topic:
The Bible states unequivocally that the Middle East, from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates belongs to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This puts us in an interesting quandary: Any Jews who today suggest that this range of territory should be theirs are considered extreme radicals! Most (if not all) countries with predominantly Bible believing populations are usually pressuring Israel to give up some of the land which it has captured during various Arab invasions. Yet according to Jewish law, it is actually forbidden for the Jews to sell or give up their land.
Even if land was sold, the law required that it be returned to its original owner on the year of jubilee. So we can perhaps begin to understand why Jewish radicals are radical. After all, they feel they will be breaking God’s commandments by giving the land to the Palestinians.
The Bible's position on the ownership of the land of Israel is nothing less than radical from a modern day political perspective.
[edit] Conditional Possession
We should be careful to point out that this ownership is never meant to imply that Jewish people by nature are more righteous or more deserving than other individuals.
Deuteronomy 9:4-6 (Deut 7:7-9)
The reason they are given the land is because of promises that God made to their righteous fathers. This is also the reason why their unrighteousness (in participating in the death of Jesus, for instance) does not nullify the promise. Indeed, no action of theirs can reverse what God guaranteed to Abraham.
The other point we need to consider is that if the land has been promised to them eternally, how is it that they have been absent from it on various occasions? After all, their last absence (which has been the longest) is really what has produced the current crisis with regard to the Palestinian population which has made its home there.
Well, in Deuteronomy we find that if the nation of Israel turns away from God, God will exile them from their own land:
As has happened on several occasions in history, Israel's disobedience has led to them being scattered across the face of the earth.
[edit] Guaranteed Return
Yet if we continue reading the passages above (and others) we find what will happen after the scattering:
- Leviticus 26:42,44,45
- Jeremiah 24:6-7
- Jeremiah 33:25-26
- Jer 33:7
- Amos 9:14-15
- Ezek 20:41-44
- Jer 12:15-16
- Ezek 11:16-20
- Ezek 36:24-38
- Ezek 37:1-14
- Ezek 37:21-28
And there are dozens more verses to the same effect. Though Israel's disobedience may cause them to lose their land, the loss will inevitably be temporary and God will restore them to their land again. In fact this is a powerful testament to the veracity of scripture and the faithfulness of God. Is their current possession the ultimate? It may be, it may not be, ultimately it's not our business (Matt 24:36).
[edit] Relevance to us and Christianity
However, we must ask whether the issue is even relevant to Christianity. Is the Jewish nation and Jewish land still something that matters to God under this New Covenant or New Testament? After all, the Jews rejected the Messiah and had him killed, did they not?
Consider a verse quoted earlier: Let God be true and every man a liar. Read a few verses back to consider the context: Rom 3:1-4. The fact that the Jews are faithless (with respect to Christ) does not in any way nullify the covenant or pact which God made with their forefathers. Thus, though every man insist otherwise, God will not revoke his commitment to the Jewish people.
Consider Romans 11:1-6,11,17,18,25. God always retains a remnant of his people, and their salvation will by grace and not works. Their turning away will also only be for a limited time: until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
So the Jews and the Jewish nation have not been discarded from God's plan due to their disobedience, because the promises that God made to Abraham Isaac and Jacob were never conditional on the obedience of the nation in the first place.
Consider Hebrew 11, the famous chapter dealing with the men of faith:
This brings us into the picture along with Abraham, our ultimate fate is tied to theirs.
If we are Christ's we are Abraham's seed (or sons of Abraham) and heirs according to the promise! What promise? Well, for one, the promise of a land, eternally.
It is evident that Jesus' disciples expected Jesus to restore the kingdom of Israel. That was their hope.
[edit] Summary
God made a promise to Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob that they and their descendants would inherit the land of Israel forever. (Gen 14)
God made a promise to David king of Israel that his house, his kingdom and his throne would be established forever. (1 Sam 7)
God has made a promise to us, that if we believe (John 3:16) in Jesus as the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Mat 1:1), that we too can play a part in these promises. (Gal 3:29)
The only question that remains is: Do you believe that God will keep His promises?
Let God be true, though every man a liar.
