The Arab Agenda
On the Arab side of the current peace initiative, the best proof that what the press reports to us is not true is the fact that Yassir Arafat is still alive. Does anyone remember Anwar el-Sadat? He offered a proposal for peace that allowed for Israel’s ongoing existence, and Islamic extremists promptly murdered him for it. Why? Because for any Muslim (adherent to Islam) to permit the infidels (non-Muslims) to retain the holy places like El Quds (Jerusalem) and Khalil (Hebron) is an unthinkable betrayal of the Qur’an. A fatwa (death sentence) will always follow such a stance for an Arab leader. Arab mayors of “Palestinian”4 hamlets throughout Yehuda v’Shomron (Judea and Samaria) have been terrorized into submission by this reality.

Why Does Arafat Yet Live?
     There can be only one answer. He must have spoken with all the Arab leaders in the region before beginning work on the Oslo Accords and assured them his apparent acceptance of Israeli existence is not genuine; it is only a step in the phased destruction of Israel. Ironically, he is borrowing a tactic straight from Ben Gurion, who said, “Give me a state the size of a postage stamp.” Because, once a territory becomes an independent state, it can legally arm itself via the world arms market. In the Arab language media, Arafat has made it clear that Oslo is only a step in the 1970’s plan  (which calls for the phased destruction of Israel). It is only in the western media  – where readers are addicted to Hollywood endings– that Arafat plays the role of a conciliator. The Palestinian Arabs are clearly positioning themselves for a future coordinated strike against Israel, with simultaneous attacks from within her defensible borders and from without. In the past, no assault purely from without has ever succeeded against Israel. A new tactic is needed, and it can only be made possible by strategic positioning. This is what the PLO and the more extreme Arab factions are after. An agreement that only appears to accommodate Israel is the only reason Islamic fundamentalists could permit an apparent traitor to Islam like Arafat to live.

The Israeli Agenda
     On the Israeli side, given these realities, I believe the general staff of the Israeli army has made a grave but necessary decision. It is similar to what New York Times Middle East correspondent Tom Friedman described in the epilogue to his startling book, From Beirut to Jerusalem. Israel has decided to give her adversary enough rope to hang himself. They have said to their enemy,  “Neither of us can have all of what we want, but you can have a significant piece of what you want. If you are sincere about your desire for long-term mutual survival, then we will give you a state, and we can work from there to build a future side-by-side for both our peoples. But if you misuse the concessions we make to build a hostile force for the destruction of our Jewish State – the next time you attack us, we will throw you over the Jordan River forever.”
     I believe Israel has made a difficult decision that will cost her a great deal of blood; but there appears to be no other pragmatic way. She is sure her jealous foe who desires to possess all of her land, not just part of it (see Ezekiel chapters 34-35) will one day attack her again. This time in a coordinated effort involving the surrounding nations sympathetic to Palestinian Arab goals. No Palestinian State will coexist alongside Israel peaceably for the long term. When they do attack again, Israel will have the excuse she has needed to act. She will then be the attacked party, and under international law she will have the right both to defend herself and to advance territorially upon the areas she gave away, and retake them with impunity.

Misplaced Optimism
     Does anyone think merciless tyrants like Hafez el-Assad are really graciously permitting Israelis to live in areas like the Golan Heights out of some kind of hitherto unseen largess on their part? Let’s not forget that Assad is the man who murdered over ten thousand human beings in the region of Hama because they did not support his political party. He had an entire village plowed under in the middle of the night while people slept, burying thousands alive. Oh no, Syria does not refrain from attacking the Golan because of a peace initiative; she does not attack because she knows she cannot win. Israel has the neutron bomb and Syria does not. (The neutron bomb kills people but leaves machinery and architecture intact.) Any military materiel that Syria used to attack the Goal would simply fall into the hands of the Israelis. They would let Syria massively occupy the Goal, then set off a neutron burst in the atmosphere, and after all the Syrian soldiers in the occupying force die from radiation poisoning - just take the Goal and the hardware left behind. Not a pretty picture - but an immensely practical one.

Who Would Want Apocalypse?
     Let me be clear, I am the least apocalyptic person I know. I do not long for the end of the world, I do not sit around rooting for God to zap people not presently aligned with his Word (I was such a person once, and I appreciate the patience He extended to me). I do not want our half-brothers – the Arabs – to go through what it appears they must experience in order to be delivered from the deception of Islam.
     However, despite my peace-aspiring nature, I am also a realist. I seek to be what John F. Kennedy called, “an idealist without illusions.”5  Randall Wallace wrote,” Some things cannot be settled by the sword; and some things  cannot be settled without one.”6 Sadly, this is true. Adolf Hitler could not have been reasoned into abandoning his quest for Aryan supremecism, neither can Islamic hegemony be abated by mere argument. The Scriptures describe in detail the nature of the Islamic delusion upon the Arab nations surrounding Israel (see Ezekiel chapters 34-35), and what God is planning on doing to remedy it. This is not easy reading; however, it is not without hope. At the end of every step in His plans to end the Islamic deception, He says, “... and then you will know that I am the Lord.”
     Our Half-Brothers Will Finally Understand Spiritual Reality.
     They will finally see the Qur’an, while definitely supernatural in origin is not godly in origin. (Muhammad, who wrote it, is called Allah’s unlettered prophet because he was illiterate.) Supernatural and Godly are not synonymous. God will expose the false premise of Islam – that God became fed up with Jewish non-submission to His will, and therefore replaced Israel by transplanting His divine commission to the sons of Ishmael. (Jeremiah 31:35-37) He will reveal the absolute failure of the Qur’an to meet the two acid-tests of divine writ – perfect prophetic accuracy and perfect alignment with previously established revelation (Deut. 18:17-22, Isaiah 8:20). Then, its claim to be the sequential heir to the Tanakh and New Testament will be eradicated. That will be a good day for all mankind. Unfortunately, that day has not yet arrived.
Here And Now
    Until that day, Israelis live with a fierce reality. They are tired of policing a huge hostile internal population. The In tifada7, staged by the PLO, was a classic Middle East maneuver in the style of the fedayeen (terrorist) excursions of the 1930’s through 50’s: if you cannot destroy your enemy in a direct attack, then wear him down by picking at his morale. There is a heavy toll taken on Israeli Zionist idealism when school buses are being blown up and katyushas are landing on kindergartens in the Galilee. There is almost no Israeli family that does not know someone having lost a dear one in a military conflict. After three generations of such a harsh life, Israelis are battle weary and ready for it to end.

But How To End It?
     If Israel tried unilaterally to expel its Arab population, world opinion would come crashing down on her in a manner leaving her totally isolated and
resourceless. A mere few years ago, when the Israeli army in an attempt to defend them selves, staged Operation Sheleg (Shalom l’Galil – Peace for Galilee) to clear out a security zone so the PLO encampments in southern Lebanon could not casually keep lobbing Syrian supplied shoulder-fired katyusha rockets into the villages of northern Israel, world opinion practically crucified the Israeli government. Imagine if Israel were to attempt unilaterally moving the Palestinian population out of the country? There is no way to forcibly relocate millions of human beings without becoming a political pariah. Yet, Israel cannot survive the moral and spiritual erosion of having to live as a police state for much longer.
     Any sane person would have to wish the reality of the situation were
happier. If only our half-brothers could be content with their own huge lot, rather than insisting on acquiring our little patch of turf. As Ariel Sharon is so fond of saying, “There is a Palestinian State: it is called Jordan.”  Why is what they already have not enough? Why must they have Israel too?
 The reason the Arab world is compulsively dedicated to reacquiring the land of Israel has nothing to do with the concerns of the post-1948 and post-1967 refugees. They are mere pawns played by the leadership of the surrounding Arab powers in a much larger chess-game. The reasons are not political; they are ideological – and spiritual. One cannot end an ideological match by mere pragmatics. Checkmate in this game will occur when militarily and politically, one side’s grip on the turf of the Holy Land becomes totally unassailable, and when the root spiritual deception is eliminated. The Nazis learned by being defeated that Aryans were not the supreme race. Hitler ceased to be seen as a divine deliverer because his agenda was crushed and he was driven to suicide. Soviet communism fell because it failed to achieve the promised results. Again, not a pretty reality, but one from which we can learn.
    Islam is going to be revealed as a deception because its agenda is going to be frustrated entirely. The theopolitical leaders calling themselves ayat’ullah  (the ears of God) will be openly revealed as false prophets leading their flocks to massive harm.
     Who Would Not Wish There were An Easier Way?
     Presently, the Holy Land cannot be wrested by Arab powers from Israel’s grip by pure force. She is too strong. Yet, she cannot unilaterally use that strength to eliminate the enemy corroding her from within. Her enemy is convinced Israel can be defeated, and is in the process of developing positioning to play its chosen endgame.8
    Hence, Israel Must Wait – And We Must All Wait With Her.
    Their motto must be “Pray for peace, but keep your Uzi well-oiled.”
    This kind of waiting is not easy.
     Israel’s prophets foretold we would return to our own land – and we
have.9 Israel’s prophets foretold there would one day be immense conflict between Israel and the nations surrounding her; and we are headed that way.10
 Israel’s prophets foretold that the outcome of that conflict would be that our Arabian half-brothers would have clarity regarding the existence of God. 11
     The Qur’an also declares (contrary to both Testaments of Jewish Scripture from which it claims to emanate) 12 “Allah forbid that God should have a Son. God has no son.”13  As believers in the Son, Messianic Jews pray that even as God will surely one day remove Islamic deception concerning the right to Eretz Yisrael – even so, may He make clear the Name of the Messiah-Redeemer among all Arab nations ... and our own people, even as He promised (Zechariah 12:10ff). “In that day, the Lord shall be One, and His name (reputation) One.”

 What A Day That Will Be.
     I was in Jerusalem a short while ago, praying at the Kotel (Western Wall), and from the entrance to the ascent into the Dome of the Rock area came the chant of the Islamic muezzin, crying out “Allah, hu akhbar.” (Allah is great.) I take the liberty in such moments to imagine the peace of hearing –“Yeshua hu akhbar.” – and from multitudes of Jews and Arabs gathered there in peace, come cries of Ameen and Amayn so that one cannot be distinguished from the other.
    That is a day many long to see.
    Y’hi r’tzohn bimhayra b’yamaynu.
    May it be His will, speedily and in our days.
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FOOTNOTES
1. Al-Tawbah 9:73, al-Maidah 5:33-34, al-Anfal 5:59
2. Ezekiel 36:8
3. Abbreviation for zikhrono l’vrahka (may his memory be for a blessing)
4. I put “Palestinian” in quotes because there is, in fact, no such thing as
“Palestine.” The land of Israel was given the name Syria Palestina (Syria of
the Philistines) by the Romans as an insult to Jewish national existence and
a deliberate attempt to undermine it. Palestine is a modern warp of the term P
hilistine; and the land of Israel does not, and never will, belong to the
Philistines. Much of the modern Middle Eastern map derives from sources
having nothing to do with Scripture, history or international law. The
present nation of Jordan is a fine example of this, being the creation of two
very human sources: Abdallah of Mecca and Winston Churchill of England.
Abdallah migrated from Arabia northward into the area across the Jordan River
from Israel with his army of retainers and squatted the land. Churchill, then
in the Foreign Secretariat, decided on England’s behalf that rather than
fight Abdallah, he would confirm him as ‘emir’ of Transjordan – and
nation-identity invented for the expediency of British and Arab interests.
There never was any ancient nation Jordan with any rights to claim
sovereignty over the turf the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan now claims. They
hold the land by less legitimate military and political means than those they
decry against Israel for claiming her ancient hereditary dwelling.
5. Quoted by former Kennedy White House press secretary, Pierre Salinger.
6. Wallace, Randall The Man in the Iron Mask. Screenplay 1997 United Artists
Pictures Inc.
7. Arabic for “Uprising” – in Hebrew, “heet-komo-mút.”
8. In chess, the “opening book” and the mid-game are most often played to
position the remaining pieces for the “endgame,” in which the results of the
preparatory strategies can be seen as they are executed. The endgame is what
reveals the winner of the match.
9. Deuteronomy 30:1-5, Ezekiel 36:18ff, Jeremiah 30:1ff
10. Obadiah 1, Ezekiel 34 & 35, Zechariah 12:1ff
11. Ezekiel 34 & 35. Isaiah 11-12
12. Psalm 2, 1John 2:22-23
13. Al-Nisa 4:17ff
 

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