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Judea & Samaria – Known as the West Bank

February 28, 2020 By Bella Davidov Leave a Comment

Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
Welcome to Judea and Samaria (from Bella’s recent trip.)

Moses led the Hebrew nation out of Egypt about 1,300 BC. Muhammad originated Islam about 600 AD, about 1,900 years later. The offspring of Jacob, the Jews, predate the Muslims everywhere in the Middle East. The land of Judea was the Jewish nation before the Roman occupiers expelled and killed a large portion of the population during the Jewish wars of the first century and renamed it Palestina in an effort to blot out every connection of the Jewish people to the land. Palestina was the name of the small part of the land that was occupied by the Philistines along the southern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. [Read more in the article: “The Origin of Palestine”.]

Judea and Samaria.

Before the Muslim conquest in the 7th century CE, the land was occupied by both Christians and Jews. The population remained essentially unchanged from the days of the Byzantine occupation (324 CE – 640 CE), and the majority of the population consisted of Greek Orthodox Christians and two minorities – Jews and Samaritans. The number of Arabs settled in Palestine was negligible. Most of the Arabs who now declare themselves Palestinians immigrated to the area between the 19th and 20th centuries, during the Ottoman rule (1516 – 1918) and the British Mandate period (1918 –1948).

Proof that Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people are cities that the Oslo Accord gave to the Palestinians –Jericho, conquered by Joshua; Hebron, where Abraham bought the burial place for his wife Sarah and where Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Rebecca, and Leah are buried; Bethlehem – where Rachel is buried nearby and where Yeshua (Jesus) was born to Jewish parents; East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount, the City of David, and Golgotha, where Jesus the Jewish Messiah died, was buried and was resurrected.

There has never ever been a Palestinian state nor a political entity that belonged to the self-proclaimed Palestinians. Through all the international agreements from 1917 until 1947, the land designated Palestine was divided into three entities: Jordan, east of the Jordan River, and the suggested Jewish and Arab future states to be shared in the land west of the Jordan River. While the Jews reluctantly accepted this painful partition as better than nothing, an area much smaller than originally allocated to the Jewish state, the Arabs refused anything less than everything and launched a war of aggression against the new Jewish state of Israel in 1948. As a result of Israel’s victory, it gained additional land but was unable to hold Judea and Samaria or East Jerusalem which fell to the Jordanians who immediately occupied and annexed the areas, a violation of international law. At the same time, the Jordanians expelled Jews from their homes in East Jerusalem creating Jewish refugees.

During the Jordanian rule of Judea and Samaria, Arabs who were kept in refugee camps never claimed to establish a Palestinian state in that area. Rather, they adamantly refused to share the land with the Jews–land they previously refused and consequently lost in the 1948 war. Until today, the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians want to replace the land of Israel with what they still call Palestine. [See the article “The Origin of Palestine”.] In the1949 cease-fire, the Arabs refused to accept Israel’s victory and claimed that the borders drawn had no legal significance.

What is the Legal Status of Judea and Samaria

As of 1967, the territory legally belonged to no one, since the annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan was considered illegal. The British vacated in 1948 at the end of their mandate whereupon the War of Independence began. In 1949 at the end of the war, armistice boundary lines were drawn up but the Arabs refused to recognize them, insisting that the boundaries had no legal significance.

Therefore, according to international law, the land cannot be considered “occupied” but is considered “Disputed Territories”, a term used when there are territorial disputes.

In 1964 Arabs in those areas formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in order to reclaim Israel as their land of “Palestine.” It had nothing to do with the territory of the West Bank. They only began demanding rights to the West Bank once it too was in Israeli hands.

UNSC Resolution 242 doesn’t call for a complete and total withdrawal from ‘ALL captured territories’ nor does it call for a unilateral withdrawal only on the Israeli side, but just calls for a withdrawal from ‘captured territories’. The language of the resolution states that withdrawal must be made towards ‘Secure and Recognized Boundaries’ or defensible borders. Judea and Samaria is a special case because it was never part of a Palestinian state. Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza were all part of British-ruled Palestine, and Britain previously promised a national home for the Jewish people in the area, without specifying boundaries. On that basis, Israel maintains it has the right to extend sovereignty over the territories with a simple Cabinet vote, a position backed by the Trump administration.

However, most of the international community refuses to accept these facts and insists on referring to annexed east Jerusalem and the so-called West Bank as “occupied territory” because, they claim, the area was seized in war.

Israel insists that the Palestinian’s demand for Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries is absolutely not secure and safe borders. For years, Palestinian propaganda has claimed falsely that Israel is occupying their land, resulting in a new generation that does not know the facts of history. They believe the Palestinians are being ruled by Israel which has taken land that rightfully belongs to them.

According to all agreements with the Palestinians, beginning with the Oslo Accords of 1993, a permanent status solution of Judea and Samaria should be determined solely through negotiations, which have never taken place. According to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, Israel has agreed to give parts of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, but only in return for recognition as a Jewish state and guaranteed security, which has also never occurred.

Previous Prime Ministers of Israel, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert agreed to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in Gaza and in parts of Judea and Samaria. They offered both Arafat and Abbas respectively almost all of Judea and Samaria in exchange for real peace and security and mutual recognition.

Not only did the Palestinians refuse Barak’s peace offer to Arafat in the 2000 Camp David talks, but they began massive terror attacks as well as a campaign war of political propaganda to delegitimize Israel. In 2007, the propaganda intensified after Abbas refused another peace offer from Olmert’s offer in Annapolis.

  • Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Views neighborhoods of Judea and Samaria.
Judea and Samaria. The Biblical Heartland of Israel.

Filed Under: History, Politics, SideBarStoryWidget-second Tagged With: History, Judea and Samaria, West Bank

Out of the Ashes

January 23, 2020 By Bella Davidov Leave a Comment

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this city will be rebuilt for Me…The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley (near Jerusalem) on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the Lord. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.” 

 In many prophecies, the Lord God of Israel has promised to bring back His people, the Jewish people, from the diaspora back to the Land of Promise.

For 2000 years, the Jews were scattered around the world, at the mercy of the nations, hated, despised and persecuted. Their homeland, the Land of Israel, was devastated and overtaken by strangers. During the Holocaust in WWII, the German Nazis finally came up with the plan of their “Final Solution” to annihilate all the Jews. They were gathered from every European country into concentration camps to be murdered in gas showers and then cremated in gas. They were shot and tortured in ghettos. Six million Jews were murdered in the worst racial genocide the world has ever known. But out of the ashes of the dead bodies, the Jewish nation and the land of Israel was reborn.

Today, seventy-two years later, Israel is considered a miracle that could only have happened by the hand of God according to His prophecies in the Bible.

The Royalty, Presidents, Dignitaries who came to the Fifth Forum in Jerusalem this week.

“Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.” (Isaiah 66:8)

Most of the surviving, Jewish remnant was on the brink of starvation and Gentiles possessed their homes. Most were homeless and penniless. They were gathered by the Jewish Agency into refugee camps, waiting and hoping that Israel, which was changed to Palestine, would once again be the Land of the Jews.

For centuries the Jews were victims of pogroms, blood libels, forced conversions, expulsions and other forms of religious persecution. A small remnant, the holocaust survivors, reached the lowest point of human dignity.

The prophet Ezekiel prophesied of a time when the people of Israel would say: “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!” Yet God assured them that He would “cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.” (Ezekiel 37:11-12)

In May 1948, just three years after the end of the Holocaust, the Jewish people rose from the ashes, and in one day a nation was born – the Nation of Israel. The resurrection power of God did this miracle.

God promised He would fight for His people Israel, and He did. When Israel’s leader David Ben-Gurion declared independence on May 14, 1948, the Jewish state was immediately attacked by five neighboring Arab armies. These large trained armies were well-armed, while the new nation of Israel hardly had an army or weapons. Frail Holocaust survivors arriving in Israel by sea were given guns upon stepping down from the ships without even shoes on their feet. Arab leaders who had vowed to “drive the Jews into the sea” were sure they would win, but against all odds, Israel won.

Jews are the only people who were uprooted from their homeland, scattered among the nations, speaking their languages, and then after two thousand years have returned to that same land to re-establish their national sovereignty while reviving their ancient language. Yet, anyone who reads the Bible can see it was foretold in His word. One prophecy that repeats itself more than any other, by nearly all the prophets in the Bible, is God promising to gather His people Israel from all the corners of the world and bring them back to the Land of Israel as He promised their forefathers.

The Jewish people clung to God’s Word and promises in the Bible, which kept them together as a people even in all those nations where they were scattered. They never lost hope that one day God will fulfill His promises and they will come back to the Promised Land. In their prayers they said confidently: “Next year in Jerusalem!”

God’s ultimate purpose for the ingathering of Israel to the Land physically is Israel’s ingathering to Himself spiritually. His love for Israel is everlasting: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. 4 I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt.” Jeremiah 31:3-4

God is faithful to His Word both physically and spiritually. His faithfulness to His people Israel is expressed by Paul the apostle in Roman 11:15, when he writes about Israel (the Jewish people) who temporarily were “set aside” after rejecting the Gospel, which led to many gentiles coming to God. “what will their acceptance be? life the dead.”  Roman 11:15  “and so all Israel shall be saved.”  Roman 11:26

Filed Under: AntiSemitism, History, Our People, SideBarStoryWidget-second Tagged With: Anti-Semitism, History

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Judea & Samaria – Known as the West Bank

February 28, 2020

Moses led the Hebrew nation out of Egypt about 1,300 BC. Muhammad originated Islam about 600 AD, about 1,900 years later. The offspring of Jacob, the … [Read More...] about Judea & Samaria – Known as the West Bank

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