I was wondering if you could give me some insight on the present crisis concerning Israel and the Palestinians. Many of us in our church are supporters of Israel and long for the world to recognize its right to the land that God gave them. There are a few, though, who argue that it is illegal to build on land that has been taken in war – as declared by the Geneva convention. This confuses me as I know God’s law is higher than man made law, but how is it OK for Israel to break the law when we expect other countries to abide by it?
If you check a map that shows the land Israel was originally given by the UN for its national homeland, you will see that it included all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Because of Arab complaints, the UN proposed a partition of the land between Jews and Arabs. But the Arabs refused, planning instead to conquer all of it. As soon as Israel declared itself to be an independent nation, the Arabs attacked but were only able to occupy what we now call the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. In 1967 the Arabs attacked again and this time Israel took these areas back. The world has chosen to ignore the fact that Israel was really re-claiming some of the land it had originally been given.