It has been a busy week in Israel since we came home. While we were in Israel, a family living in one of the contested settlements was murdered. Then, Israel approved the expansion of settlements into the West Bank (even though the UN has repeatedly told Israel that they should stop this type of expansion). This week, Israel has hit Gaza with multiple airstrikes. Today, Palestine shot rockets into Beersheva and Israeli forces responded by attacking the rocket site. Last, but certainly not least, after four years of relative safety from bombings in Jerusalem, a bomb exploded in Jerusalem today, killing one and injuring many.
All of this is very sobering for me, because these things happening only one week earlier could have created a dangerous situation for my visit. I thank God for His protection over us while we were in Jerusalem, driving through the West Bank, just miles from the northern and eastern borders on the Golan Heights, and in every other place we visited last week. While this chain of events makes me reevaluate the sense of safety that I had while visiting Israel, I still have confidence that my life was, and is, in God's hands, and I would not have done anything differently. Praise God for His goodness to us in this situation, and please pray for Israel.
From the legal side, the conclusion we came to about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was that it is "complicated." These events will likely escalate things from both sides, raise security for Israel, which will in turn make the Palestinians feel they are being squashed and discriminated against, which may lead to more attacks, which could start the cycle all over again. There are many people who are hopeful for peace and a resolution to the conflict. While this is possible, it is far off, especially when the aforementioned event reinforce the distrust between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. In other news today, Israel passed a law that would deny funding to "institutions" that did not recognize Israel as a Jewish State. I don't know whether this law would survive scrutiny before the Israeli Supreme Court. It very well may. Even if it doesn't, the fact that the Knesset took this step creates another barrier between the Palestinian and Israeli people. Currently things are not the worst they have been in this conflict, but it definitely seems to me that some ground has been lost. The sad thing to think about is that more people have died in this conflict today, and more families have lost loved ones on both sides.
I honestly don't know where all of this is going. My dispensational friends strongly believe that Israel has a huge role in an accelerating story line toward an end times climax. My covenental friends say that the church essentially replaced Israel as the group through whom God's blessing was brought unto the world. I'm not one to draw quick conclusions, and I'm not fully sold on all aspects of either theology. But what I do know is:
1) There were 18 million Jews before WWII
2) There were 12 million Jews after WWII
3) There have been three major attempts to destroy Israel in it's first 64 years of existence (War of Independence, Six Day War, Yom Kippur). Against all odds, all of these attempts failed.
4) Jews have survived much better than their ancient neighbors.
I'm not going to draw any conclusions from these facts, but I would be leery of dismissing the physical existence of Israel too quickly. Israel has made some bad choices along the way, so I wouldn't turn a blind eye toward their actions. They should be held to the same standard as everyone else. I don't know where God is taking this land, but it seems that something is at work there. Those are my thoughts.
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