The Great Wall of Palestine

Prophecy students have been told for the past century that Ezekiel 38 and 39 prophesies a Russian invasion of "Israel" in the land of Palestine. I once fervently believed this as well. But upon closer examination, we find that Ezekiel's description of that nation being invaded does not fit with Palestine in its most basic detail.

Ezekiel 38:8 says "its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them." Israeli "security" issues are well known to be their top priority and governs nearly everything that they do. Who would attempt to argue that the Israelis now live in security?

Later, in verse 11 the invaders are made to say,

"I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who are at rest, that live securely, all of them living without walls, and having no bars or gates."

Ariel Sharon's Great Wall of Palestine either destroyed Ezekiel's prophecy, or else the prophecy is not about the Israeli state at all.

Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, confirms much of what I have written for many years. I have stated oftten that the Israelis do not really want peace. They want the land, and their long-term goal is to drive out all Palestinians, rather than establish a viable Palestinian state. To do this, they underhandedly promote Palestinian violence, so that they have the excuse to stop any peace process and impose more restrictions upon the Palestinians, hoping more of them will move to foreign countries.

Jimmy Carter supports my view in his analysis of the Palestinian elections. When the Palestinian Authority was set up some years ago, the Israelis refused to deal with Arafat. This bought them some time. Ariel Sharon then invaded and destroyed his compound, the police, and the economic system in Palestine. This empowered Hamas, an organization that the Israeli secret service had helped to create in 1982 to dilute Arafat's Fatah party.

The Israelis fear Hamas, but their government leaders love Hamas, for these "terrorists" provide them with an excuse to stop the peace process and to destroy the effectiveness of the Palestinian administration. In fact, as Jimmy Carter wrote on page 179,

"Fatah, the party of Arafat and Abbas, had become vulnerable because of its administrative ineffectiveness and alleged corruption. Another factor was that both Isarel and the United States had ignored Abbas as an acceptable negotiating partner in the search for peace, publicly branding him (and Fatah) as insignificant."

In the Palestinian elections last January, Hamas won a huge victory as a direct result of Israeli policy. Carter mentions Marwan Barghouti, "a militant serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison." He makes the cautious but revealing statement,

"He seemed to be the most popular Fatah leader, and at times it appeared that the Israelis wanted to promote his suggestions, often at the expense of Abbas. They had permitted Barghouti to meet with other prisoners and to be interviewed by news media with global distribution." (p. 179)

In other words, the Israeli leaders wanted his ideas to be promoted by the media in order to further radicalize and inflame the Palestinians into voting for "terrorist" candidates.

Chapter 16 is entitled, "The Wall as a Prison."

"Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories." (p. 189)

Carter's primary complaint is that this wall is not being built on the Israeli side of the border. It is built entirely on Palestinian land, in effect snatching more land and arbitrarily building the wall in such a way as to cut people off from their own land and families.

"First, a wide swath must be bulldozed through communities before the wall can be built. . . The area between the segregation barrier and the Israeli border has been designated a closed military region for an indefinite period of time. Israeli directives state that every Palestinian over the age of twelve living in the closed area has to obtain a 'permanent resident permit' from the civil administration to enable them to continue to live in their own homes. They are considered to be aliens, without the rights of Israeli citizens." (p. 192)

In other words, when the Israelis steal this land, they take with them thousands of Palestinians living on those lands. But instead of making them Israeli citizens, they make them "aliens" living in a military zone under martial law. In other words, they have no rights, and many are cut off from their land or pasture. Life is thus made to be as miserable for them as possible, hoping that they will "voluntarily" give up their land and leave. Then the land can be occupied by new Israeli settlements.

"One example is that the wandering wall almost completely surrounds the Palestinian city of Qalqiliya, with its 45,000 inhabitants, with most of the citizens' land and about one-third of their water supply confiscated by the Israelis. Almost the same encirclement has occurred around 170,000 citizens of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus." (p. 192)

". . . An especially heart-breaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives. . . There is a church named for one of the sisters, Santa Marta Monastery, where Israel's thirty-foot concrete wall cuts through the property. The house of worship is now on the Jerusalem side, and its parishioners are separated from it because they cannot get permits to enter Jerusalem. Its priest, Father Claudio Ghilardi, says, 'For nine hundred years we have lived here under Turkish, British, Jordanian, and Israeli governments, and no one has ever stopped people coming to pray. It is scandalous. This is not a barrier. It is a border. Why don't they speak the truth?" (p. 194)

More than this, the Israelis have built a network of highways to their West Bank settlements, closing them to any Palestinians. These highways have become Israeli occupied territory, and each one further divides Palestine into small pieces. This deliberately makes it impossible to achieve any kind of viable Palestinian state.

"It is obvious that the Palestinians will be left with no territory in which to establish a viable state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River valley." (p. 196)

Jimmy Carter puts the responsibility for Palestinian violence upon the Israeli government itself, saying on page 202,

"The root causes of the conflict--occupation of Arab land, mistreatment of the Palestinians, and acceptance of Israel within its legal borders--are yet to be addressed."

His statement, "acceptance of Israel within its legal borders" is a reference to the fact that "both Israel and the Arab countries have endorsed the crucial and unavoidable U.N. Resolutions 2442 and 338, under which peace agreements have already been evolved" (p. 212). These resolutions define the legal borders of Israel. Carter concludes on page 216 with,

"The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories."

That is precisely the problem. We are now fighting a "global war on terrorism," not because they hate our way of life and our freedoms, but because we are condoning the oppression and mistreatment of the Palestinians. That is the root cause of the conflict, as I have said. Jimmy Carter obviously agrees.