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IFA asked an Israel expert to write two articles explaining in simple terms why Israel has a right to its land. It is our hope that you will read and share these articles that address this important issue.
In Part 1, we examined the biblically covenantal basis for the assertion that the land of Israel belongs in its entirety to the Jewish people. We will now examine the historical record and the international legal basis for this claim. The bulk of the information presented here was gleaned from two articles: “Why the Jewish People Are the Rightful Owners of the Land of Israel,” by Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and “Did the Jews Steal the Palestinians Land?” by Dr. Susan Michael, director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) USA.
So the LORD gave Israel all the land he had solemnly promised to their ancestors, and they conquered it and lived in it. The LORD made them secure, in fulfillment of all he had solemnly promised their ancestors. None of their enemies could resist them. Not one of the LORD’s faithful promises to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; every one was realized (Joshua 21:43–45 NET).
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Was Gaza Stolen by Israel?
“Anti-Israel lies have taken such a strong hold in Western college campuses and throughout the media that basic historical truths about the Jewish people’s undeniable right to the Land of Israel have been tossed aside and replaced with falsehoods that fuel conflict and ignorance. These truths, drawn from ancient and modern history, archaeology, and even international and U.S. law, do not simply disprove the Palestinian propaganda depiction of Jewish usurpers who swooped in a century ago to steal Arab land. These truths demonstrate that the Jewish people have a long-standing and exclusive right to the Land of Israel.”
So begins the article by Yair Netanyahu on the Jewish people’s rightful ownership of the land. In this article and the one by Susan Michael, we have irrefutable proofs in history and international law of the Jewish people’s right to their homeland.
Dr. Michael documents the Jewish people’s 4,000-year connection to the land, when, according to Scripture, God gave it to Abraham. The Bible then records the settlement of the land by the Jewish nation and God’s establishment of the Davidic kingdom there. Although the Jewish nation (divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south) was exiled twice by God as discipline for disobedience to His covenantal commandments, a Jewish remnant always remained.
Where Did the Name Palestine Come From?
In A.D. 70, the Roman forces destroyed Jerusalem, slaughtering many Jewish inhabitants and taking others captive to Rome. In A.D. 135, Emperor Hadrian attempted to remove all traces of Jewish identity from the area by building a pagan city he named Aelia Capitolina over Jerusalem and erecting a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. It was at this time that he renamed the area Palestine, after the Philistines, ancient enemy of the Israelites. That name, Palestine, was intended as a slap in the face of the Jewish people, essentially cursing them with the title of their enemies.
For the Romans, the name Palestine had nothing to do with modern-day Palestinians, who did not exist at that time. The Romans knew the coastal region of the land of Israel as Philistia, named after the ancient Philistine people who once inhabited that territory. The Philistines disappeared from history when the Assyrians conquered and exiled them 1,700 years before the Roman period. According to Yair Netanyahu, a 2019 DNA study of skeletons exhumed from Philistine tombs in the coastal Israeli cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon found that the Philistines had come from a southern European gene pool and have no genetic relation whatsoever to the modern Palestinian Arabs. Netanyahu notes that the most common surnames in the Palestinian Authority territories of modern Israel and today’s Gaza Strip include Hijazi (from a region in Saudi Arabia), Al-Masri (which means Egyptian in Arabic), and Halabi (the Arabic name of the city of Aleppo, in Syria). None of these people groups originated in the biblical land of Israel.
Islamic Rule
The Christian Byzantine Empire ruled over the region of Palestine for about 300 years until the Islamic invasion of the 7th century. Then that Islamic empire ruled over the land of Israel for roughly 1,400 years until the defeat and breakup of the crumbling Ottoman Empire in World War I. From 1517 to 1917, the land of Israel was an insignificant part of this empire. It was not a province in its own right, but only part of a province of Syria. All historical records of the Europeans and Americans who visited the Holy Land during that time depict an empty and abandoned land. Mark Twain visited the land in the mid-19th century and described it as a “hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.”
During this time, the Arabs dispossessed the Jews from their farmland, leaving most of them with no choice but to leave. Despite these hardships, the Jews maintained a continual presence in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberius, and Safed.
International Support for the Modern Jewish Return
Significant redevelopment in Israel began again only with the start of the Jewish settlements of the Zionist movement, initiating modern waves of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. This increased dramatically after the British conquest of the land in 1917. This is also the period when many Arabs from neighboring countries made their way into the land of Israel as migrant workers. Yair Netanyahu remarks that before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the only people who called themselves Palestinians were the Jews. Many Zionist and Jewish organizations in Israel even incorporated the name Palestine into their names, such as the Zionist Jewish newspaper The Palestine Post, which is now called The Jerusalem Post.
As waves of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in economic development and job opportunities for the local population, Jewish and Arab populations grew. Jewish organizations and individuals bought property from private landowners — many of them absentee — often paying exorbitant prices for barren desert and malaria-infested swamps. Upon statehood, Israel assumed title over any public lands once held by the Ottoman Empire.
In 1920 the allied countries of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan met in San Remo, Italy, to discuss what to do with the areas in the Middle East vacated by the Ottoman Turks. At this conference, they resolved to establish mandatory trusts over these areas for their respective indigenous inhabitants. Michael explains that these mandates were viewed as sacred trusts, whose intention was to prepare the area for self-rule by those indigenous peoples.
International Law and The League of Nations
In San Remo, Turkey officially ceded to Britain all its territories in the Middle East, including what it called Palestine. A mandate to rule the land of Israel (the British Mandate for Palestine, from the ancient Roman name) was given to the British by the League of Nations, the organization that preceded the UN. The mandate was given for a limited time, with the aim of preparing the local people for eventual independence and self-rule. With the Mandate for Palestine, Britain officially reiterated all its commitments from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to a national home for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Yair Netanyahu explains that this Mandate for Palestine’s founding document explicitly stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in its territory. It did not expressly mention a national home for any other people. This mandate documented the deep historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. The territory designated for the Mandate for Palestine included Transjordan, today the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, Israel, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, commonly called the West Bank.
It is vital to note that this British Mandate for Palestine was ratified by the British Parliament, the U.S. Congress, and the League of Nations. When the UN was established, it also ratified all mandates of the League of Nations, including the British Mandate for Palestine, making that a binding international treaty that became part of international, British, and American law. This international legal status has not changed, apart from Israel’s formal renunciation of the Transjordan as part of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994.
“The right of the people of Israel to the land of Israel was recognized by the League of Nations in 1921. From this moment on, the Balfour document became accepted by all nations. When the League of Nations ended and the United Nations was established, the UN charter contained a special clause, No. 80, in which it is said that all of the rights that were recognized in international law by the League of Nations still exist, and are still binding. There is no document in international law that grants rights of sovereignty to anybody other than to the Jewish people. This is the legal position.”
— Eliav Shochetman, an expert in international law at Hebrew University
Modern Status of Israel
The modern miracle of the State of Israel began after the declaration of Israeli independence in 1948. The nation was immediately recognized by the UN and was admitted as a full voting member to that international body. The nascent Jewish state was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab nations. The invasion intended to eradicate the newly reborn Jewish state. Although it failed, the Jordanian army did conquer Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem (renamed as West Bank), and the Egyptian army seized the Gaza Strip.
Many Arab peoples living in areas now under Israeli sovereignty were displaced. Their displacement occurred for many reasons, including Arab leaders urging them to flee and promising their return after victory in a few short weeks. Most Arab refugees never left Israel itself, since they traveled only a few miles to the other side of the fighting, while others crossed over into bordering Arab nations with the same language and ethnicity. Unfortunately, these Arab nations did not welcome their brethren, choosing instead to put them into refugee camps, where many remain to this day.
On May 14, 1948, Israel’s Proclamation of Independence was issued, and the newly formed state invited the Arab inhabitants of the land to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state. There are nearly 2.1 million Arab citizens of Israel today. Jews, on the other hand, were forced to flee their communities that fell on the Arab side of the conflict. Immediately after the war, the Jordanian army blew up all the synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem and chopped up Jewish gravestones to pave roads.
Again, during the Six-Day War in 1967, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan tried to destroy Israel. Israel prevailed in that conflict as well, and assumed control over the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip. All territory occupied in that war, except for the Sinai, belongs to the Jewish people according to international law. This includes Gaza. Israel returned the whole of Sinai to Egypt in the peace Treaty of 1979, and eventually unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005 in a vain attempt to appease the Arab populations in the land identifying themselves as Palestinians. The atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ongoing war with Hamas demonstrate graphically the outcome of that decision.
Summary
- The Jewish people alone have a historical and unbroken connection to the land of Israel, as ratified by the Abrahamic covenant.
- Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the area now known as Israel Palestine in A.D. 135. He did this as an attempt to eradicate all Jewish connection to the land by naming it after the Jews’ enemies, the Philistines.
- Before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the only people who called themselves Palestinians were Jews.
- The territory designated for the British Mandate for Palestine included Transjordan — today the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Israel, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, commonly called the West Bank.
- International law, as ratified by the United Nations, the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress, affirms that the title deed of the nation of Israel was given solely to the Jewish people and to no other people group.
Unfortunately, these facts of the historical record and international law have been replaced with propagandistic Palestinian lies that have permeated Western media and academia alike. As biblically centered believers, we must counter these lies — first with the ultimate authority of God’s Word, and then with these proofs from the historical record and international law.
Father, we thank You for being a covenant-keeping God. Thank You that Your sovereign choice of Israel as Your covenant people in Your covenant land will be a blessing to the whole earth, including all who identify as Palestinians. Help us as believers to defend explicitly Israel’s right to the land, and also to preach clearly the good news of Jesus Christ to the so-called Palestinian peoples and those who support them. May the truth of Your Word vanquish every lie. Remove the blinders of deceit from protesters and segments of Your Church alike. Bring unity to the believing Body of Christ so that the world may know that we belong to You, Father, and that Your Son, Jesus, is alive! Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen!
Join us in praying for the revelation of truth regarding Israel and the Promised Land.
Lori Meed is a leader on IFA’s Headline Prayer Live and an IFA contributing writer. In 2004, God moved her family from Canada to the U.S., imparting to them His heart for this country and for revival. Having walked out her own journey of freedom after being radically born again in 1992, Lori has a heart to see others set free to walk fully in their destiny. She is also passionate about teaching on aliyah (“going up,” the return of the Jews to the land of Israel), the feasts of the Lord, and the rich connections of the gentile churches to Israel. Photo Credit: MaKrieger/pixabay via Canva Pro.