{"id":9957,"date":"2024-06-28T15:35:39","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T19:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christskingdom.org\/staging\/8402\/?page_id=9957"},"modified":"2026-05-13T20:14:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T00:14:52","slug":"a-palestinian-state-fact-or-fiction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/christskingdom.org\/staging\/8402\/a-palestinian-state-fact-or-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"A Palestinian State: Fact or Fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A Palestinian State: Fact or Fiction?<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Article 53<\/em><\/p>\n\n

By Dr. Bill Jones

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Dr. Bill Jones was a beloved longtime teacher \/ writer with Zion\u2019s Hope.<\/em> This Legacy Feature, which first appeared in Zion\u2019s Fire some years ago under the title \u201cA Palestinian State: Fact or Fiction,\u201d has been republished with modifications.
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[Zion’s Fire] Editor\u2019s Note: <\/em><\/strong>The Ancient Philistines, who inhabited a narrow swath of land along the Mediterranean Sea adjacent to Israel, likely migrated to the area known historically as Philistia, from the island of Crete and other islands of the Aegean Sea.
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The \u201cPalestinians\u201d living in this region today trace their ancestry to Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula that settled in the area after the Arab conquest of the land in the 7th<\/sup> century A.D.<\/em> Thus the \u201cPalestinians\u201d of today are not descendants of either the ancient Canaanites or Philistines.

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What\u2019s the Story?

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The eyes of the world are often turned to the Middle East, Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount. We are told again and again of the great struggle for a homeland for a race of people known as \u201cPalestinians.\u201d They desire, we are told, the restoration of their homeland, usurped by the Israelis and the United Nations.

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In addition, they are willing to conduct a \u201cjihad\u201d (holy war) to protect the sanctity of the third most sacred spot of Islam \u2013 the Temple Mount. All of this is presented to us on an almost daily basis as fact. But is it indeed factual, or have we been sold a \u201cbill of goods\u201d? An understanding of the historical background of everything involved will help us to put it all in perspective.

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How it Began

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The story begins in Genesis 17:19-21. God had promised that a son would be born to Abraham. Because of Sarah\u2019s age, she did not believe she could bear a child. Following a custom of the people of that day, Abraham and Sarah agreed that a handmaid, Hagar, would give birth to the promised child.

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Hagar did indeed have Abraham\u2019s son and named him Ishmael. In Genesis 17, God informs Abraham that this is not the child He promised. Sarah would be the one to being forth Abraham\u2019s heir, and his name would be Isaac.

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The story resumes in Genesis 21:9-13. There is conflict between Hagar and Sarah, and their two sons Ishmael and Isaac. The conflict begins in Genesis, and it has continued down through the ages. The descendents of Isaac are the Jews. The descendents of Ishmael are the Arabs.

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We are seeing the continuation of the conflict in our day. It will not be resolved until the King of`kings and Lord of lords comes back to establish His kingdom. What began in Genesis will culminate in Revelation.

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Not Until 1967

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I remember watching a television special on the Arab\/Israeli problem. The commentator commented on how he could not understand why there was so much animosity between the two groups.

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They had a common ancestor (Abraham), shared many cultural traditions, and according to him, worshipped the same God using different names (Jehovah and Allah). Given all this, the hatred between the two groups was incomprehensible to the reporter. I found myself shouting at the set, \u201cRead your Bible!\u201d

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In Genesis 16, verse 12, the angel of the Lord said to Hagar, \u201cAnd he [Ishmael] will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.\u201d

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We see the final fulfillment of this prophecy in many of the Islamic Arab people of today. But what of the claims that the \u201cPalestinians\u201d are only asking for the restoration of their ancient homeland and possession of a highly sacred religious site?

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It is of great interest to note that before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war there was no serious push or demand for a Palestinian homeland. Some might object by saying that the Six-Day War gave control of a major portion of the \u201cPalestinian land\u201d to the Israelis \u2013 and that prior to the war the Palestinians were in possession of their land, and had no need to raise a furor.

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However, the Israelis did not take this land from the late Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat. They captured the territory from the Jordanians in a war they did not want and were forced to fight for national survival. Before the war, the people who now identify themselves as \u201cPalestinians\u201d lived in Jordanian territory, not \u201cPalestinian land.\u201d Consequently, they did not develop a nationalistic, pro-Palestinian fervor until after the war and the land was in the hands of the Israelis.

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A Roman Offense

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The first time the name \u201cPalestine\u201d was used for this land area was in A.D. 135. After Rome defeated the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem, they wanted to erase even the memory of Israel. They renamed it \u201cSyria-Palestina,\u201d which means \u201cLand of the Philistines.\u201d

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The ancient Philistines occupied a small strip of land on the southwest coast of Israel on the Mediterranean Sea. They were a constant thorn in the side of the Jews, but they never controlled more than a tiny portion of the Land. Eventually, they were conquered by King David.

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The so-called \u201cPalestinians\u201d of today are not descendants of the ancient Philistines. Neither are they of Canaanite descent.

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The land of Canaan never existed as Palestine or as an autonomous entity. This land \u2013 between the river and the sea \u2013 has been ruled over by the Israelis, Romans, Muslim Caliphs, Christian Crusades, Ottoman Turks, and the British. There has never been a nation of Palestine with a Palestinian government at any period of history.

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In fact, there is no Palestinian language, no distinct Palestinian culture, and there are no distinguishing characteristics. Palestinians are Arabs and are no different than Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis, or any other Arab people.

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Unsupported by the Koran

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This fact raises another important issue. The Arab nations own 99.9% of all of the Middle East lands. Israel owns less than one-tenth of 1%. The entire state is about the size of Vermont. With tens of thousands of square miles of basically uninhabited Arab lands, why could not a \u201cPalestinian\u201d homeland be located there?

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Because the basic issue is not a homeland: The basic issue is Israel. Even one-tenth of 1% of the total land mass is too much if the Jews live on it \u2013 according to the Arab mindset.

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What about their holy sites? Surely the Palestinians could not walk away from their sacred places in Jerusalem, could they? The truth is, there are no genuinely sacred, Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem as the Arabs claim.

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No doubt the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque \u2013 situated on the Temple Mount \u2013 immediately come to mind. No doubt you recall the hundreds of times you have heard or read that this is the third most holy site in Islam. The truth is the Koran \u2013 the sacred scriptures of Islam \u2013 says nothing about Jerusalem. Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are referenced hundreds of times, but Jerusalem is never mentioned.

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In fact \u2013 there is no historical evidence that Mohammed, the founder of Islam and author of the Koran, ever visited of set foot in Jerusalem. How, then, did these mosques come to be known as sacred?

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The Dome of the Rock was built in A.D. 691. The Al Aqsa Mosque was built a few years later. There are several theories as to why the Dome of the Rock was built. The predominant one today is that it was built to commemorate Mohammed\u2019s ascension to heaven to receive instruction from Allah concerning the prayers his followers were to perform.

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However, it should be noted that there is no direct information about this in the Koran. History shows that the idea of Mohammed\u2019s ascension from the Temple Mount arose hundreds of years after the Dome of the Rock was built.

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This tradition is based on an interpretation of the Koran entitled \u201cThe Night Journey.\u201d The 17th Sura states, \u201c\u2026 from the sacred temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct we have blessed, that we might show him our Signs \u2026\u201d

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From that statement, some Muslims later deduced that the first Temple was in Mecca, and the second one was in Jerusalem. This is the closest the Muslims can get to claiming Jerusalem as a holy city and the Temple Mount as a sacred spot.

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History records that in A.D. 638 the Caliph Omar conquered and entered Jerusalem. He went straight to the Temple Mount to honor the location of the Temple of Solomon. The site of the \u201cHoly Rock\u201d was highly esteemed by the earliest Muslim leaders because it was the site of the Temple, not because it held Islamic religious significance.

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In the same chapter of the Koran quoted above, under the title of \u201cThe Night Journey,\u201d we also find the following statements:

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