The "Promised Land" and the Two-State Solution

In 2006 sometime, someone asked me how Bible-believing Christians could "possibly negotiate the 'rights' of Palestinians or anyone else to share the land we believe God gave the Jews a deed to in perpetuity." I wrote a reply even though I was by then four years a post-Christian, as I now prefer to identify myself. As I see it, God is practically non-existent, if not actually, except in the imaginations of those who, for example, filter concepts of justice through notions of divine favoritism, as illustated by the question at hand. Practically an atheist (at least as practically as God is absent), I offer the following reply from a Bible-believing perspective, a perspective that I no longer hold but here only assume for the sake of answering the question.

The question is, I suppose, a million dollar one for Zionists who have a conscience. There are other Christian positions than Zionist ones, of course. Some believe that the promise is fulfilled in the church, which is to inherit the land in the new earth, and that Jews to whom the promises apply receive that inheritance in Christ, in the resurrection, as believing members onto whom the Gentile branches have been grafted, and that the perpetual promise does not apply to unbelieving Jews or to the secular Israeli state. Some believe that the promise applies to the Jews as Jews, but only again in the final Eschaton, and that, in the mean time, the secular Israeli state is obligated to deal justly, in the common order, according to the Old Testament prophetic tradition, which stressed justice and compassion for the oppressed, failure regarding which resulted in ancient Israel's original loss of the land as an act of divine discipline.

Some aren't sure what to think about Israel exactly but believe, regardless, that if Jesus has any relevance at all surely he must care about suffering people and treating them justly and compassionately, even if they are Palestinians. Someone said something once about things changing between the Hebrew conquest of Canaan and the time of Jesus. Regardless of how Christians integrate into their belief system what was essentially the genocide and slaughter of women and children when the Hebrews conquered Canaan, one wonders whether they would sanction that as a valid model for modern Israel's handling of the Palestinian problem today. If so, then Israel's failure to kill every last Palestinian should be a matter of divine displeasure, at least to kill those who are in the way of a full conquest of the land, which, of course, according to the ancient promise, includes Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria and Iraq.

If slaughter and genocide no longer constitute a valid model, then there must be some theological reason to think so, and it seems reasonable that it might have a bearing on how Israel ought to deal with the Palestinian people short of gratuitously sparing them from massacre. If humanitarian principles are now in effect in a way that they were not when God first gave the land, might those principles figure into a concern for Palestinian rights, too? Just what is it, anyway, that makes genocide seem like such an inappropriate option? Is it a worldly spirit to which the church has fallen prey, or is there something legitimately inherent to Christianity that makes caring about the earthly lives of Palestinians something other than a sentiment at which to shrug one's shoulders?

Israel's dominion never reached the scope indicated in the original promise. What does that say, for those who believe, about the dispensation of the promise's fulfilment? It suggests, at the very least, that God is patient about how quickly he intends to fulfill the promise. Who is to say, in that case, that God's plan is for Israel to occupy the West Bank in the current age? Maybe the real plan is for Israel to demonstrate justice and compassion toward the Palestinians and thereby to show forth the glory of God in the current age. Who is to say? Apparently the partial fulfilment of the promise in ancient times extends to the present day, unless Christians are willing to think that it is time for Israel to take over Lebanon and Jordan, and large portions of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. If it was apparently a part of the divine mystery for ancient Israel to make due with the existence of Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, Edom, Moab, Egypt, and Syria for centuries after the promise was given, on what basis can Christians conclude that God's will is for Israel not to negotiate a two-state settlement with the Palestinians now? Just think of how it would redound to the glory of God for him to have used the last three thousand years, two thousand of which had the benefit of Christian influence, to make a difference in how he asked his people to behave. Just think of how awesome it would be for him to make good, through a concern by Israel for Palestinian rights, on Jesus' claim that the meek inherit the earth. Who is to say that that is not how God wants it to be and that he will make good on his promise in due time?

As for me, I might have half a chance to want to be associated with a God like that, even if I had problems believing in him on other grounds.