Diving In Session 4 Covenant 6 The Land Covenant – Brief History 1947-1967

Is present day Israel fulfilment of Prophecy?

Before we push on with the modern day history of Israel, I’d like to review world changes with respect to previous significant events in the history of Israel especially relevant to their possession of the Land.

1. The 7 year Famine in Egypt
   God has His man in place (Joseph). Becomes a world-wide famine which also caused Jacob’s entire family to relocate to Egypt for their protection and to give the Amorites time to repent (we know that there was knowledge of Elohim from the account of Balaam)
2. Exodus
   God has His man in place (Moses) and instigated the plagues to set His people free
   Egypt is devastated as a world power and will take centuries to recover
3. The return from Babylon
   The entire geo-political system of the world is changed so that God has his man in place (Cyrus). He allows displaced peoples to return home, triggering the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon
4. The birth of Messiah
   God causes the entire world to migrate back to their places of birth, so that His Son will be born in Bethlehem

In each case, we see that God has a plan – not just a local plan or one just for His people, but that He organises events on a global scale to have His purposes worked out. He could have used other means but it’s also that mankind might turn and seek Him!

So as we come to 1947-8, the world has gone through 25 years of turmoil and two World Wars. Man’s idea of the Mandates for the Middle East have just produced more and more trouble. Evidence of the Holocaust emerges. The British wash their hands of the Mandate. What Germany had done to the Jews had caused world-wide outrage. God’s clock is ticking – His people have to be back in the Land and the ‘Jewish Question’ has not been answered.

Nations, be warned! God is working His purposes out. Looking back, we can see global changes and the world being reorganised according to their treatment of the Jews:

• Germany and its allies had been defeated
• Britain’s Empire was being dismantled
• the creation of the United Nations out of the ruins of the League of Nations
• US support for Israel results in increasing affluence and influence (which has been waning in recent years as its support for Israel has dropped!)
• The USSR’s antipathy to Israel starting in the 1950s with its authoritarian government-induced poverty (until its collapse in the 1980s)

The Partition Plan 1947

In May 1947 UNSCOP had been set up to prepare a report on recommendations for Palestine. Its report, delivered in August, recommended partitioning Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, which should retain an economic union. An international regime was envisioned for Jerusalem:

^{By Zero0000A/RES/181(II) – m0103_1b.gif on PLAN OF PARTITION is from UNGA Resolution 181 (27 Nov 1947). Overdrawn UNSCOP boundary is from United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, Report to the General Assembly, 3 Sep 1947, Volume II, A/364, Add. 1., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2764938}1

The plan became UNGA Resolution 181 and was passed on Friday 28^th November 1947, with the Soviet Union’s support (seeing a potential ally in the new Jewish state, but very soon backing the Arab cause, supplying them with weapons and expertise to attack Israel!). The plan’s detractors considered the proposed plan to be pro-Zionist, with 56% of the land allocated to the Jewish state although the Palestinian Arab population numbered twice the Jewish population (and notwithstanding that the most of the Jewish area was uninhabitable desert, suitable for neither farming nor urban development at that time).

The plan was celebrated by most Jews in Palestine and reluctantly accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine with misgivings. The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and other Arab leaders and governments rejected it on the basis that in addition to the Arabs forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the lands (bearing in mind that the ownership of less than 25% had been registered at that point!). They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny. They announced their intention to take all necessary measures to prevent the implementation of the resolution.

So the Arabs turned down the potential to have their own state for the second time as they would not countenance any Jewish presence anywhere in Palestine.

Passions ran high on both sides!

There had been trouble between the British authorities and the Jewish underground movements since the 1939 White Paper restricting Jewish Immigration. Actions of the Jewish underground movements had been largely suspended in 1941 but started up again in 1944. These groups were the Haganah (under the control of the officially recognised Jewish leadership of Palestine), the Irgun and the Stern Gang (Lehi) which had actually been active against the British authorities during the war.

They attacked police and Government targets, such as railway and road bridges, the King David Hotel where the British military and civilian government were housed. This was bombed by the Irgun in 1946 in an attempt to destroy incriminating documents which the British had seized during a raid on the Jewish Agency, part of Operation Agatha, a military operation on what came to be known as “Black Sabbath” Sat. June 29 1946, an attempt to end the ‘state of anarchy’ and to prevent a “coup d’état” by the Irgun and Lehi militias.

The Haganah did attempt, unsuccessfully, to reign in the activities of the those two groups and withdrew cooperation with them after the King David Hotel bombing, but placed themselves on a war footing in 1947 after Britain announced its unilateral withdrawal from Palestine.

Civil war broke out between the Jews and the Arabs (what’s new?!). In early 1948, armed groups from countries surrounding Palestine carried out attacks. The British either could not or did not want to impede the intervention of foreign forces into Palestine. They attacked largely civilian targets

February 1948, Arab militias blockaded the corridor from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, preventing essential supplies from reaching the Jewish population and successfully destroyed most of the Haganah’s armoured vehicles during the blockade.

Amongst many attacks by either side, on 9 April at Deir Yassin, groups of Irgun and the Stern Gang massacred at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children.

In response, on April 13, 1948, a convoy, escorted by Haganah militia, bringing medical and military supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem (under blockade) was ambushed by Arab forces in the vicinity of British troops – who were ordered not to intervene until later in the day. Seventy-eight Jewish doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members and Haganah fighters, and one British soldier were killed in the attack, including twenty three women. Dozens of unidentified bodies, burned beyond recognition, were buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery.

Israel back in their Land 1948 to 1967

• Britain unilaterally withdrew from Palestine on 14^th May 1948, – when the Union Jack in Jerusalem was lowered – it was flying upside down, a sign of defeat!
• The same day, the State of Israel declared by David Ben Gurion
• 15th May 1948 the surrounding Arab nations attacked the new state with the intention of driving the Jews into the sea. They had already declared this as their intention just a few weeks after UNSCOP released its report in Feb. 1947 if its recommendations were followed:
• Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, told an Egyptian newspaper “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades.” Azzam told Alec Kirkbride “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.”
• The Syrian president told his people: “We shall eradicate Zionism.”
• King Farouk of Egypt told the American ambassador to Egypt that in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.

The Israelis fought back with what little armaments they possessed (the French may have been secretly supplying arms to the Jews through Syria and Lebanon in order to stir up trouble for their ‘Allies’ the British!). On 14 May and the following days, the Etzioni and Harel brigades, supported by Irgun troops, launched several operations that aimed to take over the Arab side of the city. In the meantime, the Arab Legion had deployed in the area of the former British Mandate that was allotted to the Arab state, not entering the zone around Jerusalem but massively garrisoning Latrun to blockade West Jerusalem once again.

Israeli victories against the Arab militias in the city pushed Abdullah I of Jordan to order the Arab Legion (led by a serving British Army Officer, General Sir John Bagot Glubb known as “Glubb Pasha”) to intervene. Jordanian forces deployed in East Jerusalem, fought the Israelis and took the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, following which the population was expelled (the Arab Legion ethnically cleansed Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria of the Jewish people) and fighters taken as prisoners of war to Jordan. Israeli forces launched three assaults on Latrun to free the road to the city but without success; they then built an alternative road to Jerusalem before the truce imposed by the United Nations on 11 June and successfully broke the blockade.

A final truce was agreed in early 1949 by which point Israel, far from being driven into the sea, had made significant territorial gains which made their territory more defensible; Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank (only recognized by Pakistan!); Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip.

The land now looked like:

Blue =  the Jewish state Area assigned  under Partition plan
Pink = Israeli controlled territory from 1949
Green = Egyptian and Jordanian controlled territory from 1948 until 1967

^{By AnonMoos – This is a partial SVG conversion (omitting text) of the original PostScript vector source of raster Image:1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.png by User:AnonMoos.http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/651C804E6815FB28852575DF004B7C4C, ANNEX II, is the ultimate (UN) source., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2403271 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestin}e

1949 – 1967

In the 1950s, the Middle East was dominated by four interlinked conflicts:

• the Cold War, the geopolitical battle for influence between the United States and the Soviet Union;
• the Arab Cold War, the race between different Arab states for the leadership of the Arab world, which kept them busy and stopped them fighting Israel;
• the anti-colonial struggle of Arab nationalists against the two remaining imperial powers, Britain and France, in particular the Algerian War;
• and the Arab–Israeli conflict, the political and military conflict between the Arab countries and Israel.

This came to a head with the Suez Crisis in 1956. The “King of the South” in the person of Nasser wanted to be the king-pin of the Arab world while the British were still in control of the Suez Canal with a large military garrison. Nasser closed the canal to Israeli shipping, the British, French and Israeli armies invaded and took possession of the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Russia sided with Nasser. The US opposed military action and would finally use restrictions on financial support of Israel and Britain to stop the conflict.

This crisis probably pre-empted an invasion of Israel by Egypt that the Israelis believed was being planned for Spring 1957, and resulted in 11 years of quiet on the southern border (although it didn’t stop Arab incursions into Israel from Sinai, even though there was a UN ‘peace keeping’ force in the Sinai peninsular!)

In 1967, Nasser organised a concerted effort by Egypt and Syria to drive the Jews into the sea – the Six Day War. Israel warns Jordan not to get involved but Jordan does get involved, so Israel fighting on 3 fronts!

Israel defeats the Egyptians days 1 & 2, bombing the Egyptian Air Force on 5^th June before their planes had even left the ground!

Israel drives out the Jordanians days 3 & 4 and regains Jerusalem

Israel drives back the Syrians from the Golan Heights days 5 & 6

As a result, Israel gained yet more territory from the Arabs (the result of every Arab attempt to drive the Jews into the sea!). They expelled the Jordanians from the West Bank and took over control. It also regained access to Jerusalem and control of the Temple Mount.

By 10 June, Israel had completed its final offensive in the Golan Heights, and a ceasefire was signed the day after. Israel had seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights. About one million Arabs were placed under Israel’s direct control in the newly captured territories. Israel’s strategic depth grew to at least 300 kilometres in the south, 60 kilometres in the east, and 20 kilometres of extremely rugged terrain in the north, a security asset that would prove useful in the Yom Kippur War six years later.

This map gives a broad idea of their territorial gains:

Aftermath of the Six Day War

There was extensive displacement of populations in the occupied territories: of about one million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, 280,000 to 325,000 were displaced from their homes. Most of them settled in Jordan, where they contributed to the growing unrest. The other 700,000 remained. In the Golan Heights, over 100,000 fled. Israel allowed only the inhabitants of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to receive full Israeli citizenship, applying its law, administration and jurisdiction to these territories in 1967 and 1981, respectively. The vast majority of the populations in both territories declined to take citizenship.

The aftermath of the war is also of religious significance. Under Jordanian rule, Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and were effectively barred from visiting the Western Wall, despite Article VIII of the 1949 Armistice Agreement which required making arrangements for Israeli Jewish access to the Western Wall. Jewish holy sites were not maintained, and Jewish cemeteries had been desecrated. After the annexation to Israel, each religious group was granted administration over its holy sites. For the first time since 1948, Jews could visit the Old City of Jerusalem and pray at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews are permitted to pray, an event celebrated every year during Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day – 28^th Iyar in the Hebrew calendar).

Temple Mount has always been the subject of controversy and remains so today. It is under Israeli sovereignty but under the control of the Islamic WAQF. When the IDF retook it in 1967, the then President of Israel told Moshe Dayan that they would have to give it back as he wasn’t prepared to start Wold War 3 over it!

In Hebron, Jews gained access to the Cave of the Patriarchs – the second-most holy site in Judaism, after the Temple Mount – for the first time since the 14th century (previously Jews were allowed to pray only at the entrance). Other Jewish holy sites, such as Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, also became accessible.

Immigration to Israel of Jews to Israel speeded up considerably after the war. Also the Messianic movement started to gain ground and the number of Jews believing in Jesus has increased dramatically since 1967.

Periods when the Land has been under Jewish control and/or when Jews have been in the Land or in Exile

Duration	Period	Control	Living	In exile
215	From God’s promise to Abraham to Jacob going to Egypt	0	215	0
256	Egyptian sojourn, Exodus + Wilderness crossing	0	0	255
800	From the Conquest (1406BC) to the Exile (606BC)	794	794	0
70	During the Exile (606BC – 536BC)	0	70	70
351	From the Exile to the Maccabees (185BC)	0	351	0
122	From the Maccabees to Roman control (63BC)	122	122	0
132	Under the Romans until AD 70	0	132	0
65	AD70 to AD135	0	65	0
466	Until the end of Roman/Byzantine control (636)	0	0	466
562	Islamic domination to the Crusades (1198)	0	462	462
93	The Crusader period (1198-1291)	0	0	93
226	From the Crusades to the Ottomans (1291-1517)	0	226	226
400	Under Ottoman Control to 1917	0	400	400
30	Under the Mandate	0	30	30
19	1948-1967	19	19	0
57	1967 to present	57	57	0
3865		992	2943	2078

The End of the Times of the Gentiles – 1967?

What we need to consider is Luke 21:24c “And Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

Does this mean that the Times of the Gentiles are now fulfilled, or is this just a pre-cursor to that? Israel has to be in the land for prophecy to be fulfilled, as we shall see.

Luke 21:25-27 immediately follows and describes the Tribulation leading to the Return of Messiah (a.k.a. the Birth-pangs of Messiah) :

There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars. And upon the earth nations will be confused by the roaring of the sea and its waves. People will lose heart from fear and anticipation of what is overtaking the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

This is when the Stone cut without hands smashes the feet of the image (the end time world power that has possessed the Land) and “the kingdom of the world” becomes “the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ”. (Rev. 11:15)

This passage synchronises with Matt. 24:29-31:

“But immediately after the trouble of those days, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.’ Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the land will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. He will send out His angels with a great shofar, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

“His elect” = Israel not the church! It is the same people as those who were scattered in v.16-20 and for whose sake the days of tribulation are shortened v.22 and who will be preserved from deception v.24 and who have taken note of Jesus’ warnings v.25. Note angels and a trumpet lit. “the trumpet the great one” echoes Isa:27:12-13 the great trumpet. “one end of heaven to the other” echoes Deut.30:4. The four winds echoes Isa.11:12 to mind – all pointing to the regathering of Israel!

Deut. 30:2-3 indicates a return when Israel has turned to the Lord and obeys His Voice – certainly not the situation today in the land of Israel. But it does go on to say that the Lord will have compassion on them when He returns and that He will regather them from the nations, so indicating a further return at His Coming (this sequence ties in with Matt. 24:30-31). In Ezek. 36: 24-29 the Lord says He will gather them to the Land and then pour clean water on them and give them a new spirit.

But in Matt. 23:39 Jesus says, ”For I tell you, you will never see Me again until you say, ‘Baruch ha-ba b’shem Adonai. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” This is the same order as in Zech. 12, their recognition of their Messiah is what triggers His return (ch.14), which implies that at least some of the Jews are back in the Land before Messiah comes and it is in the Land where they repent, which triggers Messiah’s Return.

Putting these Scriptures together, we get the following sequence:

1. Many Jews from around the world are drawn to return to the Land of their fathers
2. At some point, they realise all their disobedience and God’s disciplining hand on them
3. God extends mercy to them and His mercy leads to repentance (Rom. 2:4; 11:31)
4. Messiah returns and gathers the rest of Israel to the Land
5. They are regenerated/saved/given a new heart (Rom. 11:25-27)
6. Messiah’s kingdom is established

i.e. The Land Covenant comes into effect!

Is present day Israel a fulfilment of prophecy?

The restoration of Israel to the Land and to the Lord is a major theme of the O.T. prophets. A lot of theological gymnastics is required to make all those passages refer to the Church! It might seem to work if you take a broad brush approach, but not when you start to look at the detailed description of events in the prophecies.

Taking the O.T. prophecies as a whole, there is a consistent pattern that emerges as to what will happen at, and for, Israel’s final restoration (see chart for 4 examples of this sequence, plus a comparison with Matt. 24; it comes again in Jer. 30-31; Micah 4-5)

Stage	Isa. 2-4	Isa. 10-12	Zeph.	Zech. 12-14	Matt. 24
The nation of Israel is in the land, in a state of unbelief	Isa. 2:5-8	Isa. 10:20-23	Zeph. 1:2-7	Zech. 12:2-3	v. 15-20
A time of trial and trouble, with forces from the nations oppressing the nation but God ultimately judges the nations for their treatment of Israel	Isa. 2:9-22     Isa. 2:24	Isa. 10:24-25     Isa. 10:26	Zeph. 1:8-18     Zeph. 2:8-15	Zech. 12:4       Zech. 12:9	v. 21-22
The Lord uses this for preparing their hearts to seek Him	Isa. 2:25-31; 3:1-26		Zeph. 2:1-3	Zech. 12:5, 10-14	v. 23-26
The Lord returns to deliver them in response to their repentance	Isa. 4:1-2	Isa. 11:10		Zech. 12:6-8; 14:1-5	v. 27-30
Gathering the rest of the nation in from the four corners of the earth	Isa. 4:3	Isa. 11:11-16		Zech. 13:9	v. 31
Bringing them all into the New Covenant	Isa. 4:4	Isa. 12:1-3	Zeph. 3:12-18	Zech. 14:20-21
Messiah ruling the entire world from the fully restored Kingdom of Israel	Isa. 4:5-6, echoing Isa. 2:1-5	Isa. 12:4-6	Zeph. 3:19-20	Zech. 14:9, 16-19

As can be seen, the people of Israel have to be in the land of Israel for the fulfilment of these prophecies, which implies the return we have been seeing for the last 200 years. Does this mean that there has to be a State of Israel, or just that they are living in the Land?

We have seen that there has always been a Jewish presence in the Land from the 7^th century onwards (apart from a short break during the ‘Christian’ Crusader Kingdom!). That could be the ‘afflicted and poor people’ of Zeph. 3:12 but that could point to a future remnant (this was also true of the Babylonian Captivity though). But see Deut. 28:62, which we believe is the end-time situation.

Prophecies which clearly show the time of trial and trouble for Israel prior to Messiah coming

Download Spreadsheet (in PDF format so readable on most browsers) https://davidsbiblenotes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/End-times-for-Israel.pdf