Gaza: Past, Present & Future

Gaza plays a key role in the story of the nation of Israel in the Word of God. Gaza was home to the Amalekites. They were the ones who attacked Israel after they came out of Egypt when they went into the Promised Land. It was against the Amalekites from Gaza that Moses battled when his hands were weary and he had Aaron and Hur hold his hands up as he prayed.

In response to their attack on Israel, God decreed the utter destruction of Amalek. After the victory, the LORD instructed Moses, “Write this down on a scroll as a permanent reminder, and read it aloud to Joshua: I will erase the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” Moses built an altar there and named it Yahweh-Nissi (which means “the LORD is my banner”). He said, “They have raised their fist against the LORD’s throne, so now the LORD will be at war with Amalek generation after generation” (Exodus 17:14-16).

The Philistines were a constant source of conflict for Israel. Gaza was one of their five main cities, and its seaport was a source of great wealth. Gaza is mentioned in the prophecies of Jeremiah, Amos, Zephaniah, and Zachariah in connection with future judgment. (Amos 1:6-7, Jeremiah 25:17-20, Zephaniah 2:4, and Zachariah 9:5.) Amos recorded God’s decree, “I will send a fire upon the walls of Gaza. It shall devour her strongholds.” Despite what many enemies of Israel say and what is often reported in the liberal media, Gaza was never part of a Palestinian state…because there never has been one. The land was conquered, divided, fought over, and conquered again and again through the centuries. The British defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I gave them control of the region, and they maintained it until Israel’s independence in 1948. There was a state established for Palestinians, the kingdom of Jordan.

Jordan has more Palestinian refugees than Gaza and the West Bank together. But no Arab country wants the Palestinians. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, nor any of the Gulf states are welcoming refugees. In fact, many of them have massacred the Palestinians. The Kuwaitis massacred them during the Persian Gulf War in Kuwait.

The People of Gaza

President Biden said the Palestinians do not support Hamas. That is sadly not true. When the elections were held in 2006 in Gaza, Hamas won 56% of the seats as opposed to Fatah’s 34%. After the war started, King Abdullah of Jordan and President el-Sisi of Egypt, both men I know personally, refused to allow them into their countries. One thing is for certain, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza hate Jews as much as Hitler did.

President Biden said the Palestinians do not support Hamas. That is sadly not true. When the elections were held in 2006 in Gaza, Hamas won 56% of the seats as opposed to Fatah’s 34%. After the war started, King Abdullah of Jordan and President el-Sisi of Egypt, both men I know personally, refused to allow them into their countries. One thing is for certain, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza hate Jews as much as Hitler did.

In contrast, the 500,000 Palestinian refugees were denied any place to go. The Arab states refused to absorb them because they wanted to use them as a pawn to orchestrate world public opinion against Israel. So, Jordan, the nation that controlled the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, herded them into horrible refugee camps and let them live like rats.

500,000 Palestinian refugees were denied any place to go. The Arab states refused to absorb them because they wanted to use them as a pawn to orchestrate world public opinion against Israel. So, Jordan, the nation that controlled the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, herded them into horrible refugee camps and let them live like rats.

The call for a Palestinian state is nonsense. Israel is one of the smallest nations in the world, smaller than Kuwait (about the size of New Jersey). It has no land to give away. If the West Bank were to be given to the Palestinians, Israel would be only 9 miles wide at a spot directly above Tel Aviv. No nation in the world would give such land to its sworn enemy.

And for the nations of the world to demand that Israel do so is pure hypocrisy of the first order. A Palestinian state already exists. It is called Jordan. It constitutes two-thirds of the land that has been historically referred to as Palestine. There is no need for another Palestinian state. There are 22 Arab states and only one tiny Jewish state.

Why must another Arab state be carved out of the heart of Israel? Only because the world hates the Jews. Another point to keep in mind is that there has never been a Palestinian state in all of history. From the fall of Israel in 70 AD to the present, the area dubbed “Palestine” by the Romans (to insult the Jews, since Palestine in Latin means Philistine) has been a part of greater Syria, and all the Arabs who lived there looked upon themselves as Syrians. There was never a Palestinian state, nor was Jerusalem ever the capital city of any Arab entity. The land and the city are Jewish.

The Problem with Palestinians:

The Palestine Liberation Organization

After the October 1973 defeat in the military war between Arab countries and Israel, Yasser Arafat opted to take a different approach to destroying Israel: The despot decided to become a diplomat. With the use of smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand, the newly made-over terrorist managed to create the illusion of civility and legitimacy. With dogged determination, he gained acceptance as the leader of the PLO pack. His transformation obviously did not deflect his determination to destroy Israel in whatever way he deemed appropriate. Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as other self-styled terrorist groups, failed to bolster the position of the Palestinian people by continuing attacks against the Israelis at home and abroad.

In 1978 alone:

• February 1978: A bomb planted on a bus filled to capacity exploded in Jerusalem; two were murdered, forty-six injured.
• March 11, 1978: A Fatah terrorist murdered Gail Rubin, niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff, on a Tel Aviv beach.
• March 11, 1978: PLO terrorists seized a bus on the coastal road, killing thirty-five men, women, and children.
• March 17, 1978: PLO terrorists launched Katuysha rockets on the Western Galilee, killing two and wounding two.
• June 2, 1978: A PLO terrorist bombed a Jerusalem bus, killing six and wounding nineteen
• August 20, 1978: PLO terrorists attacked Israel’s El Al airlines crew members in London airport, killing a stewardess and wounding eight.
• December 21, 1978: PLO terrorists launched a Katuysha rocket, killing one and wounding ten in Kiryat Shmona.

The PLO established a base of operations in Jordan, where they posed a threat—not just to Israel, but to the Hashemite kingdom. King Hussein of Jordan unleashed the Bedouin Arab Legion in a full-scale operation against the PLO. Tanks demolished every building in Amman from which gunfire erupted. Before Hussein had regained control, an estimated 3,000 Palestinian terrorists had been killed. PLO power in Jordan had been broken.

As the king’s troops battled the PLO, Syria intervened, sending forces across Jordan’s border. The Syrians greatly outnumbered Jordan in both tanks and aircraft, and when the king realized his predicament, requested that “the United States and Great Britain intervene in the war in Jordan.” He asked the United States, in fact, to attack Syria. Some transcripts of diplomatic communiqués show that Hussein actually requested Israeli intervention against Syria, “Please help us in any way possible.”

Israel and the United States mobilized forces, giving notice to Syria that if a full-scale invasion were launched Syria would encounter more than Jordanian troops. It worked. Syria retreated, and the Jordanians were able to drive the Palestinians out. From Jordan, the PLO moved to Lebanon, the only Arab nation with a significant Christian (Syrian Orthodox and Catholic) population. When the French pulled out of Syria and Lebanon in 1946, the Christian majority in Lebanon worked out a delicately balanced arrangement with the Muslim minority under a democratic constitution.

Under that new governance Beirut became a bustling and prosperous commercial center. At that time, its citizens enjoyed the highest per capita income in the Middle East. After Israel had become a state in 1948, several thousand Palestinian Arabs were admitted to Lebanon—not more, lest the Christian–Muslim balance of population shift disastrously. Disturbing the balance was always a matter of grave concern to the Christians who stood to lose the most.

The Palestinians, however, did disturb the balance in Lebanon—far out of proportion to their actual numbers. PLO agents worked actively inside refugee camps to establish bases from which to launch terrorist attacks on Israel. The Lebanese government was faced with a serious dilemma: If the PLO were driven out, it would anger the Muslim population; to let them stay would enrage Lebanese Christians. The prime minister began a delicate tightrope walk—he denied the existence of the PLO in public while covertly negotiating with Arafat to limit raids on Israel. His aim was to not provoke Israeli retaliation against PLO terrorists entrenched in Lebanon. The arrangement worked only briefly.

The PLO in Lebanon commandeered an Israeli El Al airliner. Israel responded by dispatching fighter jets to Beirut’s airport to destroy Arab aircraft on the ground. While the Lebanese government was knocked off-balance, its Muslim neighbors pressed for the right of the PLO to supervise and police refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Additionally, PLO terrorists imprisoned for subversive activities were released from Lebanese prisons. The result: burgeoning terror activities inside Lebanon. Israel would eventually drive Arafat and the PLO out of Lebanon in 1982, but it required another costly war to do so…and the threat this man, who was for so long the very face of terrorism, was not gone for good—Arafat would return.

Today his heirs continue the fight for Israel’s destruction. And the world continues to ignore their clearly stated goal of seeing the Jewish state wiped off the map. Sadly, many times employees of world bodies like the
UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) are openly supporting and even helping the terrorists.

A search of social media revealed that Mahmoud Abu Adhm, an UNRWA employee in Gaza, posted numerous pro-Hamas messages in support of the October 7 atrocities. On October 10, he encouraged Hamas to murder Israeli hostages, stating, “Do not walk past a captive who has not been given amnesty without striking off his neck so as to terrorize the enemy.” He cited Islamic texts that promote cruelty toward the enemy.

Another man named Afaf Talab, a teacher who the IMPACT-se report says is employed by UNRWA, shared on his Facebook page a video in which the Hamas massacre is termed the “first real victory” on the way to liberating all Palestinians. The “liberation” of Palestinians is commonly used by terrorists and left- and right-wing extremists to mean expunging Israel from the map. The video posted by Talab praised the destruction of Israeli communities “with1,000 men in 3 hours” causing “entire cities emptied out in one night.” He called on October 23 for God to “destroy the Jews.” According to IMPACT-se, “This sentence in the Facebook post was deliberately misspelled, perhaps to avoid detection through automated translation given [his] role as a U.N. employee.”