Misunderstandings about Israel and Palestine

I am not by any means an expert on Israel. But since I have been there several times now, I am often asked questions about the situation there, especially since the horrific events of October 7 and the subsequent war. I have learned a lot since my first trip in 2014. I’ve heard the perspectives of both Israelis and Palestinians. I’ve read fairly widely, as well, and I’ve listed below some books you will find helpful if you want to learn more. So here are a few things all Christians should know about modern-day Israel.

For nearly two thousand years, there was no nation called Israel. The four New Testament Gospels end with the Jewish nation ruled by Rome, but with allowances for sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem, and some sense of national identity and self-government. But in 70 AD, Rome destroyed the city and the Temple (Jesus predicted this in Matthew 24). In 132-135, there was a second rebellion against Rome, led by a man named Simon Bar Kochba. After Rome crushed that revolt, they expelled all Jews from Jerusalem, changing its name to Aelia Capitolina. They installed a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. Although Jews continued to live in the land, most eventually dispersed to other nations.  The modern nation of Israel was established by the United Nations in 1948.

Who are the Palestinians? After the Bar Kochba revolt, Rome changed the name of the region to Palestine. The word is derived from the name of the Philistines, the people who made life difficult for Old Testament Israel. So in a way, it was a final Roman insult against the Jews, a people they found irritating. A variety of people groups came and went in Palestine over the next two thousand years. In fact, from 1099 to 1291, there was a Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. But two people groups remained throughout: A small contingent of Jews, and Arabs, who took the name of the region. After the start of Islam in the 600s, they replaced the temple of Jupiter on the Temple Mount with a shrine called the Dome of the Rock, which stands there to this day. It signifies the spot where they believe Muhammed ascended to Heaven.

Therefore, when the UN gave part of Palestine to the Jews in 1948, there was no way to do this without displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whose families had been there for centuries.  

The Jewish founders of Israel weren’t religious. Exodus tells us the Jews first came to the land following the Lord, who guided them in the form of a pillar of cloud and fire. But most of the Zionists, who dreamed of a homeland for the Jewish people, didn’t even believe that story was true. They and their descendants, mostly European in background, politically left-leaning, and religiously non-observant, have been the prime movers in the Israeli government and military since then. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox, better known as Heredim (recognizable for the black suits and hats, with side curls, worn by the men) hold tremendous influence in society, even though they make up only 13% of the population. The Heredim don’t serve in the military, and most don’t even recognize the legitimacy of the modern state (believing there will be no “real” Israel until the Messiah arrives).

Most of Israel’s population falls somewhere between those two extremes in terms of religious devotion and political belief. In other words, the Jewish population is incredibly diverse in the way they think about God and the world…just like Americans.

Israel was intended to be two states, an Arab one and a Jewish one. In 1947, the United Nations announced that Palestine, a territory that had been ruled by Britain for a quarter century, would be partitioned it into two states. But Palestinian residents protested, and soon many acts of violence took place between Jewish and Arab militias. In 1948, when the partition took effect, a coalition of Arab nations (including Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon) invaded, sparking the Arab-Israeli war. Against all odds, the small Israeli army defeated the coalition. In the process, they took more territory than had originally been granted by the UN. Afterward, Palestinians who had fled their homes now found themselves permanently displaced.

That’s all historical fact. Here’s where it gets complicated: To Israelis, the events of 1948 are a miracle, an impossible victory that led to a democracy in the Middle East and a home for the Jews after two thousand years of wandering and persecution. To the Palestinians, those events are known as the Nakba (catastrophe), that forced them from their ancestral homes and left them as permanent refugees.

What is the West Bank? After the Arab-Israeli war, many Palestinians settled in the territory that was still governed by Jordan. This land was just west of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem and the Old City). But when the Arab states attacked Israel again in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel took possession of the West Bank, too. Then, in 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, in which Israel agreed to let Palestinians elect their own leaders in the West Bank and in Gaza, and to pull the Israeli military out of those territories. Today, the West Bank and Gaza are still technically part of Israel, but locally are ruled by Palestinians—The Palestinian Authority rules the West Bank. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006. Cities like Bethlehem and Jericho are in the West Bank, and are friendly to tourists.  

As my friend and tour guide Aviv says whenever people ask him about politics in his home country, “It’s complicated.” The closer you get to Israel, the more accurate that statement becomes. If you think in terms of good guys and bad guys, you are oversimplifying. Here’s my perspective, for what it’s worth: The vast majority of people in the Holy Land want the same things we want: A job that puts food on the table, safety for their families, and the freedom to pursue happiness. But extremists on both sides make peace impossible.

Israelis are beautiful people, and they have built an amazing nation in the unlikeliest of places. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. But extremists continue to build settlements in the West Bank, inflaming Palestinians who feel they’ve already lost more than enough. Politicians lack the will to move forward on real efforts for peace; frankly, it’s so much easier to get elected by building walls to keep the Palestinians out than by promising to work for solutions. As a result, many Israeli policies and statements result in breeding more terrorists, not making progress toward a solution.

Palestinians are also wonderful people, who have been continuously saddled by corrupt and incompetent leadership. When you speak to people in the West Bank, they have no faith in their leaders to improve their conditions, which are visibly worse than those in Israel. Even before the current war, people in Gaza had it even worse. There, Hamas takes the billions of dollars in foreign aid they receive and spends it on making war against Israel, instead of making its citizens’ lives better. So Palestinians have no good options, no hope that things will ever improve for them. But when Israelis hear extremist Palestinians say things like “From the river to the sea” (meaning Palestine should have everything from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, with no Jewish presence in Israel), and “the Holocaust is a myth,” it’s no wonder they continue to vote for leaders who lack any compassion for Palestinians.  

Scripture commands us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I hope you are praying for a swift end to the current war, and for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza. But I hope you are also praying for both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. Both are created in God’s image. They live in the land where Jesus died or our sins (and theirs) and rose again, where the Gospel was first heard. Pray that He would find a way to make Himself known to  them—through the witness of Christians who live in the land, through contact with believers in other countries, through dreams and visions—and bring about a great turning to salvation. Israel is the whole world in a microcosm: A beautiful place that is struggling with the effects of human sin. Jesus is the answer there, just like He is here.

Finally, my favorite books about Israel, for those who want to dive deeper:

A great source for the entire history of Israel is Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

A historical novel, The Source, by James Michener, takes you through every era of Israel’s story, from pre-history to the establishment of the modern state. If you’ve read any of Michener’s other books (like Texas, for instance) you know his fiction is a great way to learn history.

A pair of novels by celebrated author Herman Wouk, The Hope and The Glory, are about the Arab-Israeli war, and the decades of building a new nation.  Although fictional, they help give a sense of the events and what life was like in modern Israel’s early days.

Yet in the Dark Streets Shining is written by Bishara Awad, a Palestinian Christian and founder of Bethlehem Bible College. Awad grew up in Bethlehem and his family was displaced in 1948. This is a great book to read for the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian controversy from a Christian perspective.