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From: Eddie Chumney
To:      heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: Chapter 8: Israel: The Fig Tree Blossoms (Part 3 of 3)


                                        CHAPTER 8

                    ISRAEL: THE FIG TREE BLOSSOMS


                      from the book by Eddie Chumney

              "RESTORING THE TWO HOUSES OF ISRAEL"

       
                  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


                                   CHAPTER 8

              ISRAEL: THE FIG TREE BLOSSOMS

                                   (Part 3 of 3)


             THE POLITICS OF OIL IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The 1973 Yom Kippur war highlighted how imported Arab oil has become an important political and economic issue in understanding the present Israel / Arab conflict. The world economy depends on imported Arab oil and the Arab oil producing countries decided to use oil as an economic and political weapon to influence world opinion against Israel. On October 17, 1973, Arab petroleum ministers met during the Yom Kippur War and decided to cut oil production and exports. "It was under the façade of the war crisis . that the Arabs seized the opportunity to launch a drastic escalation of oil prices. Libya announced on October 18 that the cost of its oil would go up 28 percent - irrespective of the war and Israel's misdeeds. Iraq thereupon declared a 70 percent price rise. Kuwait matched this figure." 77

Members of the European Common Market took immediate measures to placate Arab oil barons, making new demands on Israel to give up the occupied territories. Thus an oil-thirsty world forced Israel into a diplomatic ghetto. Though the Arabs suffered a devastating loss in the Yom Kippur war, they discovered a powerful new weapon and found themselves in the driver's seat of the world economy. By a simple turn of oil valves they could further the goals of Palestine. 78


THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE AND ARAB POLITICS

As a result of Israel winning her war of independence and her succeeding wars against her Arab neighbors, the Arabs living in Israel did not have a country of their own. They called themselves Palestinians. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the Palestinians became an increasingly important political issue in the Israel/Arab conflict. Since the creation of the Arab states, the Palestinian people have been mistreated by Arab states and have had bad relations with many of them. During this time, Arab leaders have fought among themselves for the title of being the leader of the Arab world. By not having a state of their own, the Palestinians have been used by the Arab world for their own political purpose and as a political weapon against Israel. While the Arab states all recognize the Palestinians as their cousins, only Jordan was willing to take their refugees.

The root of Arab politics toward the Palestinian people goes back to the early 1920's when the Arab states were being created following the defeat of the Turks in World War I. Following WWI, the British and French allowed the gradual formation of seven independent Arabic states in the region (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, followed later by ten others). 79

Winston Churchill gave the area of Transjordan to Abdullah of Arabia. This he did to mollify the Arab leader for the help his father, the sharif of Mecca, had given the British in diverting the Turks in Arabia in 1917. 80 This gift of East Jordan (Transjordan) to Abdullah constituted three-quarters of the area known as Palestine.

The Arabs west of the Jordan also wanted an independent state and had candidates chomping at the bit for rulership. For many years, two leading families, the al-Husseinis and Nashashibis, had alternated in filling the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. 81 Though a religious position, it carried strong political clout throughout Palestine. Both families claimed descent from the Grand Sharif of Mecca, who in turn claimed descendancy from Muhammad himself. These two clans exerted much influence in mayoral offices in the region, but were constantly at loggerheads. From the Nashashibis came King Abdullah, who was given Transjordan, and his brother Feisal. Feisal was first given Syria (until the French took it over) and was later made King of Iraq. At the assassination of Abdullah in 1951, Hussein, his grandson (not of the al-Husseines), became King of Jordan. This family was known as the Hashemites. 82

The al-Husseini family in Jerusalem was represented by Haj Amin al-Husseini who was appointed Grand Mufti by the British in 1921 when only twenty-one. Amin al-Husseini was a Muslim extremist who violently opposed Zionism. Insisting on Palestine becoming an Arab state, he used every influence to halt Jewish immigration. On August 23, 1929, he inspired a massacre of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall. Prior to that, "Haj Amin had instituted a plan to restore the mosques in order to reestablish the primacy of Islam over all of Palestine and to counter the increasingly vocal religious claims of the Zionists to a portion of Jerusalem." 83

When World War II erupted, Haj Amin was forced to flee, first to Iraq and then to Germany where he was welcomed by Hitler and Himmler. 84

These two families, the Hashemites and the al-Husseinis, came to represent the moderate and extreme factions of Palestinian Arabs. 85 Their special bitterness toward each other stemmed from Britain's bestowal of kingdoms on the Hashemites, which the al-Husseinis viewed as a sellout to the enemy. For this Haj Amin and his followers came to regard both the Jews and the Jordanian Hashemites as bitter enemies. 86


THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PLO

The Palestinian Liberation Organization was actually the brainchild of Gamal Addel Nasser of Egypt. The PLO was first organized in Cairo in 1964. Its founding document is the Palestine National Covenant. This declaration rejects the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the UN Partition Agreement of 1948, the Jews' biblical claims to the land, and it denies the right of the Jewish people to have a nation. The Covenant has been revised several times over the years, but it still contains the vehement anti-Jewish sentiments of the original document. It insists that all the territory of the nation of Israel properly belongs to the Palestinian Arabs, and only those Jews living in Palestine prior to the "Zionist invasion" can be regarded as legitimate Palestinians and thus allowed to stay in the land. 87

Nasser sought to promote an underground forum for the Palestinian people. This was first called the Palestine Liberation Army (later the PLO). Chosen as leader was Ahmad Shuqairi, a puppet of Nasser, who set up headquarters in Cairo. The expressed purpose of this organization was to allow the Palestinian people, "to play a role in the liberation of their country and their self-determination." 88 The Arab leaders who set it up, however, had other designs for the organization. They intended to make it an instrument of guerrilla warfare against Israel under their control. They had no intention of creating an independent Palestinian movement. 89


YASSER ARAFAT AND THE FATAH

Six years before Nasser created the PLO, Yasser Arafat started his own group in Syria to "liberate Palestine." Then living in Kuwait, Arafat and a handful of revolutionaries created a military organization. They called it the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. In Arabic, the initials spelled out HATAF (Harekat at-Tahrir al-Wataniyyeh al-Falastiniyyeh). 90 They turned the letters around to spell FATAH, which is a reverse acronym of the name of the movement in Arabic. The word "Fatah" means  "conquest by means of jihad [Islamic holy war]."

The major figures in FATAH were two young dyed-in-the-wool guerrilla operators, Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad. 91 Both were from the militant Muslim community of Gaza. Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929 and grew up in the Gaza strip during the tumultuous Jewish-Arab conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s. His full name is Rahman Abdul Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. He was later nicknamed as "Yasser" by his guerrilla tutor after a great Arab hero. 92 Through his mother, Arafat was related to Haj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and a proud member of the al-Husseini family. That lineage supposedly traced back to Husayn ibn Ali, the son of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. 93

From his earliest years, Arafat was engrossed in liberation tactics, devising terrorist activities against the Israelis whom he saw as invaders. As he and his cronies began the Fatah, they saw themselves as the "generation of revenge" - seeking vengeance for the loss of Palestine. 94 Originally, FATAH opposed the founding of the PLO. By 1969, FATAH had become the largest guerrilla group affiliated with the PLO. At that year's meeting of the PLO's executive body, the Palestinian National Council, Yasser Arafat won complete control of the PLO. 95


ARAFAT BECOMES THE LEADER OF THE PLO

The very establishment of the PLO by Nasser in 1964 was intended to rebuff Arafat and his FATAH. Incensed by Arafat's deriding him in his paper, Our Palestine, Nasser  "ordered his intelligence service to see to Arafat's liquidation." 96

Arafat became the leader of the PLO in 1969. Prior to 1968, Palestinians had looked to the pan-Arab nations to liberate their land. In the wake of the 1967 war, they gave up on the promises of the Arab League and determined that they would have to go it alone if they were to "restore their land." 97

When Arafat took over the PLO, the organization reverted to cell groups developed by its FATAH members in Syria. First, it was basically a guerrilla organization that worked underground apart from national armies or agencies. Its single purpose was to evict the Israelis from the land and set up an independent Palestinian state, not one in tandem with Jordan or any other Arab state. Second, it intended to achieve its goals by armed conflict, using infiltration and terror to drive out the occupiers of  the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 98


THE PLO AND THE INTIFADA

In December 1987, Palestinian patience ran out and long pent-up feelings were suddenly unleashed with stones and homemade bombs. This uprising was known as the Intifada. It quickly spread through the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The cities of Nablus, Hebron, and Jerusalem in the West Bank soon became centers of agitation. 99

Most irritating to the Palestinians was the Israeli settlement of Jewish communities in the West Bank. This has received almost continuous coverage by the press since 1977 when Begin began encouraging the program. 100 Various reasons were given for this colonization. Some Jews settled there for religious reasons, such as the hard-core Gush Emunists, searching for their biblical heritage. Others simply sought a place of residence from which to commute to the big cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. 101

Through the intifada, the Palestinians have looked to the world media to dramatize their fight against Israel. 102 By being successful at this, it has forced Israel to rethink its policies regarding the settlements in biblical Judea and Samaria (West Bank). While the settlements are a security issue for Israel, world public opinion is demanding a compromise on the issue and encouraging Israel to trade  "land for peace." However, will trading land result in peace for Israel? It is highly unlikely because "PLO" after all, means the "Liberation of Palestine," which is not negotiable to the leaders of the movement. 103


THE PLO PHASED PLAN DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL

Following the 1967 war, two different schools of thought developed among the Arabs concerning their dilemma of what to do with Israel. With the increased territory Israel gained as a result of the war, it was believed impossible to defeat Israel by conventional means.

The first school of thought held that since it was no longer possible to defeat Israel by conventional means, then there was no choice but to make formal peace with the Jewish nation. This view was held by Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who accepted Menachem Begin's invitation to help negotiate a settlement with Israel. The peace treaty, called the Camp David Accords, was drafted in late 1978 and signed in early 1979.

The second school of thought held that since it was no longer possible to defeat Israel within her existing boundaries, then the course of action should be to first reduce Israel to the pre-1967 borders and then destroy her. This view was officially adopted by the PLO at their 1974 conference in Cairo. It was formalized in a document known as the Phased Plan. Dr. Aaron Lerner, a Middle East analyst, summarizes the goals of the PLO's Phased Plan as follows:

"First, to establish a combatant national authority over every part of Palestinian territory that is  liberated (article 2); second, to use that territory to continue the fight against Israel (article 4); finally, to start a pan-Arab war to complete the liberation of all the Palestinian territory (article 8)." 104 The PLO phased plan destruction of Israel and articles 1-4 and 8 are highlighted below.


THE PLO'S PHASED PLAN

Political Program: Adopted at the 12th Session of the Palestinian National Council, Cairo, June 9,  1974. The text of the Phased Plan resolution:

The Palestinian National Council:

On the basis of the Palestinian National Charter and the Political Program drawn up at the eleventh session, held from January 6-12, 1973; and from its belief that it is impossible for a permanent and just peace to be established in the area unless our Palestinian people recover all their national rights and, first and foremost, their rights to return and to self-determination on the
whole of the soil of their homeland; and in the light of a study of the new political circumstances that have come into existence in the period between the Council's last and present sessions, resolves the following:

1. To reaffirm the Palestine Liberation Organization's previous attitude to Resolution 242, which obliterates the national right of our people and deals with the cause of our people as a problem of refugees. The Council therefore refuses to have anything to do with this resolution at any level, Arab or international, including the Geneva Conference.

2. The Liberation Organization will employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory and to establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated. This will require further changes being effected in the balance of power in favor of our people and their struggle.

3. Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization's strategy of establishing the democratic Palestinian State specified in the resolutions of previous Palestinian National Councils.

4. Struggle along with the Jordanian national forces to establish a Jordanian-Palestinian national front whose aim will be to set up in Jordan a democratic national authority in close contact with the Palestinian entity that is established through the struggle.

8. The Liberation Organization will strive to strengthen its solidarity with the socialist countries, and with forces of liberation and progress throughout the world, with the aim of frustration all the schemes of Zionism, reaction and imperialism.

The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will make every effort t  implement this program, and should a situation arise affecting the destiny and the future of the Palestinian people, the National Assembly will be convened in extraordinary session.


                          THE OSLO ACCORDS AND
                THE PHASED DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL

The PLO has decided that it would be acceptable to get rid of Israel in stages (by trading land for peace) if it couldn't be done all at once (by war). Arafat has publicly told his followers, on numerous occasions, that the Declaration of Principles signed with Israel in 1993 (Oslo I) is actually a part of the PLO's Phased Plan. In November 1994, in a speech marking the celebration of Palestine National Day, Arafat said:

"What has been a dream has become a reality. In 1974, the PNC decided on establishing a Palestinian Authority on the first piece of land from which the enemy has withdrawn or that we have liberated."

Another clue that the PLO has not totally renounced its idea of eliminating Israel, but has merely postponed it, is the fact that the official PLO letterhead still has for its logo a map of the nation of Israel labeled "Palestine." Textbooks in Egyptian and Jordanian schools, as well as those used in Palestinian schools, do not even show the nation of Israel on their maps. 105

Furthermore, Arafat has not eliminated terrorism in his government. Instead, he has elevated it to official status. In May 1996, Arafat set aside four cabinet seats in the Palestinian Authority for representatives of the most active terrorist groups: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and two PLO rejectionist groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). The US law that provides financial aid to the PA specifically says that aid will be cut off if the PLO allows terrorists to be included in the governing agencies. But to date, Congress has made no move to terminate the annual one hundred million in financial aid to the Palestinians.

The PLO has threatened that if Israel doesn't exchange "land for peace" that they will continue the struggle to liberate Palestine by any other means. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are part of the "war by other means" by the PLO against Israel. These two Islamic fundamentalist groups are funded, trained, and armed by Iran and Syria. The Hezbollah, or Party of Allah, which operates against Israel primarily out of Syrian-controlled southern Lebanon, is also sponsored by Iran. These groups are adamantly opposed to peace with Israel and, in fact, they are fanatically dedicated to waging continual "war by other means" against all non-Muslim countries. 106

During his youth in Cairo, Arafat's family had close ties to a group called the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist group active in Egypt and the Middle East. As a teenager Arafat fought with the Muslim Brothers in Jerusalem in 1948 and, during his university days, he often went on secret missions with the Brothers when they were fighting the British at the Suez Canal. Many of the early Fatah members were tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which once tried to assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Adbel Nasser. 107

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Charter, released to the public in 1988, states that  "Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with . the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter ." So the current masters of terrorism affirm their historic link to the Muslim Brotherhood. And it's a link that joins them directly to Yasser Arafat. 108


ISRAEL WANTS PEACE WITH HER ARAB NEIGHBORS

Beginning in the late 1800s in Europe, political Zionism was birthed. With political Zionism, the Jewish people (house of Judah) dreamed of living in the ancient homeland of their forefathers Abraham (Avraham), Isaac (Yitzchak) and Jacob (Ya'acov) where they would be free from anti-Semitism while living in security and being at peace with her neighbors.

Theodor Herzl is the father of modern Zionism. He established the World Zionist Organization in 1897 with the purpose of establishing a national homeland for the Jewish people (house of Judah). His dream was carried by Chaim Weizmann who influenced the British to help establish a homeland for the Jewish people (house of Judah) by signing the Balfour Declaration.

The Arabs responded to the Jewish (house of Judah) desire for a national homeland with great protest. Because of British politics to appease the Arabs, the Jewish (house of Judah) Zionist dream was delayed until 1948. It was only achieved because of world outrage to the horrors of the holocaust and the Jewish Resistance Movement against the British. With political division, the United Nations approved the partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state and Jerusalem being an international city through UN Resolution 181 in 1947.

The Arabs rejected this plan and went to war with Israel in 1948 following the passing of the UN partition plan. Israel defeated the Arabs and won her independence. The Arabs went to war with Israel again in 1956, 1967 and 1973 to liberate the land of Palestine. However, Israel won all these wars and increased the territory that she controlled and began to build settlements in these territories.

The Arab world and the PLO became infuriated with Israel for building settlements in these newly conquered land areas. These settlements and Israel's existence as a nation continued to be a thorny issue to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Because the PLO and the Arab world could not conquer Israel by war, they decided to go forward with a phased plan destruction of Israel by trading "land for peace."

With the passing of UN Resolution 242 following the 1967 war and UN Resolution 338 following the 1973 war, the principle of Israel trading "land for peace" was established in the international world community. Because UN Resolutions 242 and 338 could be used as a means to accomplish the phased plan destruction of Israel, it was acceptable to the PLO and the Arab world. Because UN Resolution 242 and 338 is a part of the plan to establish the credibility of the UN as an organization to promote World Government and the "New World Order," trading "land for peace" is a high priority to the framers who want to establish World Government. Therefore, the goals to establish World Government and the goal of the PLO to destroy Israel through its phased plan are being united through UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Because of this, Israel is being pressured to trade "land for peace."

In the next chapter, we will learn that all of Israel's peace agreements with her Arab neighbors  beginning with Egypt and the Camp David Accords in the late 1970s have been based upon UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Because the United States has been actively involved in promoting Israel having peace with her neighbors based upon UN Resolutions 242 and 338, it is easy to discern that the United States strongly advocates and promotes the idea of establishing World Government.

Because Israel desires so strongly to have peace with her Arab neighbors, she has agreed to  "peace" with her Arab neighbors based upon UN Resolutions 242 and 338. While Israel desires peace with her neighbors, by agreeing to trade "land for peace," she is rejecting the covenant that the G-d of Israel made with Abraham (Avraham) when He promised Abraham (Avraham) and his descendents an eternal Promised Land. This land would include the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

By desiring to have World Government without the rulership of the G-d of Israel, the nations of the world have rejected the G-d of Israel as King of the Universe and have also rejected the covenant that the G-d of Israel made with Abraham (Avraham). By rejecting the covenant that the G-d of Israel made with Abraham (Avraham), the judgment of the G-d of Israel will fall upon Israel and the nations. Rather than having peace (shalom) with her Arab neighbors based upon UN Resolutions 242 and 338, the words of the prophet Jeremiah (Yermiyahu) ring loud and clear. In Jeremiah (Yermiyahu) 6:14 it is written:

"They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace."

In the Brit Hadashah (New Testament), in I Thessalonians 5:3 it is written:

"For when they shall say, Peace and safety [security]; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child [Chevlai shel Mashiach/birthpangs of the Messiah] and they shall not escape."

However, it is during Jacob's trouble (Chevlai shel Mashiach), that the prophet Jeremiah  (Yermiyahu) declares that the two houses of Israel will be reunited in the land of Israel (Jeremiah [Yermiyahu] 30:1-7) when they return to the mountains of Israel (Judea and Samaria/West Bank) (Ezekiel [Yechezekel] 37:15-22).

May the G-d of Israel pour out His Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) and bring redemption, restoration,  reconciliation and unity to both the house of Judah (Judaism) and the house of Israel (Christianity) speedily in our days. Amen !!

                            (End Part 3 of 3)

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