Middle East Update

It has been a bizarre diplomatic couple of weeks.  In an effort to entice Israel to impose a three-month freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, the U.S. offered an amazing set of concessions.  Obama agreed to three things:  1.) to give Israel twenty of our most sophisticated new generation of stealth fighters, the F-35.  That is a three billion dollar giveaway.  2.)  He also agreed to veto any move by the United Nations to declare a Palestinian state. And 3.)  Obama agreed not to ask for any further moratoria on building in the “occupied” territories.  All of this for only a ninety-day construction halt is an astounding offer.

Israel might have had Obama backed into a diplomatic corner.  All they had to do was declare the three-month moratorium, delay and deny in the peace negotiations. After three months, Obama would be left with the status quo ante, with no diplomatic way to ensure that the Palestinians would have a state of their own.  It was an shocking deal, but Israel declined.  From the standpoint of strategy, that was apparently as big a blunder as any in history.

The question then arises, “Was President Obama so stupid as not to understand what a diplomatic impossibility the deal would put him in if the three months of negotiations failed?”  He is not a stupid man.  As Editor of the Harvard Law Review, he proved himself a brilliant man.  It is only the brightest of the students who achieve such lofty heights.  Why then would he make such an outlandish offer for such a small gain?

On the other hand, with Obama’s diplomatic future in their hands, why did Israel not agree to a three-month freeze?  With the promise to block any U.N. moves to declare Palestinian statehood, why would Israel not jump at the chance?  It doesn’t make sense on either side of that coin.

Thus, there must be something that we do not know about what is going on behind the scenes in Washington, Jerusalem, and Ramallah.  There must also be some quiet diplomacy to keep the Arab League and Egypt and others online with the demand for a peaceful settlement.  As always, we do not know what we do not know.  But there is a likely scenario.

It takes time to change the hearts of peoples who have been enemies throughout their histories, to diminish their hatred and bring about a state of genuine peace.  Like a heavy locomotive, changing a world is a slow process, but when it picks up a head of steam, it is difficult to stop.  Governments must turn their people from hatred to friendship before any real deal can be announced.  Every government employs psychologists in their quest to mold public opinion.  It is manipulation, pure and simple.

Perhaps there is already a framework that is generally agreed upon.  During the time that the governments work on their constituents’ psyches, they are refining the details behind the scenes.  If this were so, then it may have been agreed in advance that the U.S. would make such an offer, with the understanding that the Israelis would reject it.  That would give Prime Minister Netanyahu a great dose of face-saving among his own people.  They had their way, and were not enticed by the extravagant offer from Washington.  They stood up to the strongest nation in the world.

Why was there no outcry among the Palestinian and the other Arab states, knowing that Israel’s agreement to the proposal would seal their fate?  There was token outrage, but nothing on the scale of what it would be if Israel accepted the offer.  Why did the Arab League and every other group not protest vociferously?  They had to know also that the offer would be made and declined, else that outrage would have swept through the Arab world and the Islamic world like the wildfires that are decimating northern Israel today. 

When diplomats speak, every word is calculated.  Aristotle wrote the book on rhetoric, and every diplomat is likely required to read it. Certainly, every lawyer and politician should read and understand it.  The point is, governments do not make diplomatic statements unless they have figured every angle.  The real diplomacy is done behind the scenes, beyond the eyes and ears of the media, and they release what they release to the press in a very calculated way.

Let us suppose that there is some framework that all sides agree upon.  The first order of business would be to begin to manipulate constituencies.  All sides must be aware of everything that is going out of the inner circle to the news media before it is released.  Why did the Arab League not express a strong sense of betrayal by Obama’s offer to Israel?  They knew in advance what was going to happen.  Netanyahu needed to be strengthened politically at home, so that when he does agree to the treaty officially, the opposition will have been softened by his strong stand against another moratorium.

Why, during all of this, would Hamas soften its stand and state that it was willing to abide by a public referendum in relation to the peace talks?  In a recent survey, sixty-two percent of the people in the Middle East would prefer peace.  Such a referendum would tie the diplomatic hands of Gaza and Hamas.  Peace would win out, though there might be considerable public opposition from some of the violent cells in the Hamas organization.  The point is, Hamas acted quickly to suggest that such a referendum would be exercised if Abbas and Netanyahu were able to work out an agreement of peace.  That was a de facto recognition of Israel as a separate state.

The movement toward a Gentile demand for whatever concessions must be made to be advanced, and to give the Palestinians a homeland in the West Bank and Gaza, in accordance with the pre-1967 borders has already begun. 

Brazil announced on the third of December that it was officially recognizing the state of Palestine.  Other nations have been making noise about the United Nations finally pushing Israel back to those narrower borders. 

By rejecting the offer made by Obama, Israel has freed the United States not to veto a U.N resolution for Palestinian statehood.  Israel has now pushed itself into the same corner in which it could have had the U.S. locked.  It makes no sense, unless there are workings behind the scenes, and unless the interested parties knew in advance that the offer would be rejected.

Why the charade?  Why put the world through such an ordeal, at least among those who follow the Mideast peace process?  There can really only be one reason, to move domestic opinion among the peoples away from conflict and toward some sort of peace in which each side concedes much.

It is likely that the final treaty will see the Palestinians and the Israelis agreeing to share East Jerusalem, which they are doing already.  The Palestinians will cede some portion of East Jerusalem to the Israelis, while keeping those neighborhoods that are currently settled by Palestinians.

The fact is, we do not know what is going on behind the scenes, but the political maneuvering of the recent weeks has been senseless unless the outcome was planned before it was announced.

If the world is already in alignment with the prophets concerning the geopolitical stage of the end times, and if the entire Gentile world is pressing harder and harder every day to force Israel to make peace and give up Gaza and the West Bank, then we may safely assume that the times and the seasons are upon us, and the world is closing in on that peace treaty, before which we will meet our Lord face to face and marvel over the glory of God’s heaven.

When people, Christians, agree that the times and the seasons are upon us, they are almost exclusively referring to Matthew chapter twenty-four.  Famines, pestilences, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in various places – these form the limit of most Christians’ knowledge of the times and the seasons.  But they ignore the realities on the ground.

Conventional opinion among conservative theologians is that the U.S. is going to suddenly collapse as the leader of the free world.  They argue that it must be deeply reduced to insignificance on the geopolitical stage.  Then another state – some say European, some say a Mediterranean nation, others say Iraq or the U.N. or the European Union – must arise to world dominance.  If this is so, then the times and the seasons must not be upon us. Why, then, do preachers insist that the end times are upon us already.  There is a contradiction inherent in such a position as to void their own stated convictions.

The Bible is very specific about which peoples are going to hold what attitudes toward Israel in the last days of this age.  There are not really very many named nations, but those that are said to be aligned in the last days are already aligned.  Why, then, do theologians ignore the obvious in favor of an interpretation that has already proven itself wrong?  If everything is in place for the events that must follow the rapture, why will conventional theology not examine the state of the world in the light of the prophets; especially given that the most powerful nation the world has ever seen is now pushing Israel into capitulation to its will, with the backing of the entire Gentile world? 

Israel cannot defeat the whole world.  It could, if it were spiritually aware and in tune with the will of God the Father.  But it is not spiritually alive, nor will it be until they say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” 

There is great frustration among the nations of the world – great indignation – over Israel’s refusal to stop building in the contested areas until the negotiations have settled the border issue.  Israel is rapidly losing favor around the world for what the world sees as intransigence.  By appeasing his hard line constituents, Netanyahu has placed Israel in the worst danger it has faced since its wars.  Israel is a nation by the authority of the Gentile world, and that body, the U.N., can revoke that charter or force Israel to move back to the borders granted them in 1948.

From a political perspective, rejection of Obama’s offer did Netanyahu a lot of good at home.  But from a strategic perspective, he may have chewed the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  The world sees that rejection as an arrogant affront.  Brazil’s recognition of the state of Palestine is going to be the first among many nations who will rise in support of what they perceive as “those beleaguered people.” 

In fact, the Palestinians are trespassers on land that God claims for Himself (Joel 3:1-2).  It is the singular event, the dividing of Jerusalem, that will so arouse God’s fury as to spark the onset of the tribulation.  It does not matter what any or all of the Gentile nations think; if God has claimed that land for Himself and for the Israelis, then it does not belong to anyone to partition according to the will of man.  They do not reckon with such a God as the One who owns the land.  He is ignored, while the nations seek their own will. 

We know that Israel will eventually capitulate, else, Daniel and the others of the prophets would have misspoken.  Seeing that the words of the prophets are being fulfilled before our eyes this day, it is probably safe to assume that the end of this age is at hand. 

The Evangelicals are correct insofar as they say that the end times are upon us, and the rapture must happen soon, but their reasoning is twisted, denying what their eyes see and their ears hear.  They are right that the end of Gentile world dominion is near, but their “evidence” suggests that it is years in the future, after the U.S. collapses and some other nation rises to world dominance.  If only the saints would look at what is actually happening, rather than waiting for that which is not going to happen, they could easily see the truth.

This is an important message.  If we are reading this correctly, then the Church has little time to preach the Gospel, ministering the word of reconciliation to the lost.  If it is correct, then the rapture must be very near indeed.