Comment & Debate
Brad MacDonald. “Israel: Why the Two-State Solution Will Not Work”. Trumpet. May 14, 2009: “Judea and Samaria are the “crux of the cradle of Jewish history,” Ettinger explained. Israel does not exist on the eastern flank of the Mediterranean because of Tel Aviv or any of the coastal cities. Instead, Ettinger said, the essential reason Israel exists today is because of the “territorial stretch between Hebron in the south, the first Jewish capital before Jerusalem, and Nabulus in the north, the first stop of the Israelites when they reentered the Promised Land.”
Judea and Samaria is the heartland of the Jewish people, Ettinger said, and a strategic necessity for preserving the independence of a Jewish state!
The Jewish people have been tethered to Judea and Samaria for more than 3,000 years. Genesis shows that Abraham entered Israel through Shechem, and that the hills of Judea and Samaria were the stomping grounds for his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. The Bible records that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried in Hebron, a bustling city in the Judean hills. Even Joseph, although he lived and died in Egypt, was buried in Shechem, in the hills of Samaria (Joshua 24:32). Scripture says Bethel, known today as Beit El, was where Jacob slept on the pillar stone and had his famous dream. The book of Exodus shows that the ark of the covenant, before being placed in the temple in Jerusalem, rested in the Samarian city of Shilo.
The Jews’ fingerprints are literally all over the hills of Judea and Samaria. “Ninety-two percent of the Bible place names are in the mountains of Israel in what the Bible calls Judea and Samaria and the world calls the West Bank,” says Billye Brim, a Bible scholar at Elon Moreh. In the book of Joshua, God maps out the borders of the Promised Land as a whole, as well as the internal borders separating the 12 tribes of Israel. In Joshua 15, God specifically outlines the territory assigned to the tribe of Judah, of which the Jews today are descendants. (You can easily prove this by reading The United States and Britain in Prophecy.)
Notice, God placed the tribe of Judah at the heart of the Promised Land, on the northwest side of the Dead Sea, and primarily in the hills of what even today is still called Judea!
As the biblical heartland of the ancient Israelites (of whom the Jews are descendants today), the territory of Judea and Samaria—not the Golan, not the coastal plain—is the pulse of Jewish sovereignty. This history definitely complicates land-for-peace deals and the two-state “solution.” But as Ettinger asked: “Can any nation survive whilst negotiating away the cradle of its history? … If you don’t have your roots, how can you have peace?” Trees will not blossom without strong roots, and will more than likely be uprooted by the lightest wind.
The same applies to Jewish national sovereignty, which is rooted in Judea and Samaria.”