The planet is slowly turning its gaze to New York City, peering owlishly at a glassy building abutting the East River – the international headquarters of the United Nations. Come the end of September, this stepchild of the League of Nations will be voting on a request by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud al-Abbas (nom de guerre Abu Mazen), asking for the world body to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state as a full member at the UN.
Many are concerned about the outcome of this process:
- What will happen there?
- What are the biblical guidelines for understanding these events?
- How can we pray about these matters?
Who is President Mahmoud al-Abbas?
Al-Abbas (shortened by world media to Abbas) is the President of the Palestinian Authority with active headquarters in Ramallah. He was born in 1935 in Safed (or Tzfat), a Galilean town. His family fled to Syria in 1948, and Abbas studied in Damascus and later in Egypt. In Moscow he took the Soviet equivalent of a PhD under the supervision of KGB officer (and later SVR Chief) Yevgeny Primakov. His doctoral study was “The Other Side: The secret relations between Nazism and the leadership of the Zionist movement”. This was an attempt to deny that the Holocaust resulted in the murder of six million European Jews, and to prove that the Nazis and Israeli Jews were actually secret collaborators (www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/856.htm; www.adl.org/holocaust/denial_me/hdme_origins.asp; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas).
Abbas joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as one of its early members, and is described as one of the co-founders of the al-Fatah terror group (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1933453.stm). In 1970 he was one of the organizers of the attempted Black September coup against King Hussein of Jordan, and in 1972 he provided PLO funding for the Munich Olympics Black September terror attack, in which eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered (http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=1088; http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/08/20/sb2). Abbas later became Chairman of the PLO in November 2004, and President of the Palestinian National Authority in January 2005.
Still denying after all these years
Abbas (while PA President in Gaza during the years 2005-6) allowed Holocaust denial and Nazi-like anti-Jewish attacks to be broadcast on official Gazan-Palestinian TV – attacks which are strikingly similar to Abbas’ own conclusions in his Russian PhD dissertation. The Simon Wiesenthal Center drew attention to a sermon in a Gaza mosque on Friday May 13, 2005, where Sheikh Ibrahim Mudairis declared,
“The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world … The Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting humankind … Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts …Through the Zionist movement the Jews incited many nations to start economic war against Germany and boycotted it…True, the Germans killed and burnt Jews but the Jews exaggerate the numbers to gain propaganda advantages and sympathy… Allah has predetermined that the Jewish problem will be solved with the extermination of the Jews … Allah has also predetermined that Christian-Islam interactions will end with today’s Christian countries under Islam” (www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4442249&ct=5851999.
Years ago the prophet Jeremiah wryly commented on similar events, “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jeremiah 13:23).
- President Abbas remains an advocate of the philosophy and strategies of the PLO, though his present political role involves downplaying his own convictions regarding the Holocaust and the PLO’s original “plan of stages” (www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_plo_phasedplan_1974.php) – the phased destruction of the Jewish state.
Which Palestinians does Abbas represent?
On January 25 2006 free elections were held in Gaza. Though Abbas and the PLO did not want elections at that time, strong American pressure on Israel forced the elections through. The Islamist perspective on democracy (“One man, one vote, one time”) resulted in Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood, see http://davidstent.com/words/, February 2006, “Hurtling Through The Fog of War: A Messianic Perspective On The New Hamastan”) coming to power.
Within a short time Abbas and the PLO had lost control of Gaza to jihadi Hamas, and at least 120 PLO members were assassinated, while more than 500 were kneecapped or tortured (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061402098.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007) ; www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/world/americas/15iht-gaza.1.6152626.html;
According to recent population statistics, there are up to 1.6 million Arabs living in Gaza, while the Arab population sector of the West Bank is somewhat larger that 1.5 million (http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=38108; www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gz.html; www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html).
- This means that today nearly half (or more than half) of all Palestinians are under freely elected jihadi Islamist rule in Gaza, and not under President Abbas’ control in the West Bank.
When President Abbas comes to the UN on or about September 20 2011, he will not be representing the majority of Palestinians. Indeed, West Bank Palestinians may be on Abbas’ home turf, but there are many who are strongly pro-Hamas. Hamas’ constitution calls for military jihad against Israel, no recognition of Israel, and the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel will never negotiate a peace treaty with an Islamist group that openly seeks the Jewish state’s destruction.
- Whatever spoils of war Abbas may receive from the UN in the name of all Palestinians, these political trophies can be (and most probably will be) hijacked in the near future by the Muslim Brotherhood-connected Hamas. In practical terms, this means that the United Nations will blunderingly be empowering a Palestinian entity that is a spiritual cousin of al-Qa’eda.
What is the strategic goal behind this UN appeal?
Abbas’ goal is multi-pronged:
- He would like to wrest control from Hamas through world opinion. Little chance of this.
- He hopes that he can weaken Israel’s and the United States’ world standing by having the Security Council vote on the Palestinian request. Were the USA to exercise its veto (there is a high probability of it doing so, and it would probably be the only member of the Security Council to do so), Abbas could use this veto to whip up anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and in the Third World.
- At very least, Abbas would like the General Assembly (GA) to recognize the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a non-member observer state. This is quite possible, and would allow the PA to engage in increased ‘lawfare’ (warfare through attempting to bring legal charges against Israel in international courts) against the State of Israel. This is another tool of attempted delegitimization against Israel.
What are the possible outcomes?
No one is quite sure how this will all work itself out. Last minute machinations in smoke-filled rooms may prevent a Security Council veto. Nevertheless, Abbas is assured of a GA majority at this point.
The Oslo Accords (which were signed on the White House Lawn on September 13 1993) created a legal framework which forces Israel and the PA to work only through direct negotiations. In going to the United Nations unilaterally, the PA is actually in basic breach of the Oslo Accords. Israel now has the legal right to no longer accept the Oslo guidelines.
Israel could take the following steps, should it choose to:
ü Stop supplying electricity, communications services and land access to Gaza from Israeli territory. Israel currently supplies 70% of Gaza’s electricity, as well as telephone services, fresh water etc. (www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=353702; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3496729,00.html).
- Cease all security coordination with the PA US-trained security forces.
- Incrementally retake territory every time that territory is used by Hamas or other jihadi terror groups to attack Israeli citizens and communities (by rocket, missile or mortar attack, or by suicide bombers, etc.).
If the PA receives world approval and acceptance at the UN in September, chances are that there will be an emboldened increase in terror attacks from Palestinian-held territories, as well as an even stronger Israeli response.
What do the Scriptures say?
Many scriptures describe a last days’ international conspiracy to shrink, divide and conquer Israel:
Why do the nations conspire together and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against YHVH and against His Messiah (ed., His Anointed One), saying, “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles” (Psalm 2:1-2).
See how Your enemies make an uproar, how those who hate You exalt themselves. They make shrewd plans against Your people; they plot against those whom You cherish. “Come,” they say, “let us wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel be remembered no more.” With one accord they plot together; they form an alliance against You — the tents of Edom, Ishmael, Moab and the sons of Hagar, Byblos, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the people of Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot’s descendants … who said, “Let us possess for ourselves the pastures of God” (Psalm 83:2-8, 12).
This is what YHVH says: In the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, who appropriated My land for themselves with glee and with malice in their hearts so that they might plunder its pastureland. Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and hills, to the wadis and valleys: “This is what YHVH says: I speak in My jealousy and in My fierce anger because you have suffered the insults of the nations. Therefore this is what YHVH says: I swear with an uplifted hand that the nations around you will themselves endure their own insults!” (Ezekiel 36:5-7).
In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to My inheritance, My people Israel, because they scattered My people among the nations and divided up My land (Joel 3:1-2).
A day of YHVH is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses plundered … Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then YHVH will go out and fight against those nations, as He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives … (Zechariah 14:1-4).
- What we are seeing this September is a marked intensification and a heightening of this process. Things are moving into a higher gear. It seems that the Lord has determined to take down all the proud mountains – all the arrogant nations – who are blithely stretching out their hand to divide Zion.
How can we pray?
- Pray for your own country, state and city – that your leaders will receive dreams and revelation from YHVH to hold them back from fateful error.
- Pray for your leaders in the spiritual and political realm – that God will grant them positive revelation, dreams and strategies about how to stand for Him and His Jewish people in these last days.
- Pray for the Palestinian people and leaders as well for both of these abovementioned issues.
- Pray for the leadership of Israel – that God would speak to them, reveal Yeshua to them, grant them His heart, insight and strategies to bring safety, deliverance and salvation to the Jewish people.
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do!
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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