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The Gaza Strip Is Not Part of “The Land of Israel”

The Gaza Strip Is Not Part of “The Land of Israel”

Last updated on: October 22, 2024 at 11:29 pm by Kermit Zarley

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The Gaza Strip Is Not Part of “The Land of Israel” 2024-10-22T23:29:55-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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There is a movement in Israel, especially in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration, that is calling for all Palestinians to move out of the Gaza Strip and let Israel annex it and settle it with Israeli Jews. And ultranationalist conference was held yesterday in Israel two miles from its border with Gaza and near where Hamas attacked last year on October 7th. It was called “Preparing to Settle Gaza.” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attended it and said he is “encouraging emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza as the “most ethical” solution. He also said, “The Land of Israel is ours,” thus claiming the Gaza Strip is part of “The Land of Israel.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also attended this conference. He wrote on X concerning the Gaza Strip, “Firstly, it’s part of the land of Israel.” All of this is wrong according to the Jews’ Proclamation of Independence and their Bible. Netanyahu himself is not for this Jewish settlement movement in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Proclamation of Independence

The modern formation of Israel began with Jewish leaders in The Levant publishing a two-page document called Israel’s “Proclamation of Independence” on May 15, 1948. That is what ignited a war with Arabs lasting seventeen months that resulted in the State of Israel. That document can be regarded as the sole basis for the State of Israel. The new nation did not produce a constitution as the USA did after its Declaration of Independence.

Israel’s Proclamation of Independence mentions “The Land of Israel” twice. And it once mentions “Eretz Yisrael,” which is Hebrew for “Land of Israel.” This document obviously defines the Land of Israel as the Jews’ “land of their fathers” and “their ancestral land.” These two later expressions are important because they restrict “Land of Israel” to that land which the Jews’ forefathers possessed and lived in.

The Promised Land Is Not “The Land of Israel”

Bible readers, including both Jews and Christians, get very mixed up about the question of “what is the Land of Israel.” Many of them think it is the so-called “Promised Land” in the Bible which God promised to give to Abraham and his descendants and which is recorded in the book of Genesis. It is a much larger territory than the historical Land of Israel. Therefore, “The Land of Israel” is not the “Promised Land.” The Land of Israel is as it is defined in Israel’s Proclamation of Independence—the ancestral land of the Jews, that is, the land that Jews of antiquity possessed and lived in for many centuries before they were cast out of that land by the Babylonians in what is called The Exile of the 6th century.

The ancient Jewish people never did possess the coastal plain south of Tel Aviv, which used to be called Joppa. Rather, that was “the land of the Philistines,” an expression that appears many times in the Jewish Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament. The Philistines were arch rivals of the Israelites for many centuries, beginning when the Israelites first entered the land and settled there.

I tell about this early history of the settlement of The Levant in the first two chapters of my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia (1990). There is much misinformation in recent times about this history. Much of this misinformation comes from Israeli Jewish leaders themselves, who should know better. And when they make statements about “the land between the seas” (between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea/Jordan River), that it belongs to Jews due to ancient history, I question if they are just stupid about that history or if they know it but are basically lying about it with such propaganda. This misinformation has been going on by Israeli leaders even beginning before 1948 by people like Menachem Begin and Yitzak Shamir, who were admittedly terrorists, who later became prime ministers of Israel. Both claimed all the land between the seas belonged to Jews, meaning Jews used to possess it.

Israel Did Not Take “The Land of the Philistines”

But let’s consider the Bible about this. We first read that “Joshua,” who succeeded Moses, “defeated them from Kadesh-barnea to Gaza” (Joshua 10.14). So, the Israelites led by Joshua did not take possession of Gaza nor the rest of the Philistines’ land. I then show in my book that there is a discrepancy in the Jewish Bible about this history. Most English Bibles say later, based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text, “Judah took Gaza with its territory. Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory” (Judges 1.18 NRSV). But this conflicts with the Septuagint.

The Septuagint (often identified as the Roman numeral LXX) was the Bible usually relied upon by the early Christians who wrote the New Testament. Septuagint is a Greek word meaning “seventy.” It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced mostly in the 3rd century BC that was translated by supposedly seventy translators, all of whom were Jews living in Egypt, and ordered by the pharaoh. It says in Judges 1.18 that “Judah did not take Gaza with its territory, Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory.” Those were the three main cities of Philistia.

There is an important reason why Judah did not take that land. God had told the nation to completely drive the Canaanites out of the land, that is, what we call today The Levant. But the book of Judges then says, “When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not in fact drive them out” (Judges 1.28). This was a serious disobedience to God. These Israelites, after Joshua, cared more about greed in making Canaanites their slaves, which was a common practice in antiquity with the spoils of war, than they were in obeying what God had commanded. And that is why God did not allow them to possess the land of the Philistines.

This Septuagint rendering in Judges 1.18 (“Judah did not take Gaza”) coincides with what is soon related in the book of Judges, whereas the MT saying Judah took that land does not so correspond. For, Judges also quotes God as saying, “I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died” (Judges 1.21). And we further read, “Now these are the nations that the LORD left to test all those in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan … the five lords of the Philistines” and other ethnic groups (2.1, 3).

And this is the way it was for many centuries following. The Old Testament has much history about conflict between the Israelites, who live in the hill country, and the Philistines who lived to the west of them in the lower, coastal plain. Therefore, when Jews today say all The Levant belongs to them between the seas, that is not true. They are saying that because they are trying to make everyone thing the ancient Israelites possess all of the land between the seas, and that is a revisionist history that is no history at all.

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