The Historical and Legal Right of the Jews to the Land of Israel ©2005

Richard E. Bristol, PhD

Jerusalem

Mail@standingstrong.org

Abstract

While the Bible provides satisfactory proof of rights to the current land of Israel and much more to those who believe the Bible, it provides no justification for the current state of Israel for the millions who do not recognize the Bible as inerrant truth. Establishing the Jews as a nation and tracing the history of the Jews in the territory in question is the only way to prove a historic and legal claim to the land as a Nation-State.  The Jews have a national identity as defined in scholarly definition.  They have a historic tie to the land.  By international law as accepted by the League of Nations, the United Nations, international treaties, and right of conquest, Israel has rights to all of the Gaza Strip and Judea-Samaria, currently referred to as the West Bank. 

The Historical and Legal Right of the Jews to the Land of Israel

People look for one of three ways to prove that the Jews have a claim to current Israel.  The first is a biblical claim. The second is a historical claim and the third is a legal claim.

David Lewis in his book “Can Israel Survive In a Hostile World states on page 192 that one who believes the Bible has no problem figuring it out that the Jewish people have a right to the land. Looking to the Bible one finds that the biblical claim is based upon a promise from G-d to Abraham and his descendants to the current land and much more; from the river of Egypt as far as the river Euphrates.  This promise was passed on to Isaac and to Jacob and then to the entire house of Israel as G-d freed His people from Egypt.  The promise was fulfilled through a right of conquest under the leadership of Jacob with an order to destroy the peoples of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.  Although the promise was dependant upon obeying G-d’s commandments, disobedience would only lead to a dispersion of His people and a promise of the return of this land.  These promises are found in the Bible in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Jeremiah. (Underwood)   The actual boundaries of the promised land is questioned by some as the actual extent of Israel’s boundaries specified in the Tenach varies from passage to passage. Sometimes it includes land east of the Jordan, sometimes not. (Wilson)274

The biblical promises are not constrained to the Old Testament.  … the New Covenant includes the promise that Israel would dwell in its own land in safety and security (Ezekiel 24-28). (Juster) 22 In fact it is claimed that No New Testament passage confutes the continuation of the Abrahamic Covenant. Paul says, “The gifts and call of G-d are irrevocable”; Israel remains “beloved for the father’s sake” (Romans 11:28-29) (Juster) 5

The fault with basing ownership of the land upon a biblical claim is that not all peoples believe in the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and an even greater number of people in the world do not believe the Bible to be inerrant truth.  While the proof can be made that the Bible shows a right to the land, unless the inerrancy of the history as stated in the Bible is accepted, this proof holds no validation. Establishing the Jews as a nation and tracing the history of the Jews in the territory in question is the only way to prove a historic and legal claim to the land as a Nation-State.  Marvin Wilson in Our Father Abraham states this the most clearly when on page 266, “In Truth, no one has the privilege to lay claim to any land simply on the grounds of ‘divine right.’” One must prove that a nation is a distinct people and then show a historic and legal claim to the land in order to justify the existence on any given piece of land. 

Theological arguments for ownership are fair game for religious belief, but cannot be expected to be treated as normative for international relations among parties who do not share the beliefs in question. If you want to assert that this is wrong because G-d really did give the land to the Jews, you are entitled to do so, but this is a theological argument that must exist independently, above and beyond whatever mundane logic dictates. Its validity is in the same class as that of your religion generally, i.e. a controversy in which you may be right but which cannot resolve the present dispute.  (Hobbes and the Middle East)

The web site, Number of Countries in the World, defines a nation as a tightly-knit group of people which share a common culture. A nation-state is a nation which has the same borders as a State. Wikipedia defines a nation as a community of people who live together in an area (or, more broadly, of their descendants who may now be dispersed); and who regard themselves, or are regarded by others, as sharing some common identity, to which certain norms and behavior are usually attributed. Number of Countries in the World further defines a people as culturally homogeneous group of people, larger than a single tribe or community, which shares a common language, institutions, religion, and historical experience.   The Hebrew language has survived thousands of years while the nation of Jews were dispersed throughout the world, maintained their religion, religious institutions and historical experience.  There is no doubting that the Jews by this definition constitute a nation. There is no doubt as to the common culture and desire to return to the land of current Israel.  For thousands of years the Passover Seder has ended with the wish to celebrate “next year in Jerusalem.” 

A Nation-State is found to have certain characteristics.

An independent State:

Has space or territory which has internationally recognized boundaries (boundary disputes are OK).

Has people who live there on an ongoing basis.

Has economic activity and an organized economy. A country regulates foreign and domestic trade and issues money.

Has the power of social engineering, such as education.

Has a transportation system for moving goods and people.

Has a government which provides public services and police power.

Has sovereignty. No other State should have power over the country's territory.

Has external recognition. A country has been "voted into the club" by other countries.  (Number of Countries)

                 It is generally agreed that Israel has economic activity and an organized economy. Israel has social engineering with public education, public transportation, and a democratic government.  This leaves the only space for argument as to whether Israel has a history of its people living there on an ongoing basis, internationally recognized boundaries, sovereignty, and external recognition.

                 The Jew’s social structure has been the quintessential example of structured society for thousands of years. The Mosaic constitution was “to provide Israel with the most exemplary and humanitarian social system that had been seen on earth.” (Juster) 16

                 Historians have found that the Queen of Sheba sent a camel train of gold and ivory to King Solomon. Solomon wooed and married the queen after she became overwhelmed by the splendour of his palace and their son began a dynasty of rulers in Ethiopia. The Bible dates the queen's reign to the tenth century BC and modern scholars have speculated that a link between Judea and an ancient African queen led to the emergence of Judaism in Ethiopia.  (Searching for the Queen of Sheba)  This clearly demonstrates a presence of Jews in the current boundaries of Israel in tenth century BC.  

We know there has been an Israel up until the time of the Roman Empire. The Romans conquered the land. Israel had no homeland, although Jews were allowed to live there. They were driven from the land in two dispersions: One in 70 A.D. and the other in 135 A.D. But there was always a Jewish presence in the land. (Inhofe)

                 How did Rome get right to the land? They obtained it by right of conquest. The validity of the right of conquest is an essential foundation of world order and should be respected.

The reality is that the world does in fact accommodate itself to conquests after they occur, because it cannot ignore the realities of power and wishes to get on with business as usual. All over the world, the United States and the international community recognize borders that were fixed by conquest at some point or another. Some of these conquests are ancient history, some of them, like the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, are recent. Until we were actually at war, we recognized the USSR and Nazi Germany as legitimate governments with valid claims on their territories. Right of conquest is, de facto, a settled and accepted part of international law and political practice.  If you won’t accept sovereignties that are founded on force, this means rejecting the political legitimacy of half the world. If you’re serious about this and willing to follow it to its logical conclusion, this means refusing to have relations with these powers or otherwise tie them into the international system. This would result in undoing the forces that keep the world at peace. The political philosopher who figured this out was Thomas Hobbes, in the 17^th Century. He was principally concerned with the chaos resulting from civil, rather than international, war, but the point is the same. Unless one is willing to place oneself into a continual state of war with most of the rest of the world, one must accept the right of conquest. International order, like domestic social order, must be based on things as they are. (Hobbes and the Middle East)

The history of this piece of land shows many changes of hands.  The Jews had originally conquered it from the Canaanites. The Romans had conquered it from the last Jewish kingdom in 63 BC. The Byzantines inherited it from the Romans upon division of the Empire in 395. The Abbasids conquered it from the Byzantines. The Seljuks conquered it from the Abbasids.  The Fatimids conquered it from the Seljuks in 1098. The Crusaders conquered it from Fatmids in 1099.  The Mamluks conquered it from the Crusaders in 1291.  The Turks conquered it from the Mamluks in 1517 and the British took it from the Turks in 1917. The British title derives from the surrender of these lands by Ottoman Turkey. (Hobbes and the Middle East)  In fact, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration in which it viewed favorably “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people.” In 1922, Britain was granted a mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. On November 29, 1947, the general assembly of the United Nations adopted a partition Plan, dividing Palestine into two Sovereign states, one Jewish and the other Arab. (Wilson) 259  It would appear that ever since the British took control of the land the intent was to make a nation-state  for the Jews.

During the time of various sovereign rules in the land there was a Jewish presence.  As Wilson states,

The Hebrews were located geographically in the ancient Middle East, and during most of their long history were under the sovereignty of powers greater than themselves. Yet, remarkably, they were the only one of those peoples to succeed in maintaining themselves through the centuries as a culture. It was primarily their unique religion which sustained them, making them capable of withstanding those forces of absorption and disintegration which would have removed them as a people from the stage of history.  (Wilson) 12

The Jews were in these areas for many years. Jewish settlement in West Bank and Gaza Strip territory has existed and was expressly recognized as legitimate in the Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations. Some Jewish settlements, such as in Hebron, existed throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule. Israeli settlements have been established on sites which were home to Jewish communities in previous generations, in an expression of the Jewish people's deep historic and religious connection with the land. (Israeli Settlements and International Law)

The homeland that Britain said it would set aside consisted of all of what is now Israel and all of what was then the nation of Jordan -- the whole thing. That was what Britain promised to give the Jews in 1917. In the beginning, there was some Arab support for this action. There was not a huge Arab population in the land at that time, and there is a reason for that. The land was not able to sustain a large population of people. It just did not have the development it needed to handle those people, and nobody really wanted this land. It was considered to be worthless land. (Inhofe) The purpose of the Mandate was to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland. Indeed, Article 6 of the Mandate provided for “close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands not required for public use.”  (Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ) 44

Even prior to the establishment of the state of Israel there were attempts to rid the area of Jews by the Arabs who wanted the land.  The Moslems slaughtered 60 Jews in Hebron in 1929, virtually wiping out the Jewish population there. The few Jewish survivors moved to Jerusalem.  In 1936 the resettled Jewish community was again driven from Hebron in the Arab uprising that took the lives of over 500 Jews in Palestine.  (Lewis) 60  It was through right of conquest that the Arabs tried to reestablish control of the land. 

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