The Jewish Power Blog: Holy Land
The current armed conflict in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank has brought back into the center of public discourse a long-running debate: where exactly should the borders of Israel be set – and according to what criteria, principles, or historical facts? In recent months we have seen Israeli demonstrators cleared out of Gaza and Lebanon by the army, when they attempted to cross the border and symbolically “settle,” while government ministers call for permanent occupation or annexation in all three areas. Meanwhile, the government has been actively and passively moving to extend and entrench sovereignty in the West Bank and “encourage” emigration by the Palestinian inhabitants. So it is clear that there are a lot of us who don’t see the 1949 armistice lines as final borders, and who have a much more expansive vision of the territory of the state of Israel – and who see that geographical ideal as worth paying any price to realize.
The Torah’s promised borders (Num. 34), though many of the points defining them have not been positively identified, seem to include Gaza, the West Bank, and a large swath of Lebanon and Syria – but not most of the Negev and Aravah south of Beersheba. King Solomon managed to expand sovereignty beyond this area, eastward into Trans-Jordan and south to Eilat – but not over the coastal strip where the Philistines retained control, from Gaza up to Jaffa. Later, the rabbis defined the borders where agricultural halakhah was binding, encompassing a smaller area, excluding Lebanon and Syria and the southern Negev, and including a smaller slice of Trans-Jordan. Ironically, the “heartland” of ancient Philistia was the coastal strip, while the Jewish “heartland” was Judea and Samaria – the West Bank. While the Romans named the general area Palestine – a Latinization of Philistia – there never was a state – or even clearly defined borders around a land – of that name.
In the carving up of the Ottoman colonies at the Versailles peace conference in 1919, the Zionists asked for a border that ran from El Arish on the Sinai coast, down through eastern Sinai to Eilat, and then northward through Trans-Jordan up to Amman and onward to include the Golan Heights and a wide strip of southern Lebanon. In the end, the final Palestine Mandate assigned to the British was the now familiar map of the sliver of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.
As the British struggled unsuccessfully to keep the peace between the Jews attempting to build their state and the Arabs (both local and in the surrounding area) attempting to prevent this, they proposed partitioning the territory into two states for the two nations. In 1938, The World Zionist Congress voted to accept this idea in principle, though a third of the delegates opposed it – either secular Zionists who thought the idea was unrealistic and unworkable, or Orthodox Zionists who argued: “We staunchly declare the eternal, complete and full right of the nation to its homeland within its historic boundaries and absolutely reject any attempt to agree to the partition of Eretz Israel…”
When on November 29, 1947 the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, most Jews danced in the streets; but there were also those who went into mourning. Was the United Nations, with its partition vote, the savior of the Jewish People and the Zionist dream – or their nemesis? With the unexpected conquest of Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in 1967, this debate burst forth as the central issue defining “left” and “right” in Israeli politics, and remains so today. Indeed, it seems that even the current judicial reform campaign to weaken the supreme court originates from the resentment of the right over the court’s support of the 2005 withdrawal of all Jewish settlement from Gaza.
The conflict is not just geopolitical; it cuts deeper, between two fundamental understandings of the meaning of modern Israel:
- The Jews need a modern state; i.e., “national self-determination:” they need power as a “normal” nation, which means territory, sovereignty, economic viability, an army, institutions for self-governance and for perpetuating their culture. It is natural and logical for this state to exist somewhere within the area where the Jewish nation’s history and culture are rooted – Palestine/Eretz Yisrael. For this state to be sustainable, it must work out a peaceful modus vivendi with its neighbors and the world based on universal moral principles.
- The borders demarcated in the Torah are divinely decreed, and it is not up to human authority – neither the UN nor the Knesset – to relinquish Jewish sovereignty over any part of that territory. Partition, “land for peace,” international agreements – these are all blasphemous wokeness. We must do whatever it takes to fulfill the divine promise. “Peace” and “sustainability” are not relevant categories; all that matters is: “When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are about to enter and possess, and He dislodges many nations before you… and delivers them to you and you defeat them, you must doom them to destruction.” (Deut. 7:1-2)
The former is complicated and frustrating, constantly presenting us with difficult dilemmas and disappointing compromises. The latter is simple and straightforward – but only if we wear blinders to prevent us from being distracted by three millennia of Jewish history and thought, whose one consistent, overarching theme has been “Not by might, nor by power – but by My spirit, said the Lord of Hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6)
