UK Votes for “Palestine Alongside the State of Israel”

Yesterday, the UK’s Parliament voted unanimously to recognize Palestine as a state. Of course, it is not much more than a symbolic gesture in support of the Palestinians’ desire for a state. The British House of Commons voted 274 to 12 to support a motion for the British government to “recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”

“Palestine alongside the state of Israel” is not what Palestinians and the international community have been focused on for over 45 years. U.S. President George W. Bush had even spoken more definitively of a two-state solution in which the states of Palestine and Israel would be “lying side-by-side.” But that doesn’t describe the ongoing vision of Palestine in the two separated territories of a Gaza Strip and a swiss-cheese West Bank with a corridor joining them.

On the other hand, what I propose in my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia (1990), does meet these descriptions. I’m saying Palestine should be located only in the coastal plain, and the major portion of Israel should be the West Bank, which amazingly corresponds to ancient Samaria and Judea. Thus, I think the way to solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict is according ancient precedent. That is, make Israel truly conform to the demand in its Proclamation of Independence for its “eretz Yisrael” (land of Israel), which it implicitly defines as the Jews’ “ancestral land,” and let the Palestinians establish their state in “the land of the Philistines,” the Hebrews’ arch-rival during antiquity and from whom they derive their name.

This solution in my book is based on my interpretations of certain Old Testament biblical prophecies, and hardly anyone has ever engaged me about them. One reason may be that no else has been saying it. In fact, this is the only book ever written which makes this proposed solution or so interprets certain scriptures. The most prominent of these biblical texts are Isaiah 11.14 and Zechariah 9.5-8. But these texts, which refer to the end of the age and the world to come, cannot be understood correctly unless one realizes that at that time the Messiah-King of Israel will come in great glory to militarily deliver Israel from imminent annihilation by its enemies and then establish it as the head of his worldwide kingdom of peace. That’s what Isaiah 11.4 and Zechariah 12 and 14 are about.