The Israel-Hamas conflict

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian Hamas troops from the Gaza Strip did the unthinkable -- they launched a surprise offensive on Israeli soil, slaughtering civilians in eight kibbutzes and a music festival. At least 1,400 Israelis have been found dead, the worst attack on Israel since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

The coordinated invasion of 2,500 troops came para-inserted via hanggliders from the air, via the coast on speedboat and on land using pickup trucks and other common vehicles. The attack will be held up as a major blight on the much-feared Israeli Defence Force (IDF), leaving many to question the intelligence and military capability of the oft-thought invincible IDF, a global leader in their field. Even more chillingly, Hamas troops are now holding dozens of Israelie and international hostages in the Gaza for leverage.

In the aftermath of the invasion, Israel has swiftly taken steps to retaliate. An emergency war Cabinet has been formed, putting an end to the peacetime bickering that just preceded this crisis. In the week that followed, Israel cut off food, water, power and fuel resources to the Gaza and rained down airstrikes on the Gaza. It has called up 300,000 of its military reserves, and on the 13 Oct, ordered the immediate evacuation of northern Gaza within 24 hours, effectively displacing 1.1m Palestinian civilians.

There is every reason to believe that this conflict is only just beginning, and will lead to severe unrest in the Middle East.

But taking a few steps back — how did things get here? And how should the thinking Christian, trusting in the God who keeps His covenant promises, think about these matters with wisdom?

The people of god from Exile to Christ

As we remind ourselves of the Bible’s own story about the Jewish people, we should understand how the people of God have moved through this part of the world. 

The prophetic books of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah remind us that because of unfaithfulness to God’s covenant, the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah were both sent by God into exile, the former in Assyria in 720 BC and the latter to Babylon in 586 BC. In particular, the prophet Daniel’s life and story unfolded in captivity under Babylonian rule, but concluded with his service to the Medo-Persian King when Babylonian rule was succeeded by Darius the Mede. His descendant the enlightened King Cyrus ordered the return of the Jewish exiles back to their homeland in 538 BC. The returning exiles rebuilt the city and temple of Jerusalem according to Cyrus’ degree, and instituted the restoration of Jewish religion as recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah. 

Following Greek control of Palestine under Alexander the Great in the 4th century, the Romans ruled Judea as a vassal state in the 1st century BC, and subjected it to the client kings like King Herod, who held power during the lifetime and birth of Jesus Christ. This entire sequence of world history was prophesied breathtakingly by the prophet Daniel, who anticipated the four kingdoms of gold (Babylon), silver (Persia), bronze (Greek) and mixed iron and clay (Roman) until the fifth and everlasting kingdom would arrive and crush the latter in its day. 

Thus Christians reading the Bible should rightly understand that it is for covenant unfaithfulness that the nations of Israel and Judah, the children of Jacob, lost the land of promise and that the latter glory of the temple, restored by the returning exiles, then expanded in Herod’s day could never compare to the first.

In the New Testament, the carpenter from Nazareth and self-proclaimed Messiah Jesus Christ led his followers in “The Way” claiming that His body would be a new temple, destroyed and raised again in three days. His Way was seen first as merely an off-branch Jewish sect by Roman authorities. As Chrisitanity began to transcend race and language and spread throughout the Empire, the question of Jewishness as the pure mark of the church of Christ was decisively dealt with by the Jerusalem Council and the enquiries of the apostle Paul of Tarsus, who confirmed that followers of Jesus need not conform to Jewish ritual and tradition. Thus the New Testament witness emphatically stresses that salvation into the people of God was not by heritage or circumcision or Jewishness, but by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This point was recovered, stressed and preserved in the Protestant Reformation some fifteen hundred years later. 

But in the ancient world, the rapid growth of Christianity came to alarm the Roman authorities who then attempted to suppress it through martyrdom and persecution, until the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine four hundred years later.

How should we see the Jews?

But don’t the Jews have special claim to the land? The book of Romans deals precisely with this question in chapters 9 to 11. And reading those difficult chapters, some come to the conclusion that while a partial hardening has come upon Israel - meaning there is widespread rejection of God’s Messiah - one day God will have mercy upon His covenant people and usher them in in great numbers. Others reading that chapter understand that true Israel, the church of Christ Jesus, will comprise people ethnically descended from the nation of Israel as part of God’s promise, which we recognise to already be the case. Thus, “not all descended from Israel is Israel” (Rom 9:6).

Moreover, no one should assert that the modern secular state of Israel, founded in 1948, in its Messiah-rejecting form, is heir to the covenant promises. God’s covenant explicitly states that when His people actively reject Him, God will not hold them guiltless! Yet, post-1948, Christians, especially those interested in eschatological matters, have seized upon particular interpretations to insist that various prophecies must be fulfilled with the founding of the modern state of Israel, and that regardless of its spiritual rebellion against God there is divine favor to be found. 

Thus the Christian should rightly pray for the Jews as a nation and tribe and tongue, as we pray for the Indonesians, or the Chinese or the Bulgarians, to repent and return to Messiah.

How should we see modern Israel?

Where did the modern state of Israel come from? 

Six hundred years after Christ, as the Roman empire waxed and waned, Palestine came under the control of the Rashidun Caliphate, which began a new period of Muslim control stretching all the way into the Ottoman Empire. In this period,  massive population decline of non-Arab peoples, including the Jews began in Palestine, arising from the Islamization of the region. 

Amid the European Crusades, initiated first by Pope Urban II in 1095 AD, the Jewish population in Palestine plummeted. 

Years later, the Emperor of France, Napoleon defeated the Ottomans in the eighteenth century, and took control. It was he who first raises the question of whether the Jews should have their own state when he occupied Palestine in 1799. The “Jewish Question” continued to be raised and the cause of a Jewish state in Palestine was fuelled by groups like “Hovevei Zion” meaning “Lovers of Zion”, founded in 1871 to raise funds from European Jews to that end. In 1896, Theodor Herzl published “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State) arguing that the solution to antisemitism in Europe was the establishment of a Jewish state.

In the twentieth century, colonial European powers provided various options and formulations for how to house the Jewish and Arab peoples in Palestine, which were seen as selectively favorable and unfavorable by both parties. In 1948, the Jewish people accepted the United Nations’ proposal and the modern state of Israel was founded - not as a result of covenant faithfulness to God or built on the surety of His promises that culminate in Messiah, but on claims for a land for a secular people to call home. 

Thus rightly Christians should pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that all who live there, as well as Gaza, the West Bank, and across the street, be places of peace and belonging, so that the Gospel can flourish and be proclaimed. We should pray for an end to longstanding conflict, war and human displacement, for the sake of Christ. 

Timeline of the Creation and Crisis of Modern Israel

  • The British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, articulates “The Balfour Declaration”, stating the British Government’s view on “The Jewish Question” – to establish a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people, most of whom reside in Europe.

  • The League of Nations confirms British colonial control of Palestine, establishing “Mandatory Palestine” which includes Transjordan. This corresponds with “The Third Aliyah” which begins as many Jews relocate from Europe to Palestine.

  • The British Peel Commission proposes the master partition plan of a “two-state solution” for both the Arab and Jewish peoples in Palestine. While the Israeli response is mixed, the plan plan is soundly rejected by Palestinian Arabs.

  • The British White Paper recommends joint control of independent Palestine by Arabs and Jews to be established over the next decade. The plan is rejected by both sides.

  • Approximately 6 million Jews are killed in Germany as part of the Nazi Holocaust between 1939 and 1945.

  • Post-WWII, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) creates a United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The UN Partition Plan recommends the “two-state solution” – the creation of Jewish and Arab states side by side, with Jerusalem under an international trusteeship system.

  • The modern state of Israel is created in Palestine on 14 May 1948. The fledgling Government declares the mandatory conscription of men and women into the Israeli Defence Force.

  • The Jewish “Law of Return” is declared, recognising the right of relocation to Israel for any person of Jewish ancestry or anyone who converts to Judaism.

  • The “Six Day War” breaks out between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, leading to Israeli control of the Sinai Peninsula, The Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and West Bank.

  • Syria and Egypt launch a surprise attack on Israel on the holy Day of Atonement. The Arab League nations are soundly beaten by the Israeli Defence Force in the “Yom Kippur War”.

  • In the wake of the 1982 Lebanese War between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist organization, is established with Iran’s backing and funds. Hezbollah means “Party of God”.

  • The Hamas Charter is issued, establishing Hamas as a Sunni Islamist organization in Palestine. “Hamas” means “zeal” or “bravery”.

  • The leaders of Egypt, the US and Egypt - Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat - sign the Oslo Accords, formalizing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Limited Palestinian self-governance over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was agreed to be implemented gradually.

  • Hamas is democratically elected in Palestin’s legislative election and gains control over Gaza.

  • US President Donald Trump announces the formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.

  • Israel normalizes relations with UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

  • A potential normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, brokered by the USA, is advanced in September.

Why did this conflict break out?

The events that gave rise to this conflict are complicated and multifaceted. But suffice to say that long before the founding of modern Israel in 1948, this land had long lost the blessing of peace on all sides that God had promised to His obedient covenant people.

Despite the best international efforts for diplomatic peace, the history of Palestine and the modern state of Israel has been marked by war for the last eighty years. On the Arabic side, this was propelled by two factors: first, the view in Islam that calls for the total annihilation of the Jews. This Islamist view is espoused by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organisation, and shared by Hezbollah, its Lebanese Islamist cousin. Both organisations are backed by Iran, which does not wish to see the normalisation of relations with Israel. Second, the checkered record of Arab-Israel conflicts left a deep sense of generational mistrust and hatred on both sides, who view the other side as the aggressor and oppressor of peace. Even among non-religious Arabs, the history of pain is too heinous to wipe away, and the view that Israeli military dominance is used to oppress them is too deeply entrenched. Never mind the fact that the former leads to provocation and saboteur actions that deepen the effect of the latter.

In the years leading up to the Oslo Accords and the Abraham Accords, the USA has been a major force to bring about normalisation of relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, most prominent of which is oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Today, we understand that this was largely unacceptable to both Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, which hopes to draw the surrounding Arab nations into escalated conflict with Israel as it did in both the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Nothing would please these actors more than a regional jihad or righteous war, in which combatants are guaranteed eternal blessing from their god.

One can only pray that after Israel’s rage and wrath are quelled through retaliatory anger, calmer heads will prevail as the international community also helps to put on the brakes. Similarly, we ought to pray that surrounding nations resist being drawn into the fray, and that no regional conflict breaks out, dragging in superpowers and international alliances that take the world to the brink of global war.

How should we think about this conflict?

Christians around the world should understand that we have Palestinian and Jewish family members — there are believers and churches in Gaza who belong to Christ Jesus, just as there are churches in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem who belong to Christ Jesus.

A divine claim one way or the other to land should not be supported by the vague appeal to the covenant promises of God, especially when they are borrowed by secular states to bolster their interests. The atrocities of murder, hostage-taking, suicide bombing, abuse of women and children, displacing persons from their homes is wicked regardless of who commits it. Christians should be as swift to say that Hamas’ attack on Israel is wrong, as much as we say that Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes and displacement of Gaza Palestinians is wrong. We should lament and weep in both instances.

Praise be to God that He hears the prayers of His people. As we pray for peace, for the restoration of righteousness and justice and healing in the land, we cling to no other hope than the name of Jesus be proclaimed and upheld. In Him alone is true peace and rest, and He is the desire of nations.

We pray with the psalmist in Psalm 2 -- why do the nations rage against the Lord and His Messiah? Ours is the call to all the nations to kiss the Son lest He be angry, and find your peace as you bow the knee before Him.