By Stan Goodenough
Jul 26, 2007
According to the Bible, Israel's God is behind the settling of Jewish people back in Samaria and Judea - the cradle of Israel's nationhood – after 2000 years in exile.
[Ed note - see Jeremiah 31:5; Jeremiah 32:44. Ezekiel 34:13,14. Ezekiel 36:6-12.]
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, feels that Israel should not be settling these places but should be building its state elsewhere.
"I believe that Israel understands...that it has obligations that need to be met and need to be met now, because the future of Israel is not in the continued occupation of the West Bank," she said in a television interview Wednesday.
"The future of Israel is in building a strong Israeli state in places like the Negev and Galilee."
The international community begrudgingly "awarded" the Negev and the Galilee to the Jews - who accepted it - in 1947. Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip were "given" to the Arabs, who rejected it.
According to US President George W. Bush's "two-state vision" and the Quartet's "road map," Israel must vacate those latter lands, which the Jews took in a self-defensive war against the Arabs in 1967.
Rice is trying to further impress this international dictate on Israel.