By Stan Goodenough
Sep 07, 2005
Nearly 200 leaders from Lutheran churches around the world met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav Monday and informed him that is was Israel?s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs that was to blame for terrorism.
?The security of Israel depends upon the treatment of the Palestinians,? Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan, of the so-called Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, told Katsav.
Katsav retorted that terrorism was to blame for the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs.
Evangelical churches by and large believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people by divine covenant. Not so these Lutherans, who applauded last month?s expulsion of Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, saying that it represented a ?sign of hope towards a two-state solution.?
This two-state solution ? which is central to the policies of US President George W. Bush ? sees the mountainous biblical heartland of Israel surrendered to the Arabs for the creation of a Palestinian state.
According to polls of ?Palestinian? public opinion, the majority of the Arabs now hoping for a homeland see ?Palestine? as a springboard for the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state.