Page 13 - TORCH #16 - August 2020

The Bible is the Jewish people’s title deed to the Land of Israel. The pages of God’s Word are filled with verses that document
the unbreakable covenant God made with His Chosen People and nothing man can do will ever change this.
Jeremiah 31:35-36 declares:
This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.”
If you are reading this article you will be aware that the sun is still shining. Therefore, Israel still exists as a nation in God’s eyes.
Though the foundations of Christian Zionism are under threat from believers who have been deceived, the purpose of this article is not to give Biblical support for Israel’s right to exist. Instead, it is to show how God, in
His ultimate wisdom, ensured that the Jewish people’s right to the land He promised them would be enshrined into international law, a claim that no other people group can make.
Annexation or Sovereignty?
In recent months you may have heard discussion of Israel’s planned “annexation”.
In most contexts, this will have been from governments and world bodies condemning Israel’s expected plan to “illegally annex parts of the West Bank” in fulfilment of the US peace
proposal. There is nothing illegal about Israel’s presence in the West Bank. In fact, Israel is not annexing anything. It is simply declaring the sovereignty it has every legal right to implement.
Annexation means “possession taken of a piece of land or a country, usually by force or without permission.” Israel has permission, the world is choosing to ignore the facts.
According to man-made laws and treaties, Israel belongs to the Jewish people from the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. This includes Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) and all of Jerusalem, including Settlements and their right to declare sovereignty (so-called annexation).
This article seeks to explain, as simply as possible, the legal rights the Jewish people have to the whole Land of Israel.
San Remo
To start with, we must go back to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans ruled over the Holy Land for 400 years. When the Ottoman Empire fell after World War I, the Ottomans conceded these territories to the international community which at the time was the League of Nations.
It was at the San Remo conference in 1920 that Britain and France were given mandates over certain parts of the former Ottoman Empire. When a country is given a “mandate”, this means they have all authority over that land.
France was given the mandate for Syria (Lebanon and Syria) and Britain was given the mandates for Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (Palestine and Transjordan).
“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.”
CUFI.ORG.UK 173