The Statue of Ozymandias

⁴ I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. ⁵ The Lord your God will push them back before you, and drive them out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as the Lord your God promised you.

Joshua 23:4-5

The last year has made it evident that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is driven by the belief that the rightful borders of modern Israel are the borders of ancient Israel (variously defined in the Old Testament). They consider it not merely a matter of historical inheritance but the promise of God Himself. It is theirs by divine right. Consequently, ceasefire negotiations have merely been a smokescreen behind which the Israeli government can complete its effective annexation of Gaza. It is the reason why the return of the hostages has never been a major priority and why Israeli settlers in the West Bank are brazenly encroaching on Palestinian lands. It is the reason why the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has been able to operate a ruthless campaign of mass civilian casualties even while claiming it is minimising civilian casualties (an essentially meaningless claim). The ethical framework of divine right provides the moral justification and moral imperative – what they are doing is not only justifiable, it is holy.

The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has urged the UN Security Council this week to insist on a ceasefire by Israel, but western leaders, in particular, have not understood that conventional international responses will be ineffective because the Israeli government is no longer operating within the same political framework. Even if not stated in so many words, Netanyahu and his government are engaged in an holy enterprise.

Israel is no longer talking the same language as the US or the West.  As a result, Israel is deaf to the blandishments of the West, which leaves only coercive actions – refusing to supply military equipment to Israel, economic sanctions – or hand-wringing. Netanyahu’s government has, probably rightly, judged that the latter is what will happen.

Those who are religiously inclined in the West (and many western leaders, especially in the US, profess to be so inclined) may well struggle with what appears to be clearly stated in the Christian Bible concerning the borders of Israel. But the Christian Bible is not just the Old Testament, it is also, and primarily, the New Testament, and with the New Testament there came a hermeneutical shift of tectonic proportions initiated by Jesus Himself. Jesus read the Old Testament so differently from His contemporaries that it caused huge tension between Himself and the Jewish authorities. For the New Testament, Israel is so much more than borders on a map. Indeed, political borders are irrelevant. The Israel of the New Testament is a people knowing no borders, it is unbounded, encompassing peoples from every nation and language having no geographical limit. The promise of God in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament in an astonishing way beyond any mortal anticipation, and just as the Old Testament states, God does it Himself. The borders that Netanyahu and his government are pursuing are a mirage in the sands of history, no more holy than the statue of Ozymandias.