A recent article in World News and Prophecy showed that all the major geopolitical problems that plague the world today can be traced back to one single event-the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. This led directly to World War I, which, in turn, has led us to the continual upheavals that dominate today's headlines.

World War I saw the demise of the great European empires and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. This led, in turn, to the creation of the modern Middle East-the Ottoman Empire being divided up into individual nation-states that complicated the region irreversibly. Some of those nations came under temporary British or French control between the two world wars. The British gave up their mandate of Palestine and the new nation of Israel was established in May 1948. Nothing in the region has been the same since.

The presence of a non-Islamic, Western-style democracy has been a major source of contention for over 50 years. Israel is seen as a Western presence in a region that has been Islamic for centuries. From the moment that Israel was established as an independent nation, neighboring countries have wanted to destroy her. Peace in the Middle East has been elusive. For over two decades American presidents have tried to bring peace to this troubled region of the world, but without success. Suddenly, following the dramatic events of Sept. 11, there is a renewed sense of urgency about bringing peace to the region.

Mideast remains biggest foreign policy challenge

Following the events of Sept. 11, the United States turned its attention increasingly to the Middle East. Suddenly, the Bush administration was aware of the dangerous consequences of leaving the Israeli-Palestinian struggle alone. Washington was not as involved in seeking a resolution to the struggle as many would like it to have been. Recent terrorist strikes against Israel have drawn the U.S. into making statements of much stronger support for the Israelis, urging Yasser Arafat to insure that Palestine does not incite terrorism or harbor terrorist cells.

The problem is how to solve the insoluble

Whenever Western nations turn their attention to the Middle East, the pressure is always put on Israel. There is a failure to perceive the reality of the situation. The reality is that many Palestinians want Israel destroyed. They do not want a compromise that would give them an independent state-they want all of what is now Israel in addition to those territories already under the control of the Palestinian Authority. PLO leader Yasser Arafat has consistently promised the millions of Palestinian refugees that they will be able to go back to the homes they had before 1948. After more than 50 years, there is no more willingness to compromise now than there was then.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it well in an interview on BBC America's Hardtalk (Nov. 19, 2001). Netanyahu, whose own brother was killed by terrorists in the raid on Entebbe 25 years ago, said that the only difference between Yasser Arafat's PLO and Hamas, the "militant" Palestinian "liberation" movement, was that Hamas said the same things in English as in Arabic, whereas Arafat didn't.

What Netanyahu was saying is that Hamas makes it consistently clear that it wants to destroy Israel. All its followers know that. They hear it said regularly in Arabic. The world knows it because Hamas regularly issues statements to the world press claiming the same end goal-the total annihilation of the nation of Israel.

But Arafat is not as consistent. To the world he speaks peace and conciliation, showing a willingness to compromise, blaming Israel for its intransigence. But in Arabic, to his own people, he promises the same as Hamas-the total destruction of the state of Israel.

His path is to keep pushing for the Palestinian refugees to be allowed back to their ancestral homes, land and houses, which are now in the Jewish homeland. This sounds reasonable-everybody can sympathize with the desire of refugees to return to their homes. The problem for Israel, though, is that this would lead to a Palestinian majority in Israel itself. And as Israel is a democracy, with one man, one vote (the only real democracy in the Middle East, as it happens), this would mean the end of the Jewish state of Israel.

Arafat is busily pressuring the United States to force Israel into a "final settlement" of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. This would include the right of the refugees to return to their homes. For Israel, "the refugees would be given several options: to stay where they were, to settle in a third country, to settle in the new state of Palestine, or to settle in Israel in numbers to be agreed on. At Taba, the Palestinians reportedly said 400,000, the Israelis 20,000" ("America Tries, Again, to End the Endless Conflict," Serge Schmemann, New York Times, Nov. 25, 2001).

Columnist Michael Barone wrote: "One of the reasons Yasser Arafat gave for rejecting Barak's Camp David offer was that it didn't include a right of return for Palestinians to Israel. His motive was clear: Get enough Palestinians inside Israel and they'll outvote the Jews. From the intifada that Arafat unleashed after rejecting Camp David, we know what life would be like for Jews in a Palestinian-majority Israel: kristallnacht every day of the week" (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 3, 2001). Barone's reference was to the night in 1938 when Jews and Jewish property were attacked by rampaging Nazis in Germany.

In effect, as Barone clearly stated, ".Israel is ready to accept a Palestinian state. The problem is that the Palestinians refuse to accept the Israeli state."

Push for final settlement

Speaking at the United Nations recently, Mr. Arafat made it clear that the peace process required the United States to join with other countries "to introduce immediately a comprehensive framework for a permanent solution" to the Mideast problem.

Writer Schmemann continued his article by stating that such a "framework already exists. According to published reports and interviews with some participants, it would probably include the following elements. . ."

Listed were Israeli withdrawal from some of the territories that now housed Jewish settlements, with compensatory land (desert) given to the Palestinians for other lost areas.

"A sovereign Palestinian state would be proclaimed, but would agree to remain demilitarized. Israel would retain three early-warning stations in the Jordan Valley, eventually in conjunction with an international military 'presence'" (ibid.).

The Palestinian refugee issue was the next item listed.

"And finally Jerusalem."

Schmemann added: "There could be some form of international stewardship over the holy places. Or the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif could be shared, with the Palestinians controlling the surface plateau and the Israelis holding sovereignty underneath, as well as over the Wailing Wall. The rest of the Old City would be divided up, as it already is, and the outlying portions of the city divided roughly along the lines of who lives where now."

Note the stark contrast between what the New York Times writer, Serge Schmemann, is saying and the earlier words from Benjamin Netanyahu. The difference is quite simply explained-one lives in the United States, the other in Israel. Peace in the Middle East looks easy when viewed from the peace and stability of a distant Western democracy. It's clearly not so simple when you live in Israel, when your freedom and security have been threatened daily for over 50 years.

Achieving a peace settlement in the Middle East will not be easy. However, in some respects, it is more likely now than it has been for many years.

The explosion of terrorist attacks in Israel in recent weeks brought home to all Western nations the urgency of ending the stalemate in the Middle East. The United States is the only nation that can put pressure on both sides. The European Union is the biggest financial backer of the Palestinians, the United States of the Israelis. The two should be able to impose an agreement on both sides.

Additionally, Arafat is central to any deal. He has been the chief leader of the Palestinians for decades and knows that he will not be around much longer. The Israelis fear that his successor will be more militant, making a peace agreement even more difficult. At the same time, Yasser Arafat knows that he will lose much international support if he is seen to be the cause of failure.

Will peace last?

Whatever peace agreement is eventually signed, it won't last. Netanyahu made it clear when he reminded BBC viewers that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. This is a part of the world where people have long memories that go back thousands of years. They also think long-term, whereas we in the West think short-term, usually seeing no further than the next election. If a peace agreement is desirable now, the parties may sign, but it won't change the long-term goal, which is to rid the world of the state of Israel, to return the Middle East to its former state-one of Islamic domination that went back centuries.

Netanyahu reminded the West that it is not just Israel that is threatened, but the West itself. Israel is simply an extension of the West. Whereas the PLO leader may talk peace, the reality is that young children, not even old enough for kindergarten in America, are being trained for suicide missions in PLO-run schools in Gaza. As any such mission would be years in the future, clearly there is no serious intent on peace.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ foretold that Jerusalem would be at the very center of world conflict immediately prior to His return (Luke 21:20; Mark 13:14). Aware of these prophecies, the apostle Paul later wrote that "the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, 'Peace and safety!' then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:2-3).

The whole world will rejoice when a peace agreement is signed in the Middle East. Christians are warned not to be complacent at such a time, but to realize that a brief period of peace may happen before "sudden destruction comes upon them"—a return to the violence that has been so much a part of our modern world. WNP