The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

How to think theologically about Israel and pray for it and Palestine

Photo by Anton Mislawsky on Unsplash

On Saturday morning, I woke up early to take some friends of mine who were visiting from out of town around Kansas City. As I do, I opened Twitter as I was getting ready and saw that Palestine had launched some kind of surprise attack on Israel. Naturally, this piqued my interests and I clicked a link and saw a video of people running through a field to the sounds of gunfire. I would learn later that I was seeing the first attacks by Hamas on Israel at a music festival. During my busy, fun-filled Saturday, I kept seeing more reports. This went on into Sunday, as I was getting ready for church and into the late afternoon as I went to a friend’s wedding. My life was pretty normal, maybe more exciting than normal, as the conflict raged and hundred upon hundreds of people died half-way across the world. Finally, on Monday and Tuesday, I caught up on the conflict and was horrified and saddened by the gruesomeness of this war.

As one might expect, social media has been a buzz with everyone’s hot takes, from the ignorant, to the half-baked, the well-intentioned, and the informed. Many are probably a mix of these. In the past, I would have been quick to add my voice to the mix, to try and think of some quippy statement or repost a clever meme that declares my thoughts on the issue at hand or which side I’m on, but I couldn’t do that with this. War is a terrible tragedy, always. Even when it is “necessary,” if such a thing exists, it is a horror for those who suffer the consequences. I also feel like, while I try to stay abreast of the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” I know too little to try and be an authoritative voice.

Yet, I feel a bit compelled to say something about this, and hopefully what I say will help people navigate their thoughts and feelings. Clearly, I have no voice with the powers that be, so my intention is not to try and sort out the geo-political issues at hand and offer my solution to a problem I barely understand. Rather, as a theologian and pastor, I want to speak to Christians in order to help them think theologically about Israel, Palestine, the conflict, and help them orient their prayers in a way that is guided by the Gospel instead of politics, political parties, or worse, social media.

Pray for Peace

I started actually thinking about the events when I saw this tweet. By the time I saw it, which was the day after it was posted, I was already filling in some blanks and forming thoughts. I can’t say with 100% assurance that the poster of this tweet doesn’t have nuanced thoughts about Israel, because I don’t know, but I do know he’s a Zionist and is part of a religious organization that is Zionist. The call to pray for Israel is one of the main goals of this ministry, and they take it very seriously. This has led, in my opinion, to an uncritical eye toward the modern nation-state of Israel and an unjustified support of its actions and existence. This is not unique to the Charismatic flavor of Christianity to which this ministry belongs, but it is a weekly reality for them. I was long part of this ministry, but their position, or at least their rhetoric about Israel, and what I perceived as an unwillingness or inability to budge was one of a few reasons I ultimately decided I could no longer be a part.

As I read that tweet, I got frustrated because I felt like it reverberated with the uncritical and unbalanced view of (the modern state of) Israel. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the most obvious to me was that Jerusalem (which is what the OP meant and this is confirmed in the responses to the original tweet) is not the only other city that “the people of God are called to pray for.” At the very least we have examples of people praying for other cities, like Abraham praying for Sodom (Gen. 18:16-33), but we also have an explicit command to pray for another city. In response to this tweet, said “You mean Babylon? (Jer. 29:7)?” Obviously, I knew what he meant. I was being snarky to make the point there is at least one other city we’re called to pray for, and that is none other than the great harlot herself (cf. Rev. 17:3-6). By extrapolation, we could also say this is an implicit call by God to pray for any city in which we live. I quote the verse in full.

And seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray on behalf of her to Yahweh, for in her peace, you will have peace.

This isn’t to say we are called to pray for Babylon, whether proverbial or not, and not Jerusalem, but at the very least, we are to pray for two cities.

Let’s Talk about Israel

To put all my cards on the table, I do not believe that the modern nation state of Israel, established in 1948, is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. While that may cause some to want to write me off immediately, let me also say this — I believe that the Jewish people who occupy the modern nation of Israel are descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore the people of promise. What we see in Israel today is a complex kind of settler colonialism — complex because the Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Canaan,¹ but have largely been absent since the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the First Jewish-Roman War (AD 66-73). To say there has been no Jewish presence in Israel would be misleading, but there has not been a majority presence of Jews in the area since that time to the establishment of modern Israel in 1948.

While there are some compelling parallels between the Exodus and Conquest in the time of Moses and Joshua with the events following World War II, there are also some glaring differences. One I want to focus on here is that the people of Israel moved into Canaan and conquered without the help of outside forces other than Yahweh, whereas the modern state of Israel would not exist without the help of other, powerful European nations. Israel’s move into Palestine, as the land was known prior to 1948, was informed by and carried on the legacy of European colonial policies that have been in practice since the so-called “Age of Discovery.”² Israel’s existence on the land mirrors more closely the homogenizing, destructive practices of European colonizers than even the conquest narratives of the Old Testament. For instance, in Joshua 9, the Gibeonites deceive Joshua into making a treaty with them, a smart move on their part. As part of the treaty, the Gibeonites were to be slaves to Israel, yet were under Israel’s protection. In Joshua 10, the then-king of Jerusalem, Adoni-Tzedek, began to attack the Gibeonites, and the armies of Israel come to their aid. At no point in the process of the creation of the modern state of Israel has the Israeli government signaled that they have a desire or willingness to live in peace with the Palestinian peoples, regardless of international agreements and plans³, the very nations that gave Israel the chance to exist in the first place.

As the people of God, Israel is under a covenant that includes them, Yahweh, and the land. They are always under this covenant, but if they are in the land, they are especially bound to keeping it. If they are in the land by divine action, i.e. if the modern nation of Israel exists because God is the one who has brought them there, then the ramifications of breaking the covenant are quite dire. There are many passages in Torah that talk about how God expects the Israelites to relate to “the foreigner” or “the stranger,” but we will only look at one from Leviticus 19, a kind of “ethics for life” found in the heart of Torah.

And when a foreigner sojourns with you in your land, you shall not oppress him. As one from among you the foreigner sojourning among you shall be to you. And you shall love him as yourself, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:33-34

That’s my own, rather wooden translation. Let me retranslate it into something a little closer to English. When the non-Israelite lives in your land with you, you shall not oppress him. The non-Israelite living among you shall be to you like one of your own. You shall love him as you love yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

This is interesting because Palestinians are not strangers to the land. Perhaps they are not Israeli nationals, and perhaps they were strangers 2,000 years ago, but not today. What we have then are layers of complexity that all center around the unjust treatment and oppression of Palestinians by the modern state of Israel, and there is little, if any, justification for that treatment. If the Palestinians are not foreigners in the land, then Israel has come with the help of international aid and unjustly taken land, while it continues to occupy more and more Palestinian land and partakes in unjust actions against the people of Palestine. If the Palestinians are foreigners in the land, then Israel is under the covenant-command of God to treat them and love them as their own kin. If Israel is a secular state without covenant between the land and Yahweh, then they are acting against international law, if not by the establishment of the state, at least by incursion of Israeli settlement states in Palestinian territory.⁴ Yet, Israel continues to act unjustly towards the Palestinians, again, with the help or blind eye of powerful western nations. On that note, the nations of Israel and Judah are condemned by God for trusting in the power of other nations instead of in their covenant with him (cf. 2 Chron. 16-10; Is. 30-31).

I say all this to point out that to be uncritically “pro-Israel,” to “stand with Israel” in the face of systemic and social injustices that take place frequently. To turn a blind eye and respond to Israel as if they have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card from the God of all humanity is a betrayal of the Church’s mission to support the poor and oppressed and a tarnish on the Gospel.

What About Palestine?

This isn’t to say that Palestine, or more specifically, Hamas is guiltless. Hamas has been labeled by many western nations as a terrorist organization, and though my sympathy for the Palestinian people gives me pause, I must agree. The suicide bombings over the years and the recent kidnapping and killing of civilians in the recent attacks, among other horrors, lands them squarely within the definition of a terrorist group. As a Christian, I have no room in my theology or ethics for these kinds of actions, and I cannot turn a blind eye toward that, just as I do not want Christians to turn blind eyes toward Israel.

So, when I talk about Palestine, I’m thinking about Palestinians more than the governing bodies, and especially not Hamas. I’m talking about the common Palestinian people, the men, women, and children who do not get a say in what Hamas or Israel are doing, who only suffer the consequences of powerful governments at war with one another. Hamas is concerned with power, not with the Palestinian people, and that is an evil on par with much of what Israel does to Palestinians.

As I said above, perhaps there was a time when Palestinians were “foreigners” to the region, but they have not been for a very long time, and they have “indigenized” over the last two millennia or more. In Leviticus 19, the word I translated as “foreigner” or “non-Israelite” is the Hebrew word ger. This word is often translated, along with “foreigner,” as “stranger” or “alien” in most contemporary English Bibles. HALOT⁵ offers as a definition: “[ger] is a man who (alone or with his family) leaves a village or tribe because of war, famine, epidemic, blood guilt etc. and seeks shelter and residence in another place, where his right of landed property, marriage and taking part in jurisdiction, [worship] and war has been curtailed,” and offers as a translation: “protected citizen.” In some ways, Palestinians have been made gerim (Hebrew plural of ger) by the nation of Israel, but instead of protected citizens, they are oppressed strangers.

Because of my Christian convictions, I must champion the cause of the Palestinian people.

A Christian Response to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
May those who love you be at rest.
Peace be within your walls,
and rest within your towers.
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you!”
For the sake of the house of the LORD our God
I will seek your good.

Psalm 122:6-9

This was the verse in the mind of the person who sent the tweet I referenced above, and this is a verse I can (must) receive as a Christian. As it stands, there are two groups of people who dwell in Jerusalem, Palestinians and Israelis. As it stands, Jerusalem belongs to two groups of people, Palestinians and Israelis. Jerusalem is the holy city of three faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Ultimately, Jerusalem is the city of one king, Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to save and unite all humanity under his loving care in peace and in shalom. So, when I pray for Jerusalem, I am not praying for Israelis over against Palestinians. I am not praying for the success of modern Israel against Palestine or even Hamas, if by that I mean that Israel wipes out the Palestinians along with Hamas. When I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, I am praying for God to perform a miracle between two groups of people, a power that mirrors Babylon (Israel) and a harassed people that mirrors ancient Israel (Palestine). There is so much animosity here that only divine intervention can help.

Jeremiah may have told us to pray for Babylon, and the Psalmist may have told us to pray for Jerusalem, but Jesus gives us another way to pray, and his words came to me as I reflected on the tweet above.

But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:44

As Christians, no matter what side of the Palestine/Israel issue we stand on, Jesus’ command to us is the same. Pray for your enemy. So as we look at the current events, as Christians, we should be praying for peace in Jerusalem, peace for Palestinians and Israelis, peace for the people who get caught in the crossfire, peace for families who are missing loved ones tonight, and for a miraculous peace that is impossible without God’s help. When I look out and see Israel as an enemy of peace, its government as an institution of injustice and unrighteousness, I can pray they would see the light, that God would move miraculously on them and cause them to seek peace instead of oppression. I can pray that Hamas, who is a kind of enemy to Israel and Palestinians, would be miraculously stopped or that there would be a change of heart. And if you see the Palestinians as the enemy, how might you pray for them?

As Christians, we must not be dragged to one of two sides on issues like these. Our thoughts and prayers must transcend the political boundaries of our nation and the nations of the world. It can be especially difficult in our time when it seems culture demands we pick a side, where we are ridiculed for seeing or seeking complexity. This doesn’t mean we don’t call out injustice where we see it. We can no more ignore Israel’s terror than we do that of Hamas, nor can we ignore the suffering of the innocent in Israel than we do for those suffering in Palestine. As followers of Jesus, we are under obligation to love our enemies, no matter what side of the partition they live on.

1. Which is itself a complex issue because contemporary biblio-archaeology claims this is true, but Scripture has Abraham and his family as indigenous to Mesopotamia.

2. Yeo, Khiok-Khng, and Gene L. Green, eds. Theologies of Land: Contested Land, Spatial Justice, and identity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021.

3. Such as the United Nations Resolution 181, which granted different areas of land to Israel and Palestine, calling for Jerusalem to be governed by a separate, international body of legislation. Cf. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel

4. “U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 on Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

5. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament.