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Stan Goodenough is an experienced journalist who has written about politics in South Africa and the Middle East for such organizations as The Daily Dispatch of East London, South Africa, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post, and the Virtual HolyLand website. He has been a South African gentile resident in Israel for 12 years. Stan is editor of and .
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By Stan Goodenough
November 26, 2002
A resolution of momentous importance is staring us all in the face. And in a way it has arrived almost by stealth, catching Israel off guard although its approach has been evident for years.
This is the week when the people of Israel will vote for or against the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the chilling words of informed voter, Dr. Aaron Lerner, "The time frame isn't years. It isn't even months. We are facing Israel's last chance out of this nightmare without having to pay a cost I shudder to even consider."
When the Likud Party's 300,000 or so paid up members go to the polls on Thursday, this is what they will be voting for. Not for Ariel Sharon and not for Binyamin Netanyahu, men who will come and go over the next few years, but for or against the permanent, irreversible establishment of "Palestine" in what for millennia has been Judea and Samaria - the biblical heartland; the center of the divinely promised inheritance of the Jewish people, the land which hundreds of generations of Jews have wept and prayed and died to return to.
And the land about which Sharon once said to his son, "There, those places there, they are not in our hands, but they are ours. They belong to us."
Interestingly, those citizens who have been most supportive of a Palestinian state are to have little say in the matter.
The deciding lot has fallen to Israelis who support the right wing, whose politics have until now been against the establishment of a Palestinian state.
If the polls are anything to go by, the Likud vote this week may hand the left its sweetest victory yet.
These Likudniks will either return incumbent Sharon to the top slot, or they will choose for Foreign Minister Netanyahu. Whoever wins will be set to become Israel's prime minister when general elections are held in two months' time.
If it's Sharon, Israel will have given the world a green light to set up a Palestinian state in the second half of 2003 - that's less than a year from now.
If it's Netanyahu, Israel will have said, "No way," and will have to forge its way ahead having made that courageous decision.
It was Netanyahu who decided, one week ago, to make the issue of a Palestinian state the deciding factor in the primary. He assaulted Sharon's willingness to accept such a state against the wishes of even his own party. And he now insists he will not participate in a government that agrees to the establishment of "Palestine."
The moment of truth is almost upon us, and things look decidedly gloomy for "Bibi." For the last 10 days he has been trailing Sharon by as much as 17 points. Sharon's camp and the Israeli press are allied in their efforts to ensure that Netanyahu will lose - and lose big.
Sharon insists that a Palestinian state is a fait accompli, and he has made it clear to the international community - and most pointedly to U.S. President George W. Bush - that he will work towards the creation of such a state.
With this as his position, Sharon has supporters around the world rooting for him. They are motivated, too, by a personal dislike for Netanyahu, an antipathy stemming to a large extent from their belief that he betrayed them by agreeing to cede control of Hebron to the PLO. The irony that escapes them is that they are now supporting a man who is prepared to give away, permanently, so much more.
Early yesterday morning, a small knot of men and women gathered in the rain outside the Knesset to protest against the creation of "Palestine." Representatives of the "Women in Green" and the "International Christian Zionist Center" spoke out against the plan to reverse the divinely ordained restoration of the land to the Jewish people.
Hardly a soul came to hear their words. No television cameras broadcast their call. One lone Member of Knesset walked out into the drizzle to thank the group for its stand.
The rest of Israel appears either resigned to losing the heart of their homeland- the cradle of their nation - or they are too apathetic or shell-shocked to act.
It falls to us as believers, then, to call on the Lord to rescue Israel from national disaster.
The odds may not be in our favor, but that's okay. One reality has been stamped on the pages of Israel's history from time immemorial: and that is that small numbers of people acting in tandem with God make up a formidable majority.
For by You I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall. (Psalms 18:29)
There are just hours to go. Let us take a hold of God's throne, let us not keep silent; let us give the Lord no rest until He establishes the work He is doing to make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. (Isaiah 62:6-7)
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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