The Division of Palestine
About the Gaza Evacuation
August 18, 2005
- page 3 -
At this point is located the historical division of Palestine, according to a tradition essentially religious. When you watch the television news, you see that Israeli soldiers are dealing with religious people, not with secular ones. The settlers of the Gaza Strip wear their "Kippa" on their heads. Some have small black boxes on top of their heads, fastened with a strap, which contain passages from the Torah, the Jewish Law (the Pentateuch, the five first books of the Bible. "Penta" in Greek means five). They gather around their rabbis.
Can one speak of legitimacy when facts date back to ... thousands of years? Who owned France three thousand years ago? The Gauls? There are many territorial legitimacies today that remain questionable in the light of much more recent facts. The American Indians, the Sioux (who are actually called the "Lagota") are demanding a land that was taken from them barely more than a century ago: the "Black Hills", the size of a French department, located in the Dakota. After Indian wars, a treaty had been signed, which granted the defeated Indians this last sanctuary, which had for them a highly religious character. The Black Hills were for the Sioux a "sacred land". The treaty was signed in 1868 between the Indians and the representatives of the American government of that time, at Fort Laramie. But when gold was discovered there in 1874, the same government confiscated this territory in 1877, without any further procedure.
Where does the "sacred land of Israel" begin and end? Before even considering the legitimacy of the concept of "sacred land", it is a good idea to look at the traditional texts. What does this strip of Gaza correspond to? Take a look at the map below
It is nothing more than the land of the Philistines and I believe that the word "Palestinian" is nothing more than a distortion of the word "Philistine". To be checked.
Today, contemporary history and stories dating back thousands of years collide dramatically. It is good to explore the texts, historical facts or legends, in an attempt to understand what some people have in their heads, displaying an anachronism that defies all logic. Let us refer, for example, to a passage from the Old Testament that features a war chief named Jephté. It is explicitly a conflict between Jews and Arabs, since the Midianites are presented as "sons of Ishmael".
The phrase "What the Lord has put in our hands" is typical of this Old Testament. Let us take a look further at a story in "The Judges". You have seen, above, the initial division of the Promised Land. The "Danites" had been assigned a small territory to the north of that of Judah and to the west of the land given to the Benjaminites. Suddenly:
You think I am exaggerating, that the interpreter? OK. Buy yourself a pocket Bible and go to "Judges, Book 18". The result is that these people kill each other over stories that are thousands of years old. And it continues, through the centuries and millennia. Below, you will see that the history of this strip of Gaza is rich in events.
Sometimes it is the Jews who beat the Philistines. Sometimes it is the other way around. Here, if you look at this episode, it is the Philistines who manage to steal the Ark of the Covenant from the Jews.
Read the comic strip, less daunting and more informative than the text, which it follows literally. You will discover the adventures of Saul, David, and Absalom. And I massacre you here, and I massacre you there. And with all that, we still don't know who owns the Gaza Strip (but I suppose that if you ask a random settler, he will answer you with passionate accents "that it is a Jewish land!").
Then comes Solomon, the great King Solomon. Solomon, the brilliant inventor of the principle "make love, not war".
I explain. He was a smart man, who had grown up with the memory of the constant wars waged by his father David and by Saul, the first king of Israel. He invents diplomacy, in his own way, by marrying the daughters of all his neighbors. To solve the problem with Egypt, he starts by becoming ... the son-in-law of the pharaoh, despite the scandalized protests of his priests, since, this man, he deliberately violates the Law (1 Kings, 3: 1). Until now, the religious leaders had exercised some power over the kings (Samuel over Saul). Do these priests have visions? So be it. Solomon decides that he has them too, and in color. During his reign, the religious leaders will keep quiet.