Congregation Beth Shalom

Masei
Book of Numbers
Chaps. 33:1-49
July 29, 2011

Whose land is it, anyway?  For over 3,000 years, the borders of Israel have been a source of conflict.  Chapter 34 in the Book of Numbers delineates the boundaries of this Promised Land:



The ancient borders included a considerable portion of modern-day Lebanon and reached into modern-day Syria.  It also included Gaza even though the Israelites were never able to conquer the Philistines who occupied Gaza.  In the 10th century b.c.e., during the rule of King Solomon,  Israel's boundaries were extended beyond the limits described in the Torah:







Now let's skip ahead to the 20th century.  At the end of WWI, Britain was given a mandate to administer the southern portion of the former Ottoman empire.  In 1922, the League of Nations divided this mandated territory into two areas-Palestine  under the rule of Great Britain and Transjordan under the rule of the Hashamite family:



In 1947, the United Nations created the modern State of Israel by carving the former British Mandate area into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state:





The 1947 partition plan was typical of a plan by committee.  It created two disjointed states with Jerusalem  (dubbed an "international city") in the middle of the Jewish state but not considered a part of either the Jewish or Arab state.  This plan was greeted in May of 1948 by an all-out attack from the surrounding Arab states on the fledgling State of Israel.   When the aggression ended, the map of Israel from 1948-67 looked like this:





In 1967, Israel came under attack from the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.  The war became known as the "Six-Day War."  In six days Israel was able to turn back all her attackers.  In doing so, she took possession of portions of the West Bank of the Jordan River (formerly part of Jordan), the Golan Heights (formerly part of Syria), the Sinai Desert (formerly part of Egypt) and East Jerusalem (formerly part of Jordan):





In 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty which included the return of the Sinai desert to Egypt.  Egypt was also offered the Gaza strip, but turned it down.  From the 1980's to present day, Israel has been locked in a conflict to determine her borders and those of a Palestinian state.  It is interesting to note that the mandated border for ancient and modern Israel was never realized.  A portion of every Jewish religious service concludes with the following prayer, "May God who made peace in the heavens, bring peace to us and to all Israel." To this one says, "Amen!" and, please, in our day.

Rabbi Howard Siegel