U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in Tokyo this week meeting with the Group of Seven, which are the largest financial-industrial nations in the world. Besides financial matters, they probably are discussing ongoing conflicts in the world as well.
Due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas War in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, Blinken made some statements today which I think could become very profound regarding the future of the Gaza Strip in that they may lead to the development of a Palestinian state there. But his statements need some background.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently has been saying Israel’s goal in its current invasion of the Gaza Strip, with perhaps as many as 350,00 soldiers, is to so destroy Hamas–the extremist Islamic organization that governs the Gaza Strip and the U.S. designates as a “terrorist organization–so that Hamas will never be able to govern the Gaza Strip again. Netanyahu then said two days ago that in the aftermath of the war, Israel will “control,” but not “govern,” the Gaza Strip to prevent anything like the formation of Hamas and its governing there. Hamas has a charter that rejects the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel and calls for its extermination.
I am a strong supporter of the existence of the State of Israel while also believing Palestinians have just as much of a legitimate right to have their own state. I adopt this position in my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia.
When Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,400 Jews and took 240 hostages, U.S. President Joe Biden made public statements about Israel’s right to defend itself by attacking Hamas in Gaza and that the U.S. was in full support of Israel in doing so. But I believe it was unfortunate that he never balanced his statements by mentioning the growing hatred Palestinians have for Israel since Jews got their own state 75 years ago and Palestinians are still wanting, partly because Israel has made efforts to prevent that from happening.
Today, Blinken pushed back against Netanyahu’s assertion that in the future Israel will “control” the Gaza Strip. The U.S. is Israel’s #1 ally and provides Israel annually with over $3 billion in aid, mostly in military equipment. Blinken said there will be “no re-occupation of Gaza after the conflict,” referring to the current Israel-Hamas War and adding, “no attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.” For about 18 years, Israel has formed a blockade around the Gaza Strip, tightly controlling who can enter and exit it. Therefore, many pundits have described the heavily populated Gaza Strip as “the world’s open-air prison.”
John Kirby–spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, followed Blinken’s remarks by saying, “We believe that the Palestinians should be in charge of their future, and they should be the determining voice and factor in their future.” This statement is a completely new position for the U.S. regarding Palestinian rights.
I also have been blogging about increasing hostility being directed by the armed, half-a-million Jewish settlers against the unarmed 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank which the UN designates as “occupied territory.” The result is that it is making life increasingly difficult for West Bank Palestinians, causing some of them to leave.
I have been a keen student of biblical prophecy all of my adult life. Half of my ten books are about Bible prophecy. And I’m writing a planned series of 10 or 12 books on this genre, with four book published in it so far. In my book Palestine Is Coming, published 33 years ago as my first book on Bible prophecy, I predicted mostly on the basis of my interpretations of ten texts in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) that a Palestinian state will be created solely in the Mediterranean coastal plain as a very expanded Gaza Strip and that Israel will annex all of the West Bank. During all of these years, I haven’t hardly convinced anyone. It is so amazing to me that people object to what I say about this for all kind of reasons, but never because of my interpretations of biblical prophecy. In fact, they always ignore that and thus have nothing to say about it.
But with Blinken’s and Kirby’s statements today, it is now looking to me like what I say in this book is about to happen after this war in Gaza ends–a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip that will only expand outward in all three directions, with West Bank Palestinians wanting to transfer there to this add-on territory which will occur either by a negotiated land swap or war.
[Click here to learn more at his website and read for free half of Kermit’s Palestine Is Coming book.]
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