Why did the Christians begin a series of wars to conquer Palestine?

Answer 1

The Balfour Declaration

In a formal, but classified statement of the British Government's policy, on November 2,1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour had given this declaration to Baron Rothschild, leader of the Jewish Federation in England, addressed to his London home:

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." Balfour added this personal note to Rothschild: "I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation."

The battle for this land is almost ageless. When Israel first came to the promised land, God had established Abraham, Issac, then Jacob (Israel) there, with his twelve sons. During famine they were forced to go to Egypt, where God had prepared the the way through Joseph to have plenty of grain stored to last through the famine. Israel wound up staying in Egypt for four hundred years, where they ultimately became slaves to Pharaoh.

God called Moses to deliver the nation of Israel out of the slavery in Egypt, thus the Exodus event. Israel spent forty years in the wilderness, basically in the Sinai Desert. When God led them into the Promised Land by Joshua, it was the land of Canaan, not Palestine.

The Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and the Jebusites were there. Exodus 3:8. By and large these people were antagonistic towards God's people and against God. A picture of this is stated by Christ: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you." John 15:18. God dealt with this hatred differently in those days, whereas in Christ, forgiveness of even hatred of God is available, if a person would turn to God. Somehow, just as God had said of the Amalekites, who fought letting Israel go through there land, that they were perpetual enemies with Him.

It seems that god knew that the nations in Canaan Land were like that also, so god gave Israel victory in conquering the land back which he promised to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob (Israel) years before.

On the border of this land, where the Gaza Strip is today was the Philistine nation, who also troubled Israel. They sometimes were called Palestina. When Britain pledged to give Israel the land she now has, plus more, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, she mistakenly called the whole land Palestine. There was no Philistines any more, nor Palestinians, just nomads and small settlements in the area, which was desert land, yet they were also protected by the Declaration. Unfortunately, the Arab league rejected the plan. After WW2 the land was finally given to Israel, becoming independent on May 14, 1948. The Arab League declared war against Israel the next day.

Israel had made a successful transformation of the land into fruitful farms and bustling communities. Yet, at the outset, the Arab league effectively ruined the peaceful homes of those who were in the country, having to flee because of the war. Now there is the claim for Palestinians, who in effect want the whole land for themselves. Much Propaganda shades the truth of the transactions over the years, the invasions and wars, and the victories that have kept and expanded Israel as she is today.

After the promise of the Balfour Declaration, through political wrangling and stalling in time, the atmosphere in England grew more Anti-Semitic. Minister Balfour attempted to press on to open the land to Jewish Immigration. By the time the British Mandate expired, on May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence on the same day. The State of Israel had been formally established. Eleven minutes after the declaration was signed, president Truman recognized the State of Israel, with other nations following: Iran, Guatemala, Iceland, Nicaragua, Romania, and Uraguay. A few days later, the Soviets, the Czechs, Yogoslavs, Irish and So. Africans joined in.

The next day, however, there was an invasion by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which lasted until July 4, 1949. This war had actually followed a Civil War in 1947, declared by the Arabs, after they rejected the United Nations plan to partition the land between the Arabs and Israelis. By the time of the peace armistice of the 1948 war, Israel had increased its land by about 50% over the partition plan. The long antagonism between the Arabs and the Jews continues to this day. Some Arab nations have learned peace, but their remains those who want to destroy Israel.

AnswerFollowing the end of the First world War and until 1948, Palestine was a British mandated territory. At the beginning of their Mandate, the British classified the 800,000 inhabitants of Palestine according to religion: 650,000 Muslims; 80,000 Christians; 60,000 Jews.The Jewish population quickly increased, not by invasion but by means of legal and illegal immigration.

British policy on the territory was informed by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, whereby Palestine would be regarded as a homeland for the Jews, subject to the rights of the Arabs, but would not necessarily be an independent state. By 1939, Britain was moving away from this position, and a white Paper recommended that an Arab state of Palestine be created.

A new phase of terrorism was then initiated in order to force Britain's hand and ensure a favourable outcome for the Jews, with the Stern Gang as the main participant. In 1946, the British headquarters in the King David Hotel were blown up. By February 1947, the number of British casualties in Palestine has risen sharply and Britain called on the UN to solve the Palestinian problem.

Initially, The United Nations proposed dividing the territory into four quadrants that touched at one point, with each side receiving two quadrants and approximately half the territory. Jewish aggression resulted in this solution no longer being tenable, and a United Nations Green Line was proposed, with the Palestinians receiving rather less territory, but still much more than the Gaza Strip and present-day West Bank.

In the Civil War that followed, the Jews were well-armed and well-organised, while the Palestinians were largely defenceless. The turning point was arguably the Dir Yassin massacre, when the entire population was lined up and shot (A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, Professor Ilan Pappe, University of Haifa, Israel.) Soon the Jewish side was able to force Palestinians to flee their villages simply by reminding them of Dir Yassin. The bulk of the Arab population of what was to become modern-day Israel was forcibly deported by the Jews, and their land and property confiscated. Israel then unilaterally declared independence.

So, modern Palestine was not invaded, but was decimated by Jewish terrorism and the Civil War. Following the establishment of Israel in 1948, it became the turn of the Palestinians to be the terrorists, but at a high cost to their own people.

Answer 2

If you accept the Biblical narrative, Jews invaded Canaan and established a nation that would eventually be called "Israel" around 1270 BCE (roughly 3,280 years ago), while led led by the Prophet Joshua. If you accept Archaeology, Jews were an endemic Canaanite people who came from the hill-country and developed a distinct culture in the hills of Judea and Samaria.

Answer 3

They didn't (start a series of wars to conquer Palestine): you are thinking of the Crusades. The Crusades were a defensive campaign to save the surviving Christians who had not been killed by the Muslims who WERE fighting wars to conquer Palestine.

The Muslims invaded the Holy Land and killed people by the thousands, they killed all the men, and enslaved the women and children. They burned the Churches and shrines. The Crusades were formed for the task of rescuing the survivors from the brutal conditions that they were barely surviving under, and to liberate the Holy Land itself. Pope Urban II made a very public and urgent plea in 1095 to all of Christendom after receiving a letter from the Byzantine Emperor Alexis describing the increasing danger from the Seljuk Turks, Tartars from Asia, who had already conquered the caliphate of Baghdad in 1055 and now were seeking to expand their empire into the Holy Land.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

Crusades. The military expeditions undertaken by Christians in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems. The name comes from the cross that the crusaders bore on their clothing. There were eight principal Crusades: the first (1096-99) and the eight (1270). However, the term is also applied in a wider sense to all expeditions blessed by the Church against heretics and infidels. (Etym. French croisade; Spanish cruzada; Latin cruciata, a marking with the cross.)

All of the history you have heard about the Crusades is so much hogwash:

from Seven Lies About Catholic History, by Diane Moczar

Unprovoked Muslim aggression in the seventh century brought large parts of the southern Byzantine Empire, including Syria, the Holy Land, and Egypt under Arab rule. Christians who survived the conquests found themselves subject to a special poll tax and discriminated against as an inferior class known as dhimmi. Often their churches were destroyed and other harsh conditions imposed. For centuries their complaints had been reaching Rome, but Europe was having its own Dark Age of massive invasion, and nothing could be done to relieve the plight of eastern Christians.

By the eleventh century, under the rule of a new Muslim dynasty, conditions worsened. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of the Crucifixion was destroyed, along with a large number of other churches, and Christian pilgrims were massacred. In 1067 a group of seven thousand peaceful German pilgrims lost two-thirds of their number to Muslim assaults. By this time the popes, including St. Gregory VII, were actively trying to rally support for relief of eastern Christians, though without success. It was not until the very end of the century, in 1095, that Pope Urban's address at Clermont in France met with a response-though not quite the one he had hoped for. But the response was what we now call the First Crusade.

"The general consensus of opinion among medievalists . . . is that the Crusades were military expeditions organized by the peoples of Western Christendom, notably the Normans and the French, under the leadership of the Roman Popes, for the recover of the Holy Places from their Muslim masters." This seems to sum up most neatly what the Crusades really were and how their participants actually viewed them. The Crusades were not colonialist or commercial ventures, they were not intended to force Christianity on Jews and Muslims, and they were not the projects of individual warlords. Their primary goal, in addition to the defense of the Eastern Empire, was the recovery of the Holy Land for Christendom, and they acknowledged the leadership of the Popes. As French historian Louis Brehier wrote, 'the popes alone understood the menace of Islam's progress for christian civilization.'"