Birth Pangs
Annapolis in Perspective
by David Parsons--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 28, 2007
After his predecessor’s involvement in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations left the region in flames, President Bush has spent years trying to be the 'un-Clinton'. But Bush has now given Condoleezza Rice leeway to rush a Palestinian state into being.
Thus, after months of frantic shuttle diplomacy, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas stood side-by-side with Bush yesterday at the historic US Naval Academy in Annapolis MD and agreed to address the conflict’s "core issues." On the table, is the bid to establish a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. What remains hidden, however, is the price the Arab states have been demanding of Israel in order to help the West confront the looming Iranian nuclear crisis.
Iran and its proxies Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas have been making advances on several fronts edging towards the nuclear threshold, bogging down American troops in Iraq, destabilizing Lebanon and seizing Gaza. To secure their cooperation against this Iranian axis, Arab rulers are demanding progress on the Palestinian front - meaning Israeli concessions.
So Olmert and Abbas are being asked to hastily forge an agreed outline for final-status talks, even though both are considered politically weak and unable to implement any major peace deal. Olmert faces criminal probes and a withering report on last year’s Second Lebanon War. Abbas would like a pact for creating a Palestinian state to present in order to start rolling back Hamas in Gaza and prevent a take-over of the West Bank.
Observing these developments and in particular the renewed talk of dividing Jerusalem, some Christians are suddenly speculating this may be the "false peace" of the Antichrist warned of in Scripture. Others see movement towards a Russian-Iranian alignment as signaling the battle of "Gog and Magog" foretold in Ezekiel 38-39.
I would caution against both conclusions.What is clear is that Secretary Rice is playing mid-wife to a Palestinian state that has been still-born several times. Furthermore, she has been instructed to "induce labor" within a year. But it is important that we do not forget that there is a far more important birthing process going on here, and it has to do with Israel birthing the world into the Messianic Age.
Israel has known many labor pains, throughout her modern restoration to the land of promise and we can expect many more birth pangs in the days and years ahead. But the end is not yet!
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David Parsons is ICEJ Media Director in Jerusalem and contributing Christian Editor of The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition. This article is published in the December USA edition of the ICEJ's flagship
monthly publication, Word from Jerusalem