Displaying items by tag: israel

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russia that Israel would not seek to topple its ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but Moscow should encourage Iranian forces to quit Syria. This happened just hours after Israel shot down the third Syrian drone that had penetrated its airspace recently, underscoring the frontier’s volatility. Israel is on high alert as Assad’s forces advance on rebels in the Golan Heights (land which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognised internationally). Israel worries that Assad could let his Iranian and Hezbollah reinforcements entrench near Israeli lines or that Syrian forces may defy a 1974 Golan demilitarisation. Russia has an active interest in seeing a stable Assad regime, and Israel want the Iranians out. These aims can clash or align. Israel will not get involved in Syria’s civil war, but said they will ‘act against anyone who acts against us.’

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 21 June 2018 22:25

Gaza: terrorists blow themselves up

In order to thwart attempts by terrorists to tunnel from Gaza into Israel, the Israeli government has an underground wall along the border. On 18 June, Gaza terrorists blew themselves up trying to destroy the underground barrier. The incident occurred after an escalation of rocket fire and firebomb-laden kites and balloons sent from Gaza into southern Israel. Defence minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Israel would not allow Gazans to continue launching incendiary devices into Israeli territory, which have caused hundreds of brush fires and burned thousands of acres of land. ‘If anyone thinks it will be possible to continue with the daily kites and fires, they are wrong,’ Lieberman said. Meanwhile housing minister Yoav Galant said, ‘When an eight-year-old boy flies a kite strapped with a firebomb because someone told him to, it is problematic to send a drone to shoot him dead.’

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 24 May 2018 22:29

Israel: media encourage Hamas violence

Hamas said fifty of the people killed by Israeli forces on Gaza’s border recently were its fighters and named them online, including photographs and details of their ranks within the group. Yet the IDF’s response to the clashes was condemned worldwide. See If this was the first time the media caused Israel’s self-defence actions to kill civilians, they could be excused, but this is something that Hamas repeatedly does. Fathi Hamad of the Palestinian Legislative Council said, ‘For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry in which women stand out, and all the people who live in this land. Older people excel in this, as do mujahedeen and children. This is why we have made human shields for women, children, the elderly and mujahedeen, to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It's like telling the Zionist enemy, “We want death as much as you do life”.’

Published in Worldwide

The USA wasn’t the only country to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem this week. Just days after the historic - and contentious - opening in the holy city, Guatemala did the same. President Jimmy Morales, a strong evangelical, said, ‘We have had an excellent relationship with Israel since it was founded. I believe we will be receiving a blessing for both peoples by doing the right thing.’ Citing prayer and prophecy as their motivation, Morales and vice president Jafeth Cabrera officially recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last year and pledged to return their embassy there. ‘People in Guatemala pray for peace in this region, pray for Jerusalem, and they are excited’, said Sarah Solis, the country’s ambassador to Israel.

Published in Worldwide
Friday, 11 May 2018 09:53

Israel attacks Iranian forces in Syria

On 10 May, Israel said it had struck almost all of Iran's military infrastructure in Syria following an Iranian attack. After twenty rockets were fired at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, it responded by launching what a spokesman called ‘one of the broadest aerial operations in recent years’. There was no immediate comment from Iran, whose deployment of troops to Syria to back the government in the country's civil war has alarmed Israel. Iran has repeatedly called for an end to the existence of the Jewish state.

Published in Worldwide
Thursday, 19 April 2018 20:54

Gaza border: third Friday of protests

Please continue to pray over the Gaza border. In the third Friday of protests, 10,000-15,000 Palestinians took part in violent riots in different locations along the border, and again tried to cross the barrier; they intend to continue every Friday until 14 May. They threw Molotov cocktails and explosives at Israeli soldiers. Over 100 Palestinians were hurt and one man killed. They tried to use kites to fly Molotov cocktails toward Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops, and were photographed placing an explosive device on the fence. On one side of the border there are watchtowers and anti-terror barriers: on the other, a tent city of Palestinian protesters. Meanwhile the IDF exposed and neutralised a fifth underground Hamas tunnel running from northern Gaza into southern Israel. It was connected to an intricate network of tunnels running through Gaza. See

Published in Worldwide
Friday, 06 April 2018 11:14

Israel: ‘March of Return’

The ‘March of Return’ in the Gaza Strip began on Good Friday. 30,000 Gazans overwhelmed the border security fence, and the resultant clashes with Israeli forces resulted in 18 dead and 1,400 injured. Israel has been accused of using disproportionate force against what became a vast violent march. Hamas has called for mass demonstrations to continue for seven weeks. There are fears that this could turn into war on several fronts. Hamas is indebted to Iran. If major conflicts erupt in Gaza, Iran might order Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria to attack the Jewish State. The march goes beyond resistance. A situation is erupting, and political issues in the region have resurfaced. Violent Israel-Gaza border activity was described locally as ‘peaceful protests being infiltrated by terrorists’ and ‘Israel exercising its right to defend its sovereignty and protect citizens from terrorism’.

Published in Worldwide
Friday, 06 April 2018 10:40

Saudi Arabia and Israel

Historically, Saudi Arabia has a hatred for Israel and Jews. No Jew may live in the kingdom, which has never opened diplomatic relations with Israel. For 70 years no Israeli passenger planes have been allowed over Saudi airspace. But there are now signs that this hostile stance may be cautiously changing. The Saudis have a ‘peace plan’ related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and recently there have been rumours of secret communications between the two countries. When President Trump made his maiden trip abroad last May, his first stop was in Saudi Arabia. From there his plane made one of the few flights ever allowed from Arabia to Israel. Netanyahu recently spoke of Israeli relations with the Arab world (including Saudi Arabia) as ‘best ever.’ As of April 2018, flights from India over the Arabian Peninsula will take place three times a week.

Published in Worldwide

(Image:Route of AI139 passenger flight from New Delhi to Tel Aviv 22 March 2018)

From the evening of her re-birth 70 years ago, Israel, has been always keenly aware and wary of the vast desert kingdom spreading southeastward from her western neighbor Jordan.

Six months previous, Saudi Arabia had cast their vote against the UN Partition Plan paving the way for the birth of the Jewish State.  Now, hours after Israel’s Declaration of Independence, as five Arab armies began their invasion to stamp out the new state, allied under the Egyptian army was a mass of soldiers sent from the Arabian Peninsula. 

Twenty-five years later, the Saudis would again send troops to support Egypt in the 1973 War. Afterwards, although there have been no further military overtures, Saudi Arabia has continued to be seen as an enemy nation, one with a hatred for Israel and Jews (By law, no Jew is allowed to live in the Kingdom).  They have never opened diplomatic relations with Israel. It was with uneasiness that Israel witnessed in 2010 the US sale of $60 billion worth of F-15 fighters, attack helicopters and advanced munitions to this unfriendly nation, some of whose borders lie only minutes by air from our capital. 

For 70 years no Israeli passenger planes have been allowed over Saudi airspace (When, some years ago, the authors travelled to Thailand, our plane was forced to fly southwards along the Arava through the Gulf of Aqaba, then down the length of the Red Sea—with enemy state Sudan to the west, Saudi Arabia to the East— on southward to just before the Horn of Africa, where we finally made a sharp left turn eastwards out over the Arabian Sea towards India—

In recent years, there have been signs that this official stance of hostility may be, at some levels anyway, beginning cautiously to change. The Saudis came out with a “peace plan” related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More recently, rumors began to surface of secret communications between the two countries.  When the newly-elected President Trump made his maiden trip abroad last May, his first stop was to Saudi Arabia—from there his plane made one of the few flights ever allowed from Arabia to Israel. 

With the remarkable reforms which appear to be attending the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Al Saud, an unprecedented warming of relations with Israel has begun to be spoken of as a legitimate possibility (PM Netanyahu recently spoke of Israeli relations with the Arab world—obviously including Saudi Arabia—as “best ever.”  As of this week, the flights from India over the Arabian peninsula will continue three times a week.

Then this past Thursday night, history was made.  For the first time in Israel’s 70 year history, a passenger plane from another country was allowed to travel the length of the Arabian Peninsula (see map above) en-route to Tel Aviv.  The Air India Boeing 787 from New Delhi touched down at Ben Gurion Airport at 10:15 p.m.  Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz described the occasion as “the first time that there is an official connection between the state of Israel and Saudi Arabia.”  Of its enormous significance, one Israeli analyst observed that even in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty (considered for years a prerequisite for relations between Israel and the Arab world), “this shows you can have small gestures that are of real meaning.”

The most generally held explanation for this thaw in relations is that the Sunni Saudi government is eyeing the expansion of its Shi’ite arch-enemy Iran and its nearness to acquisition of nuclear weapons, and is therefore open to (at least temporarily) making an alliance with the Israelis, whom the Iranian Ayatolla’s have repeatedly vowed to annihilate.  While not discounting this as a factor, we sense it is essential that we seek the Lord as to what He—Lord of the Nations—is doing.  Of course there is war in the heavenlies, with evil powers and principalities over nations at war against the decrees of the Elyon—the Most High—on behalf of His redemptive purposes on the earth.

We believe that through the present year a season of grace is being extended in which nations are being granted opportunity for making choices as related to their alignments with God’s purposes in His covenant land and people Israel.  How they choose will significantly determine their pathway in the season ahead—whether for blessing and awakening or for darkness and great deception and delusion.  During this year, there will be nations whose past histories would have indicated them to be last in embracing Israel, which will turn towards here—others with reputations as friendly will turn away.

During this window of opportunity, the determined efforts of intercessors, though small in number, may have great influence in swaying the stance of their leaders towards that which is good.  It is remarkable that we see the leadership of Egypt, with whom Arabia allied strongly in both the 1948 and 1973 wars against Israel, slowly but steadily engaging in more friendly relations with her.  We believe this is being surely facilitated through the prayers of millions of Christian believers and the many houses of prayer in that land who love and are praying fervently towards the fulfillment of the Isaiah 19 “Highway” which God says will connect “Egypt My people” with “Israel My inheritance.” 

If God has such plans for Egypt, where His people suffered bondage for 400 years, might He not also have redemptive plans for the Arabian Peninsula, where it is appears that these same Children of Israel may have wandered for 40 years in the desert? (In fact, in the opinion of a growing number of Biblical scholars, many factors point towards the very Mountain where the LORD came down and spoke with Moses as lying, not in the “Sinai Peninsula,” but in that area of Midian on the “back side” (i.e. the Arabian side) of the Gulf of Aqaba). 

Might not this area of the world in which the delusion of Islam arose—a delusion which holds vast throngs of people throughout the nations in a bondage not unlike that typified by Egypt before the Exodus—might not this area where His manifest presence once moved among His people Israel be one in which the God of Salvation longs to begin releasing freedom to captivities from evil—even from its very source?  Perhaps this itself sounds delusional.  But God, whose greatness will dwell in Jerusalem, is beginning to shake things—“Let the peoples tremble…let the earth shake, YHWH is great in Zion, He is exalted above ALL peoples…They SHALL praise Your great and awesome name: Holy is He!” (Psalm 99:1-3).  This includes those in captivity to darkness in Saudi Arabia! 

Some of the Body of Messiah in Israel is using the shifts we sense occurring to stir us to pray for His life and blessing to spread over this great enemy from our past.  After all, a part of our call, from the beginning, has been that through the seed of Abraham, every family and nation will find blessing!  (Genesis 12:3; 22:18). 

Will you join with us!

PLEASE PRAY:

* That the Spirit which is drawing a new generation in Saudi Arabia towards regarding Israel with favor, will increase - that the leaders there would respond positively to this Spirit.

* That the “true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every human being” (John 1:9), will illumine hearts of Muslims throughout the Arabian Peninsula to the truth that Issa-Yasuah-Yeshua-Jesus who was born in Bethlehem is the divine Son of God and saviour of the World (We personally have heard testimonies of former Muslims who were illumined by this Light while on the Haj in Mecca itself!).

* For Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Al Saud, that He will be protected in mind and body; that the Power which has already been at work in him towards releasing freedoms towards women, and other areas of his society which have for centuries lain in unjust bondage and oppression, that this Power will reveal itself in a personal way.

* For Israel’s leaders, to regard the initiatives in Saudi Arabia with wisdom, discernment and grace.  That God will work His alliances between the two countries out in His way and timing.

* That the grace and favor which is presently linking India and Israel will be released over the Arabian peninsula over which their flights are now free to take place!

“In world first, Air India crosses Saudi airspace to Israel”: AFP (Reprinted in The Times of Israel: 22 March 2018).

Martin & Norma Sarvis

Jerusalem

Friday, 16 March 2018 09:55

Royal visit to Israel

Prince William’s visit to Israel will be an historic and extremely important event for the UK, as he will be the first member of the British royal family to visit Israel in an official capacity. It will take place this summer as Israel celebrates 70 years since independence and as America recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The royal visit signals a significant change of policy at the Foreign Office (which advises about official visits). The Queen has visited 129 different countries, including many of Israel’s neighbours, but never Israel. This royal visit is seen as Britain’s most significant action regarding Israel since Balfour. In the past a few royals have visited Israel, but only on a private basis, never officially.

Published in British Isles