World Focuses on Israel and Jerusalem

“French lawmakers voted in favour of recognizing Palestine as a state on Tuesday, a symbolic move that will not immediately affect France’s diplomatic stance but demonstrates growing European impatience with a stalled peace process. The motion... echoes similar votes in Britain, Spain and Ireland…” (Haaretz, December 2, 2014). “European countries have grown increasingly frustrated with Israel, which since the collapse of the latest U.S.-sponsored talks in April has pressed on with construction of settlements in territory the Palestinians want for their state.  Palestinians say negotiations have failed and they have no choice but to pursue independence unilaterally… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Tuesday’s... French vote a ‘grave mistake’” (ibid.). France has backed “a two-year timeframe to re-launch and conclude negotiations, and said Paris was working on a United Nations Security Council resolution that would set those parameters” (ibid.). 

As global support grows for the idea of a Palestinian state, Israel is predictably angered, and seen by some as increasingly unstable. The future could see some type of international intervention to try to bring “peace in the holy land”—just as the Bible predicts (Daniel 9:27; Psalm 83:5-8). Bible prophecies indicate that Gentile nations will control Jerusalem for a short period of time at the end of the age just before the return of Jesus Christ (Luke 21:24)—see “Jerusalem’s Sobering Future!”