Israel and Hamas: War on the Horizon
Former United States Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro has warned that conflict between Hamas and Israel is looming.
Writing for Bloomberg View, Shapiro explained his theory by pointing to what is now an entrenched cycle: Hamas arms itself, Israel seeks to disarm Hamas, and war begins. Right now, with Hamas stocked and ready to go and Israel having already engaged in efforts to destroy Hamas tunnels and weapons caches, Shapiro says we are about to enter the third phase: full-scale war.
A war could be sparked by a range of incidents—a border fence event with casualties; a “lucky” rocket strike by a Salafist group on a civilian target, slipping past Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and drawing an Israeli response and Hamas counterresponse; or a terrorist attack in the West Bank, followed by an Israeli operation there (as with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in 2014), that spurs Hamas leaders in Gaza to feel the need to get involved.
During the Obama years, we faced a Gaza crisis roughly every two years. It doesn’t take a genius to predict another round—one can feel it coming, like the change of seasons. Each conflict saw Israeli civilians under fire and left Gaza civilians in agony, and the next one will as well.
As regular readers of the Trumpet know, we have long spoken of Hamas’s conflict with Israel—predating even Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In Jerusalem in Prophecy—first published before Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza—Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry warned, “The deadly delusion that ‘all problems can be solved by negotiation’ is going to lead Israel and the U.S. to disaster!” (We offer this booklet to you free upon request.)
This is referring to a disaster that is still to come. The Trumpet forecasts conflict between Hamas and Israel, and a conflict that includes more than rocket fire and kidnappings. We point to a coming alliance of nations—including Gaza—that will attack Israel in the very near future.
How can such a prediction be made so far in advance? Bible prophecy.
Bible prophecy says that the inhabitants of Gaza will align with Arab states to wage war on Israel. You can study the prophecy in Psalm 83. Trumpet contributing editor Brad Macdonald wrote about this prophecy in 2015, explaining:
“Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones” (verses 1-3).
Here, “thy people” is referring to the biblical nations of Israel. It’s referring primarily to the birthright nations of Israel and the Jewish state in the Middle East. (Request our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy to learn the identity of the modern nations of Israel.) The main goal of the Psalm 83 alliance is to destroy these nations! (verses 4-5).
This prophecy then lists which peoples comprise the alliance: “The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah” (verses 6-8).
If you study Bible history, you can identify the modern descendants of the Psalm 83 nations. The modern-day descendant of Edom is Turkey. The Ishmaelites are the Saudi Arabians. Moab and Ammon make up modern Jordan. The Hagarenes can be found in Syria. The Philistines anciently inhabited the region of southern Israel that is called Gaza today.
That’s right. God prophesies that the inhabitants of Gaza will wage war against Israel—and they will not do so alone!
Shapiro is correct in his warning about an imminent conflict, but the situation is far worse than he imagines. Whether it is the next conflict in Israel, or another that will inevitably occur, Bible prophecy says that war in Israel will be the catalyst that sets off World War iii.
