GAZA: THIS HAD BETTER BE WORTH IT

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

So Arabs will now take over the Gaza Strip. This had better be worth it. And maybe it will be. The Roadmap to Peace may in fact be "out there" somewhere.

Just maybe Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US President George W. Bush are in league with the goodwill of the tomorrows by all this Gaza pull out. Let those of us who care truly pray so.

If this is not worth the peace in the Middle East, particularly in that little strip of land called the Holy Land — no bigger than the state of New Jersey — then there is no gamble for hope measures in anybody’s future henceforth.

This seems to be the last straw. And may it be the straw that weaves into a peace mat for both sides.

Right now it seems to me that Jews are lopped against the sides of hell’s corridors. I cannot imagine what they are going through. As a writer, I am stumped as to express what is going on in Israel as I type these sentences.

I read the newscasts and then cannot read any more. It is carnage. It is betrayal. It is injustice. It is barbarism. It is psychologically and emotionally destructive to the Jewish people.

Children’s minds are being torn apart by what is happening. The elderly are ripped from head to toe. The young adults’ dreams are shredded one more time by simply inhabiting that part of the world.

Jews who live elsewhere on the planet are being grieved beyond nerve. Their prayers are so laden with tears that it is beyond sorrow’s patience. Gentiles such as myself are worn down by the madness set loose in what we Bible believers hold dear — the Holy Land. God’s country. Palestine — the land flowing with milk and honey. That geography so precious to biblical prophecy. The turf of Abraham and David and Samuel.

Anguished faces. Jews yanking at Jews. Homes being burnt to the ground. Garbage heaps in neighborhoods pristinely kept. Parks and back yards and front yards infiltrated by soldiers. A woman setting herself on fire. A synagogue under siege. Singing and praying Jews being sliced through by their own kind. It is hell. It really is a shaft from hell lumped up at the navel of the planet.

Bible researchers have dreaded this kind of dark day in Israel. We who study biblical prophecy for our lifetimes are aghast and saddened. We are non-plussed and yet we know that certain horrific occurrences will take place in the land of Moses and Jesus.

Yet to read about it in the news as we read the Scriptures alongside it is kin to attending a funeral. We want to do our part, be respectful and helpful, and then we want it all over so that the sun can shine again.

If this hurt and shame is all in vain with the Muslim murderers global continuing their killing cult agenda, then heaven help the planet’s Arabs.

They will all pay dearly, beginning with Hamas and their clones.

If this gamble of Sharon and Bush does not add up to establishing the Roadmap to Peace, then all hell will break loose — and it won’t be from the Islamic killers international alone. It will be that peace people will have their time to settle the score.