Nearly a thousand Christians from 45 nations have expressed their support for Israel’s biblical connection to the Holy Land in a decree presented to the International Court of Justice in The Hague ahead of a key ruling by the U.N. court this week.
The direct appeal by the Christian representatives, which was hand- delivered to the court registrar for each of the 15 justices earlier this month, was made ahead of Friday’s scheduled ruling on the legality of Israel’s control of east Jerusalem and the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.
The decree, which was signed in The Hague by a mix of Christian religious leaders, pastors and political representatives, including former U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Pastor Satish Kumar, the head of Calvary Temple church in Hyderabad, the largest in India, highlights Israel’s connection to the land under dispute.
“We, Christian representatives of our nations from all over the world, declare and testify that the Land of Israel includes East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria,” the July 4 decree reads. “These areas belong indisputably to Israel and are ultimately the inheritance of the Jewish people. Dividing the Land is in conflict with the Bible and the will of the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.”
The case was taken up by the court after the U.N. General Assembly voted in December 2022 to ask the judges for a nonbinding advisory opinion on the dispute over what it termed “Occupied Palestinian Territory: East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”
At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the General Assembly over the resolution, which was approved over U.S. opposition and supported by less than half of the 193 member states. He accused the world body of “distorting historical facts” and declared that the Jewish people cannot be an occupier in its own land.
“Everyone is talking about international law but this is 100% biblical,” Jack van der Tang, an evangelical minister and the president of the Hague-based International Conference of Truth Justice and Peace who is behind the initiative, told JNS in an interview on Wednesday.
David Parsons, vice president of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, said, “We came to support this initiative in The Hague to make sure the justices at the World Court heard the perspectives of tens of millions of God-fearing Christians worldwide who stand with the Jewish people’s 4,000-year-old claim and connection to the Land of Israel.
“It would not be just or fair for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to be allowed to present their shameful annihilist view on the very existence of Israel, while an even larger global Christian constituency was being ignored,” Parsons continued.
Andrew Tucker, director general of The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, an NGO that fights the misuse of international law to delegitimize the State of Israel, said, “From a legal and political point of view, the court’s ruling will be devastating for Israel.
“But it will also undermine the court’s legitimacy. And instead of de-escalating the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict it is likely to make an agreed upon solution less likely than ever.”