'Judaism Is Not Dependent on a Few Square Miles of Sand'

Beginning somewhere around 2,000 BCE, the Bible says that God promised a piece of land to Abraham. And that begins the story of the Israelites and their attachment to territory between the Euphrates in modern-day Turkey and the Nile in Egypt.

So most of the next 2,000 years of Israel's history takes place in this landscape. The places that are-the earliest places mentioned in the book of Genesis are Shechem in modern-day Nablus, Beth El, which is north of Jerusalem, Hebron, which is south of Jerusalem, and Beersheba. These are places that have deep emotional significance to lovers of the Bible. They are today-jumping forward 4,000 years in history-in the West Bank.

And the big defining question in Middle Eastern politics in the past 50 years is what land will the Jews occupy, and what land will the Muslims occupy? The Jewish claim to the land comes from the Bible but also historical attachment that Jews have had to this land for thousands of years. The Palestinians have countered that they were there before the Israelites got there.

Most of the time, this issue is viewed through the lens of geography, but I think it should additionally be viewed through the prism of religion. Who gets to control the argument. Is it religious moderates, or the religious extremists?

Gaza is historically very important in that part of the world. It main road of that world, the sea road, ran from Cairo to Damascus, right through Gaza. But Gaza is not particularly important in the Bible. It's mentioned [as Azzah, a city of the Philistines] only in passing in the first five books [which Jews call the Torah], in Deuteronomy. It's mentioned in Joshua, saying that Joshua never controls Gaza [it is described as a city he could not subdue]. Then [King] David never controls Gaza. So if you make a list of the 50, 100 places of most significance in the Bible, Gaza would not be on that list.

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