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Pro-Israel activist denounces 'land for peace' letter written by evangelicals

A Christian Zionist is lamenting the existence of what he calls "a deep chasm" among evangelicals regarding Israel.

A coalition of 30 liberal evangelical leaders has sent a letter to President Bush, urging him to continue pushing for the creation a Palestinian state "that includes the vast majority of the West Bank." The coalition says it is attempting to correct what it calls "a serious misperception among some people, including some U.S. policymakers, that all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution."

Dr. Jim Hutchens is president of the Jerusalem Connection and the Washington-area director for the group Christians United for Israel. He says there is a disturbing theological underpinning behind such calls for a Palestinian state.

"I would suggest that the basic theological underpinning of this is super-cessionism -- and that is to say that the church is the new Israel, that Christians have replaced Jews as the covenant people of God. [That] the covenants that God made with Israel and the Jews are now null and void because they have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah," explains Hutchens.

Hutchens says that evangelical supporters of a Palestinian state have an "appalling ignorance of both secular and biblical history," noting there has never been a sovereign nation called "Palestine." He says the only viable solution to the Israeli situation is for Israel to annex the West Bank into Gaza and for the Israeli military to go in and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.

Hutchens says the modern state of Israel is a partial fulfillment of God's covenant promise of a national homeland for the Jewish people.