First, you have to get out of your head the very modern idea of nation states. For a good part of human history, association was based on geographic proximity: family, tribe, city, kingdom, empire. The "border" was wherever the influence of a family, tribe, king, or emperor waned and was superseded by a different family, tribe, king or emperor. These areas of influence, usually commanded from a central settlement or city state, were linked by trade. Often, as in the case of the ancient cities that survive today, they were located at the hub of a major trade route where merchants could sell, trade or purchase goods that they could carry with them to the next city. No matter how homogeneous a city's population might be, the influx of traders kept up the exchange of foreign ideas and foreign goods. Cities along these trade routes grew wealthy with such luxury goods and taxes and thus became attractive to other cities or kings looking to expand their circle of influence. This explains the city of Megiddo which we know today as Armegeddon (a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddo which means Mount Megiddo).
This map showing the ancient caravan routes to Babylonia also shows the convergence of several routes of trade in the land of Canaan, and especially at Mount Megiddo. Megiddo overlooked the main north-south thoroughfare of middle eastern trade. Go north from Megiddo and you would reach the rich city of Hazor and then Damascus or deviate towards the coast and you could ship goods out of Akko or you could trade with the Phoenicians in Tyre. Go south and you could reach the Mediterranean ports of Gaza and further south, Egypt. Boats on the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf could then access the wealth of India and China for spices and silk. Canaan was at the center of it all.
It was straight into the middle of the ancient world that God decided to put the Israelites. The promised land was the center of commerce, the buffer zone between empires (Assyrian, Egyptian and Babylonian) and pivotal to the security of the region's trade. The fact that it was dominated by one ethnic tribe that absolutely refused to assimilate to the surrounding cultures must have been especially galling. By promising the Israelites land that was already occupied by other pagan cultures, God illustrated his supremacy and made sure that all the other people got the message. News of the Israelite conquest under Joshua spread far and wide as other powerful kings of Canaan either were either slaughtered by or made subject to the upstart tribe from the desert. This tribe was different. It did not make peace with its neighbors. It did not intermarry. It prayed to one invisible god. It was set apart.
The Jewish presence in the centrally located land was the source of great conflict. Jerusalem, "Abode of Peace," has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. (As the German map illustrates, in terms of commerce, Jerusalem was at the center of the world). Subsequent conquering empires decided that the only way to control the Israelites was by forcibly removing them from the land--a policy followed by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and, eventually, the Romans.
When the British announced in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that they would "support the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," they once again introduced conflict to the region. This time the Jewish people's presence in Palestine severed the links between Arab states. It was not the Canaanites but the Palestinian Arabs who were the "people in the land."
Standing on Har Meggido, looking out across the peaceful valley, I can see several minarets in the neighboring hill towns. One exit down the highway is the West Bank. Could this be the great battleground at the end of the world? As the people here become more entrenched in their separateness (divided by religious practices, language, ethnicity, culture and history), conflict seems inevitable. I hope I'm wrong.
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