Our world is in transition right now - moving from 2007 into 2008. Of course, this is the Gregorian calendar year. For the Jewish people, we’re well into the year 5768, which began on September 12, 2007.

Still, when it comes to the world’s plans for Israel, the Gregorian year is the frame inside which things are to be worked out, especially since President George W. Bush declared his intention to create a Palestinian state in 2008.

Now, after enjoying Christmas on his Crawford ranch, Mr Bush is to kick off his new year by coming to Jerusalem to do just that. Yes, on January 9, he will make his first trip to Israel as president in the apparent hope that the prestige of his position will push the, despite-Annapolis, still-very-much-stalled land-for-peace process back into meaningful motion.

Mr Bush is committed to doing this thing. In fact he has tied himself to it, repeatedly stressing his PERSONAL resolve - we could call it his new year’s resolution - to seeing two states, Palestine and Israel, born to live side by side in security and peace.

Of course, the one state, Israel, already exists and has a history going back close on four thousand years. State number two, Palestine, does not exist, and never has. It is to be established on a central chunk of the ancient homeland of the Jews.

Two things will happen when Mr Bush arrives. First of all, he will mess up our daily lives. Shuttling to and from Jerusalem, and making his way inside the city to his various ports of call, the president will horribly foul up the traffic, forcing me and my children - among thousands of others - to either walk to and from school or stay at home. Entire trans-country motorways are to be sealed off to Israeli commuters and kept for the president’s exclusive use. The King David Hotel will move all its guests out to other hotels. People flying in and out of Israel will have their schedules disrupted as Ben Gurion, the country’s only international airport, caters for the security of the presidential party.

Secondly, Mr Bush will be welcomed by Israel’s government and lauded and applauded as a great statesman who has come to bring peace.

But, and everybody knows this, as surely as all the inhabitants of that fabled city knew that the emperor was wearing no clothes - peace President Bush cannot bring. Peace he will not bring. What is almost worse, peace he KNOWS that he will not bring. Instead of waving an olive branch as he descends from Airforce One, his hand will wield a sickle, a scythe, a sword  - an implement whose ultimate purpose will ensure the destruction of Israel as it severs the Jewish people from their geographical roots.

Let’s consider, for a few sobering minutes, that often-sounded phrase: “the destruction of Israel.”

It is possible that you heard, in the weeks leading up to the Middle East conference in Annapolis last November, about a movie being widely promoted on the Internet. It was called “Farewell Israel.”

In “Farewell Israel” we hear how the Jewish state is the primary obstacle in the path preventing newly ascendant Islam from attaining to its former glory. The producers show how Bush has played into the hands of Al-Queda, and how Iran is free to pursue its quest for a nuclear bomb while developing other strategic weapons with which to defeat Israel. Madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leads tens of thousands of Iranians in chants of “Death, death to Israel! Death, death to Israel!”

Certainly - were the Islamic and Arab states free to have their way, Israel’s destruction through weapons of war would be assured. And the Arab military threat is understood to pose the greatest danger to Israel.

I believe, however, that President Bush’s two state solution presents just as deadly a threat to Israel as does any weapon in the arsenals of Damascus and Tehran.

This is what the once Judeo-Christian world must consider: The two state solution sees the historical ties of the Jewish people to their land and their nationhood severed at the roots.

It is crucial that we comprehend this. Israel’s national and historical roots go deep into the soil of Judea and Samaria, and not into the coastal plain that stretches between Haifa and Tel Aviv. God, when He spoke to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, promising to make them into a great nation and to give that nation a homeland that would be exclusively and eternally its own, did so as they made their way through Samaria and Judea, and revealed Himself to them in Shechem, Bethel, Bethlehem and Hebron.

It is specifically and particularly these parts of the land that are universally described as “the Israeli occupied West Bank.” And it is precisely this land which Mr Bush - with the enthusiastic support of all the nations of the world, envisages as the central and major component of the new Palestinian state.

If you know the history of the Jews you will know that the people of Israel, in a way that was unprecedented and unparalleled by any other people in the history of mankind, preserved and maintained their national identity through two millennia of exile, primarily in two ways:

First: Enough Jews defiantly clung to their Jewish faith and traditions to render ineffective the massive, and often violent efforts to have them assimilate and disappear into the gentile fabric and millieu.

Second: They held onto the promise God had repeatedly made to them through their prophets dating all the way back to Moses, that they would one day return to their land, to the hills and valleys where their forefathers, the patriarchs, lived and walked, where their judges ruled, where their priests served and worshiped, and where their kings, especially King David and King Solomon, reigned.

This is the rich history of the Jews. Their national identity springs forth from the very land which President Bush wants to take away, or to pressure them to give up.

It is a given that, with the moutainous high ground of Judea and Samaria - the so-called West Bank - made into a 23rd Arab state, and the only Jewish state in existence reduced to the low-land coastal plain, the Negev and the Galilee, Israel will be militarily compromised to the point where it can no longer defend itself against the aggressive Arab umma.

The United States does seem to recognize this, at least to some extent. Hence its repeated promises and words of encouragement to “our ally, Israel” that America will never abandon its defense and will continue to guarantee that Israel enjoys some form of military superiority in the Middle East.

What Bush, his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and all those purported friends of Israel’s who are pushing the process forward cannot see or simply will not consider, is that their hoped-for-Palestine can only be born at the cost, to Israel, not just of a few pieces of nefarious land or territory, but at the cost of the Jewish people cutting themselves off from their own, life-giving and hope-nurturing national and geographical roots.

All the nuclear firepower and state-of-the-art weapons systems in the world will not save a Jewish people severed from the cradle of its nationhood.

Without Hebron, Bethlehem, Bethel, Shiloh, Shechem and Jerusalem, Israel will wither and die.

I realize that this sets forth a very gloomy scenario indeed. But, and it’s a very big BUT: My real aim is not to paint a pessimistic picture of Israel’s future, but rather to sound a warning about the gravity of the consequences of the road down which the world is pushing this plucky and enduring nation.

There is a God in heaven. He calls Himself the God of Israel and the God of the armies of Israel. He has committed Himself to not only restoring the scattered Jews to the land He, Himself, gave them, but to keeping them here once they have come home. He is ready to wage war to ensure they remain.

Quite clearly this is the one thing that Bush, Rice, Blair, Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin, CNN, Sky News, the BBC and virtually everyone else has NOT considered. By uniting to push, squeeze, threaten and cajole Israel into surrendering its land, they have united themselves against the purposes of God to return and keep the Jewish people right here.

Who, do you think, is going to end 2008 on top?