A Bolder Two-State Solution

The bad guys have to go.

This is the fifth installment of my Israel series, a project that provides historical perspective and moral clarity on the Israel-Hamas war. Previous installments:

Jewish Roots in Israel: An overview of the Jewish people’s ancient connection to Israel, from 4,000 years ago to the State of Israel’s birth in May 1948.

Israel 1967: The pivotal Six-Day War, how it came to pass and how the Jews defended their national home so successfully that its territory expanded.

Israeli Settlements: Why Israel began settlements in territories it won in the defensive Six-Day War, the areas it still settles today, and whether settlements are an effective defensive strategy.

Israel 1967 to Hamas: Major Arab-Israeli armed conflicts since 1967, attempts at negotiated peace, and whether Islamic terrorists can be separated from the Arab cultures that create them.

Today, I’ll present a bold idea for reducing Arab-Israeli violence. The vaunted goal of peaceful coexistence is a naiveté that has cost thousands of lives since Israel’s birth in 1948.

The modern problem began with the United Nations, when it recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and a special international regime for the city of Jerusalem. The plan of partition included the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Intentions were noble, and the idea of peaceful coexistence is appealing, but from Day One the Arabs refused to accept the new Jewish homeland beside them in Palestine.

This notion that gasoline and fire both need a home, so let’s mix them together, was doomed from the start.

The UN’s plan created a state of constant conflict for the past 75 years, starting with Arab assaults on pre-Israel, escalating to national wars on the State of Israel, then descending into terrorism against the people of Israel. Every Arab attack resulted in an Israeli victory, and following each of these successful defenses, the world complained about Israel acquiring territory. Israel has tried negotiating, building settlements in captured territory to create a buffer zone of mixed Arab-Israeli presence. It tried returning territory, then removing settlements. Nothing has worked.

When Israel pulled out of Gaza and granted it the self-governance the world demanded and cheered, Gazans elected Hamas, and it immediately got busy turning Gaza into a dedicated terrorist factory. Terrorism is the strip’s only export. On 7 October 2023, some 3,000 Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered more than 1,200 people, most of them in their homes, on the streets, or at a music festival. The New York Times reported that terrorists “fatally shot the elderly, women and young children, according to survivors; others were burned after attackers set their homes ablaze.”

Sympathy for Israel lasted about a week, then sympathy for the terrorists dominated the United Nations, American universities, and other places around the world.

On October 24, less than three weeks after Hamas’s attack, UN Secretary-General António Guterres all but excused the murder of 1,200 Israelis by saying it “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” He said their land had been taken by Israeli settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled, their people displaced. He allowed that such grievances did not justify Hamas’s October 7 atrocity, but said the atrocity “cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

But when that people produces terrorists forever, despite attempts at peace, fighting embedded terrorists within the Palestinian community becomes unavoidable, leading to inevitable civilian casualties. These incidents are then exploited by Hamas to garner sympathy from the likes of Guterres. Hamas situates its military assets among civilians for the purpose of creating mouthpieces like Guterres, who then blame Israel for defending itself rather than addressing the foundational error in the UN’s plan for Israel. Its initial blueprint was flawed, predicated on naive thinking that Arabs would tolerate the presence of Jews.

Left unmonitored, Palestinians commit acts of terror against Israel. When Israel defends itself and sets up guardrails around Palestinians, it is accused of having driven them to desperate acts. When Israel reduces its control, a new act of terror results, restarting the cycle.

If Arabs would stop attacking Israel, the violence would end. The UN-designated territories for Palestinians, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, could peacefully coexist with Israel, but 75 years of failure to do so is sufficient to conclude that they never will. To keep hoping for peace when lives are on the line is an abdication of responsibility. In the context of weighing plans to reduce Arab violence against Israel, “give peace a chance” becomes “give murder a chance.”

Hamas made this clear in media appearances following its October 7 massacre. To take one example from many, top Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said last month that October 7 was just the beginning. “We will do this again and again,” he vowed. There is every reason to believe him.

Advocates of a two-state solution usually propose that an independent nation of Palestine be created alongside the State of Israel, but what would this solve?

Palestinian Arabs were granted homes in Gaza and the West Bank in the UN’s original plan of 1947, which birthed the State of Israel the following year. When neighboring Arab nations proved unable to eliminate Israel militarily and kept losing territory to it every time they attacked, they turned to Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank as proxy fighters, along with like-minded Arabs in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. If instead of being territories, as they are today, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were part of an official Palestinian homeland, what would change? Passports, basically. Not the Arab propensity to attack Israel.

We know this from negotiations around the idea.

The best Israel could get was a May 2017 agreement from Hamas to form a Palestinian state along 1967 borders, without recognizing the statehood of Israel. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said, “We shall not waive an inch of the Palestinian home soil, no matter what the recent pressures are and no matter how long the occupation.”

By “occupation” he meant the territory Israel won in the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel’s territory prior to what it won in the Six-Day War is usually referred to as the Green Line, and dates back to the 1949 Armistice, which itself included territory Israel won when repelling Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. What Meshaal said in 2017 was that Palestinians would accept sovereign state recognition in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but would not recognize Israel’s existence as a country. There is no doubt that Hamas terrorism would continue even after changing the label of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from “territory” to “country.”

Diplomats need to stop aiming for an impossible peace, and instead aim for a reduction of violence. Permanent hatred is acceptable as long as it happens in separate silos without bloodshed.

The best way to get there is by evacuating Palestinians from the area that was called Mandatory Palestine by the League of Nations in its Mandate for Palestine. It is the current territory of Israel, plus the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Arab side of this shared-territory disaster is the side that has proved incapable of peaceful coexistence, the side that uses its own civilians as pawns in a never-ending terrorism campaign, the side that refuses to acknowledge the other side’s right to exist.

Somebody needs to go, and it should be the side that has failed most miserably in the shared-territory experiment. That side is the Arabs.

My proposal is that Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip be relocated to their own, new country in the middle of the Sinai Peninsula. Their state would comprise a rectangle of land 2,324 square miles in size, equal to the combined territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel won the Sinai from Egypt in the Six-Day War, then negotiated its return to Egypt in 1979 in exchange for Egypt’s recognition of Israel as a sovereign state. In 1982, Israel ceded to Egypt control of the Rafah border crossing linking the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Using Sinai land to reduce Middle East violence is justifiable given dismal results for Israel over the four decades after it returned the Sinai to Egypt. Hamas smuggled weapons into Gaza from Egypt, showing that Egypt has been unable or unwilling to secure the border.

It has, however, supported peace efforts between Arabs and Israelis, including the 2020 Abraham Accords that saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan normalize relations with Israel. In every previous clash between Israel and Hamas, Cairo has been instrumental in brokering ceasefires. This suggests that Egypt might be open to a more durable solution that would forestall its greatest concern, an influx of Palestinian refugees.

Under my proposal, the new Middle East would look like this:

Benefits would include:

• Turning Israel into a solid block of territory, with more easily defended borders.

• Creating a sovereign state for Palestinian Arabs that includes access to the Mediterranean, bringing seafaring trade opportunities for a vibrant economy.

• The presence of a large buffer zone between the new State of Palestine and Israel.

• A chance for Israel to erect stronger protection along its new borders, without needing to manage ingress and egress for terrorism-prone Arabs.

• An end to settlements for security purposes. Israelis would be free to live anywhere within their new national borders.

Challenges would include:

• No change in the world’s condemnation of Israel. Instead of being accused of occupying Palestinian lands, it would be accused of conquering them.

• Continued attacks on Israel. Relocated Palestinians, including Hamas sympathizers, would keep trying to eliminate Israel.

• Some innocent people would be uprooted from their homes.

• Muslim access to holy sites in Jerusalem would still need to be managed.

• A mechanism for relocation would be difficult, and receive critical coverage in media.

Let’s go through these benefits and challenges.

Benefits

Israel’s current shape encloses two outposts of adversarial people. It provides them with basic necessities, such as water, while simultaneously defending against their attacks. Removing these outposts entirely and making the whole region purely Israel would simplify national affairs and defense.

A new State of Palestine would free the Palestinian people to pursue potentially better lives unfettered by constant conflict with Israel. One hopes they would eschew terrorism and embark on a better way of life in their own country with ocean access.

It would be better for them than the usual two-state solution, urged by the Oslo Accords, to combine the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into one country connected by a corridor through Israel. This fragile two-zone state of Palestine could be cut in half by Israel at any time, ramping up tension. Non-contiguous countries fare poorly. My proposed new State of Palestine would be contiguous, not easily cut in half by an enemy, and one half of it would not be landlocked into economic mediocrity, as the West Bank would be in the usual two-state plan.

Economically, there’s basically only one way for Gaza to go: up.

Hamas’s permanent terror campaign has forced Israel and Egypt to smother Gaza’s economy, such as it is beyond the warlord dictatorship. Consequences of this crackdown have been severe: Gaza’s general population is 44% unemployed and the figure is 59% for young people, 97% of the area’s water is undrinkable, electricity blackouts are common, medical treatment often requires travel permits to Egypt or the West Bank. Maybe restarting in a new location, free of Hamas and the security restrictions its existence necessitates, would embolden Palestinian Arabs to build a real country with a real economy.

However, even if they pursued their terrorist ways and continued an anti-Israel ethos, their new crop of killers would be less capable of inflicting damage on Israel. Its border would lie farther away, making rocket strikes more difficult, and surrounding the Palestinian Arabs would be fellow Arabs, not hated Jews.

Restarting a new life in this State of Palestine would sever the cord between Palestinian Arabs and Israel, reducing or eliminating the need for passage between Arab territory and the State of Israel. In the early 2000s, when Israel oversaw Gaza, it built a $60M facility to monitor the passage of about 45,000 Palestinians per day into Israel for work. After Israel vacated Gaza and Gazans put Hamas in charge, the passage of workers dwindled to nearly zero, until ramping back up to 17,000 economic travel permits in 2022. A year later, Hamas attacked again and the border is now shut again.

Enough of this senseless cycle. Gazans need to go elsewhere and make their own way in the world, no help or hindrance from Israel, the latter brought about by necessary security measures intended to prevent days like October 7. Hardship suffered by both Israelis and non-terrorist-abetting Gazans is the fault of Hamas. Until the situation changes, Hamas or its descendants will keep coming.

Once Palestinian Arabs are set up in the new State of Palestine, Israel could rededicate Gaza-management resources toward shoring up its new borders to resist military attacks, which would be easier to repel than constant terrorism. Israel boasts a successful record of repelling armies, better than its record against terrorists. Counterintuitively, state-level military aggression is easier to defend against than terrorism. Israel would easily detect enemy tanks and planes coming its way and rally a strong defense before its borders were breached. Terrorists sneaking across its borders, mixed with workers, are harder to detect and neutralize before they commit murder.

Under this new arrangement, with Arabs out of Israel and everything inside the Green Line belonging unequivocally to Israel, the need for settlement programs would disappear. Israelis would be free to live anywhere in their country, no special dispensations required. The territories of the former West Bank and former Gaza Strip would be simply Israel, operating under the same national laws as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.

Challenges

If this plan were executed, world condemnation of Israel would go through the roof. It would be called a colonizer, an occupier, and worse.

But what else is new? No matter what Israel does to defend itself and try to make peace with Arabs, it’s condemned. Rather than seek new, meaningless agreements, it should at least garner tangible benefits. Physical changes mean something. Treaties, handshakes, and promises—nothing.

We can hope that Palestinian Arabs would make the best of their improved situation, but they probably would not. They would seethe, preach destruction of Israel, and plot to end its existence. They would try seeping into Israel with suicide bombs and other mainstays of their terrorist past. They might obtain long-distance weaponry from their backers in Iran and elsewhere.

Yes, but, again, what else is new? At least they would be doing it from farther away, and new attacks from them would be easier to detect and avert than ones originating from the daily migrations that preceded the October 7 atrocity. Criminals outside of one’s house are easier to fight than criminals inside.

Remember, the goal is not peaceful coexistence but a less violent separate existence.

We should stop seeking an outcome in which lions lie down with lambs. There will be no laughter at a shared violent past turned into a friendship. Put this out of mind in favor of realistic expectations. Let the hatred flourish to its heart’s content, as long as it causes no physical harm.

This proposed mass relocation would inevitably uproot some innocent people from their homes. In my view, the percentage of innocent Palestinian Arabs is lower than suggested by global media, given the deep honeycombing of terrorist assets into civilian infrastructure. That can’t happen without corroboration.

We saw evidence of it when doctors at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City spoke only about loss of medical capabilities as Israel hunted terrorists near and eventually in the hospital, as if an innocent hospital just trying to help people had been unfairly targeted by Israel. Subsequently, the US confirmed Israel’s claims of a Hamas operation in and under the hospital, and Israel later released footage of terrorist tunnels under the hospital, complete with air-conditioning. Construction of such an elaborate base could not have gone undetected by people in the vicinity.

While greater Gazan culture is suspect, there surely must be some innocent Gazans in the mix and we need to admit that they will be unfairly uprooted in this proposal. However, nothing is fair in this UN-sponsored quagmire, and in the end such innocent Palestinian Arabs forced to restart in the new State of Palestine may end up better off in an economy out from under Hamas’s thumb. As stated above, things could hardly get worse.

Some Palestinians would feel anger at being separated from Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, but few of them currently live near the sites.

Even after Palestinian Arabs had been relocated outside of Israel, Muslims worldwide could still visit holy sites in Jerusalem. Israel would probably like to make arrangements for this. It has in the past. Future graciousness on Israel’s part would be rewarded with future terrorist attacks, if past is prologue, and Israel might eventually adopt a no-Muslim policy, or one with severe restrictions. Again, ire would rise from the world but, again, it does anyway so it’s not a factor to consider when planning a solution. No matter what course of action Israel takes, it will be condemned, so it might as well do what’s in its own best interest.

A mechanism for relocation would be difficult, but so is every other option.

For starters, financial incentives should be tried. The United Nations, the United States, Israel, and Egypt could contribute to a fund that covered relocation expenses and initial, basic housing until the economy of the new State of Palestine got going. Maybe the World Bank, working with the United Nations, could devise a tax on oil exports from the region, which are known to fund terrorism. It was mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11, and Iran pays for much of Hamas’s empire.

In fact, Iran has funded, trained, and armed both Hamas and Hezbollah for decades, investing billions of dollars in support of their terrorism.

It’s time to get the proxies out of Israel and force all of Israel’s enemies to attack from the outside and face the wrath of Israel’s response. Force the financiers to put skin in the game and they will be less eager to fund tomorrow’s murders. There’s a reason Iran uses proxies. It fears a direct war with Israel, for good reason.

And it’s high time to show rank-and-file Palestinian Arabs that their worst enemies are not ordinary Jews in Israel, but rich Arabs with an utter indifference to the plight of actual Palestinians. Hamas is managed from luxury suites in Qatar, its leaders worth $11B. Who’s abusing whom in this terrorism industrial complex? Israel has provided jobs and higher living standards. Arab leaders have provided discord and a chance for children to serve as human shields.

For Arabs who refused to depart regardless of financial incentives, coercion would be necessary, the same way Israel coerced its own settlers from the Gaza Strip. The Guardian reported on 17 August 2005: “Thousands of Israeli troops evicted Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip today amid anger, grief and isolated acts of violence. The actual removals—which have seen troops dragging some settlers out kicking and screaming—have taken place amid high emotion but little physical confrontation.”

Every option entails some form of violence, it seems. But which side is acting in good faith and which is not? Those Israelis who lost their Gazan homes in 2005 now understandably wonder why they were forced to do so. What good did it accomplish? All they have to show for their sacrifice 18 years ago is the rise of Hamas, resulting in thousands of Jews murdered and Arabs killed. Now it’s time to force the other side out, to better results, one hopes.

Egypt would likely balk at this proposal because it would lose some land in the Sinai. However, the new State of Palestine’s 2,324 square miles of territory would represent just 9.9% of the Sinai’s 23,500 square miles, and just 0.6% of Egypt’s 386,900 square miles. Israel graciously returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1979. Now it’s Egypt’s turn to act graciously, to advance the mutually beneficial reduction of violence in the region.

The Sinai is a good place for carving out a new country.

Population density in the region is as follows, per square mile, according to Worldometer: 15,000 in Gaza; 1,098 in Israel; 293 in Egypt; but just 30 in the Sinai Peninsula. Some 90% of Egypt is desert, and 95% of Egyptians live along the Nile. The vast majority of Egyptians reside in 3% of the country’s geographic area.

Egypt owes Israel a debt of gratitude, and is particularly well-suited to donating 0.6% of its land to this worthy goal.

Time to Get Bold

Jerusalem is considered holy by all three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and all three claim a historical connection to the region, but only one has proved itself incapable of accommodating the others. We cannot fault the world for trying a shared Palestine. It’s a wonderful idea and feels possible that these three peoples could get along, but the Muslims simply can’t.

It’s why they are the ones who have to go. They have forfeited the right to a benefit of the doubt, and created the reasonable assumption that they will never get along with Jews.

Those who sympathize with Palestinian Arabs should welcome this proposal. It does not grant all of Israel to the Arabs, as some protesters suggest should happen when they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but it does grant Palestinian Arabs a nearby home country in which they could try a better way forward.

If the Arabs so choose, they could preach their eternal hatred from far away. If they had not committed themselves to a culture of terrorism, the world would not face the hard choices it faces today. If the Arabs stay, more Jews will be murdered and more Arabs will be killed in Israel’s defensive operations. Extreme action is necessary on behalf of future lives that will be lost to terrorism if nothing bold is done.

Hamas, pack your coffins. Palestinian Arabs, pack your bags.

Israel deserves a fresh start and the bad guys have to go.

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SOURCES

The New York Times
What We Know About the Death Toll in Israel From the Hamas-Led Attacks

The New York Post
Hamas leader shows why no cease-fire is possible if Israel is to survive

Al Jazeera English
Hamas accepts Palestinian state with 1967 borders

The Soufan Center
IntelBrief: What is Egypt’s Role in the Future of Gaza?

The Guardian
‘It’s like another planet’: crossing the frontier from Gaza to work in Israel

The Wall Street Journal
Israel Says Targeted Operation Conducted Inside Gaza’s Largest Hospital

The Wall Street Journal
Israel Releases Footage of Tunnel at Gaza’s Largest Hospital

Haaretz
Did Hamas Operate Under Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital? A Tour of the Tunnels Leaves No Room for Doubt

The Economist
Inside Hamas’s sprawling financial empire

Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists
Unraveling a Complex Web: A Primer on Hamas Funding Sources, Iranian Support, Global Connections and Compliance Concerns, Considerations

The Guardian
Soldiers evict Gaza settlers

The New York Post
Hamas heads grow rich on the backs of suffering Palestinians

Worldometer
Current World Population

National Geographic
Nile River

Al Jazeera English
‘From the river to the sea’: What does the Palestinian slogan really mean?