Palestinians Need Builders and Not Destroyers
Israel and its friends must teach Palestinians to elect good leaders
Israel needs to decide what to do about the defeated Hamas-run Gaza before the sainted international community makes the decision.
So far this year, the Israeli government has only pretended to try eliminating Hamas in Gaza. Its problem is purely political and self-inflicted. Israeli officials can’t agree on how to rule Gaza after eliminating Hamas. Israeli choices are all bad, worse and horrible. Israel is slow rolling the elimination of Hamas. This dithering has caused many problems in and for the United States, and for Israel in the United Nations.
The UN has indeed caused a serious problem for Israel in the absence of Israeli policy to establish facts on the ground. Hamas slaughters Jews and rather than being subject to war crimes trials is rewarded with its own informal seat in the UN General Assembly:
Palestinians took a seat among member states at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, a new right accorded to the Palestinian Authority’s delegation despite it not being a full member of the body.
Ah, the sainted international community. Tip to PJ Media.
With all due allowances for distinguishing between Palestinians in general and Hamas and other brutal subsets, if Israel doesn't do something to make sure non-brutal Palestinians run Gaza, the UN will inevitably elevate the brutal thugs. Even if they are replacements for those Israel has killed. Recall that in 2005 Israel backed the less brutal Fatah to run Gaza when Israel withdrew. It didn't take long for the more brutal Hamas to destroy Fatah in Gaza and take over.
To cope with this record and reality, early in the current war I suggested the Korean peninsula solution to get, in time, a full contrast between the building and murdering paths:
Israel's war to eradicate Hamas as an organization continues. It will be ugly as war is even without Hamas levels of depravity. Given the scale of the Hamas crimes on October 7th, the Israeli response will leave death and destruction in its wake from the sheer scale of the operation. Lawful conduct of war does that. And that is no reason to deny Israel the right to prevent future October 7th murder sprees.
I'd like to think that something good can come from all the dead Israelis murdered by Hamas on October 7th and the costly (for both sides) but very necessary war that Israel is compelled to wage in defense of its own people to stop that Hamas conveyor belt of hate and murder.
The war since then has been as I suggested. There was no getting around the death and destruction once Hamas and its satellite jihadi allies decided to fight the Israeli counter-invasion. I hoped that Israel could find a way to make something good come out of this rather than just being a decade-long ceasefire of exhaustion:
By holding the "evacuation area" after the large-scale ground operation ends, Israel could create an option to create a new Gaza in that evacuation area centered on Gaza City--New Palestine--that can be created by Israel, built with Saudi and other Gulf Arab money, and inhabited by Palestinians recruited from rump Gaza in the southwest, the West Bank, and the Arab world.
These Palestinians allowed to enter New Palestine would be screened to keep out terrorists or those with known terrorist sympathies by the Israelis and Arab peace partners who have no love for pro-Iran Hamas and who sign on to the Abraham Accords. And numbers of residents could be kept down until the economy and infrastructure can support more immigrants in more than poverty. Israel and its Arab allies would oversee both the building of New Palestine and the containment of rump Gaza.
Israel would turn the power and water back on for New Palestine indefinitely and for rump Palestine for a period of 10 years. So build water and power plants before then. Otherwise, let Iran and Russia pay to sustain rump Gaza.
The very existence of New Palestine might free Arab states to make peace with Israel, by pointing to a new hope for progress, the core of a Palestinian state, and real peace.
Israel and Arab allies can define this New Palestine as the first step for a larger Palestinian state without defining its ultimate form. But in practice, the unstated assumption can be the 2000 peace plan, assuming Palestinians are cured of their maximalist, genocidal goals. Israel and its Arab allies would have built a stunning contrast to the hate and poverty that rump Gaza will no doubt continue to display.
Can Israel and its Arab friends sustain this for decades on end to reach that contrast? After nearly a year of war that has not seen the Palestinians generate any urge by any Arab government to intervene to save Hamas from Israel's just wrath, the odds look good. Only the proxies of Iran--an enemy of Arab states--like Hezbollah, the Houthi, and Iraqi militias, have conducted low-level attacks on Israel designed more to simulate solidarity without doing enough to prompt serious Israeli military action.
If Israel doesn't create good men (and women) to govern Gaza, the UN will champion the bad men to rule Palestinians.
UPDATE: This is consistent with my suggestion:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in order to lay siege to Hamas and force the release of hostages.
That clears out Hamas and other jihadis, gets some of the hostages, and clears out all civilians which allows Israel to screen any civilians they let back in to the northern part of Gaza.
NOTE: The image was made with Bing.