I would expect that Egypt would at least take in the members of the al-Masri clan. That’s what they call a “hopeful joke”.
As a general matter, the realist in me thinks that there will be wide opposition to anything that is perceived as letting Israel off the hook, not because your vision is bad (I happen to agree with it) but because it will be seen as a way to weaken Israel and set it up for destruction by sticking it with Gaza. As we see in the media, Israel is given zero benefit of any doubt and is often ascribed malevolent motives for the hell of it.
As a matter of realpolitik, I think it fair to say that quietly the West and Sunni countries are in broad concurrence but remain quiet to avoid any eruption of the “street” beyond what has been witnessed already. These governments all understand that a defeat of Hamas is a defeat for Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Conversely, and notwithstanding the media slant, they also understand that the decision to expand Gaza into a regional war is Iran’s decision not Israel’s. While it would be helpful to know what is happening behind the diplomatic scenes, whether a harder line is being pushed, we won’t know.
So in a perfect world, if all the chips fell properly, the reconstruction of Gaza would follow Ambassador Oren’s lines, Egypt would provide temporary shelter for the displaced - though the Arab world should permit Palestinians to relocate and have a chance at citizenship in any country that will have them. This last point is important. The Arabs have always worried about what they called in the 1950s the “fragility” of Palestinian identity. Today, the phrase is around a fear of “liquidating” their identity. Well, that fear should be put to the test in the real world. Why should anyone be more Palestinian than the Palestinians? Their assimilation in the wider world would go far toward simplifying the process of integrating them in Gaza and, under a “two states for two peoples” paradigm, whatever portion of the “disputed territories” is agreed will be under Palestinian authority.
I can't even imagine the incentives needed to convince Arab governments to naturalize any significant number of Palestinians. Every one of them minus Saudi Arabia is hugely unstable (Egypt especially, with had two major political crisis in the last 20 years). They can't provide much more than a very minimal standard of living to their citizens right now. A large cohort of young people with no opportunity is precisely what led to the revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Syria.
And further for what would matter to Israel, if the Palestinian deluge has the effect of destabilizing the government of every country foolish enough to accept them, a possible outcome is a new government allied with Iran on the principles of loving God/Islam and hating Israel. Tehran would certainly make an attempt anyway.
I recall that the Irish PM and Scotland’s First Minister both recently put out the welcome mat for Gazans. Maybe it’s time to call their bluff for their virtue signaling.
The larger question is why not let the Palestinians have a say in where they wish to go and what citizenship they might wish to acquire. Based on their public statements and UN voting records, there would appear to be many opportunities in Spain and Portugal (or as the Muslims still call them collectively “al Andalus” - so they might well see it as a return home). Plus, these volunteer states could redirect their UNRWA support to this new domestic end.
Obviously, in the real world this would be a non-starter but it would highlight the hypocrisy that exists in far too many Western countries. I think Israel should publicly take at least Ireland and Scotland up on their offers. Resettlement in these countries would be only as temporary or permanent as the Palestinians desire. Again, let them decide their own future.
I hope I could find a better use for a bona fide time machine, but a quite interesting dial to turn would be getting the Israelis to let the refugees return to their homes back in '48 when there were only hundreds of thousands of them. The state would be less Jewish but also possibly less under constant attack.
To answer many of Michael Oren’s prescriptions, I believe we have to look at history. The precedents for turning barbaric, murderous, sadistic enemies into peaceful allies is there for us all to see, namely NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan. Peace requires that hate-filled enemies be defeated to the point that even the most delusional can no longer fantasize that there is any road to victory. Only then can there be peace. We must learn from history and aid Israel in every way possible to crush the Islamist fantasies of victory, or we are ensuring that there will never be peace with this common enemy of every civilized nation on the planet.
The trouble with giving the Gazans the old neutron bomb treatment is the possibility that afterwards it's the Israelis who earned the mantle of common enemy of every civilized nation.
FWIW I don't think there's a way for them to really win here.
All of what you propose (or rather, wish) is dependent on cutting off the head of the snake (Iran regime as presently constructed). Nothing constructive and hopeful is possible until that occurs. Another prerequisite, which follows the first requirement, is a change in an American administration which ends the appeasement of Iran by, at least, a military deterrence through actionable measures.
Every newscast now highlights the Hamas/Al Jazeera videos of suffering Gaza civilians, with full sobbing and tears by women & children, with special attention to crying children.
How much of this is pallywood (as in the videos from the hospital that Israel DIDN'T bomb)?
How soon the world has CHOSEN to forget the hideous atrocities of October 7, of a pregnant women cut open and feus stabbed, or a baby "roasted" to death in an oven in front of its mother as she was being raped?
I'm forced to recall my late cousin's words in her video describing the transport (she escaped minutes before arrival at the Belzec extermination camp October 28, 1942):
True, Wilf, but the propagandists applying moral equivalency, or worse, to Hamas and Israel are not just Al Jazeera. The hateful New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and all the liberal-left mainstream media have been the terrorists’ eager cheerleaders, but in a subtle and “regretful” way that makes them even more effective than the ravings of Islamic media.
What do you do with the 75% of Arabs in Gaza & the PA who support Hamas and the atrocities of October 7? What of the even higher approval rating of Hamas in the PA?
Apparently send them to Egypt, where the government is incredibly stable and there's zero risk that they could join with local discontents and stage a revolution.
Ambassador Oren, I am currently reading Cynthia Farahat's The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood's Industry of Death. If you haven't yet read it, you should. None of the wonderful things you imagine for Gaza, or any Palestinians who define themselves by their opposition to a Jewish state, are possible as long as the Muslim Brotherhood (creators of Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) and the Revolutionary Republic of Iran (supporter of these groups) remain operational. Both Israel and the U.S. must finally face the reality that the Islamist enemy is several steps ahead and can't be wished away. Only cold, hard reality and strategies will work.
Actually, an address to the interests of the Gulf states that aren't interested in Hamas' death-wish cultism or in the regional hegemonic ambitions of Iran and Turkey might work here.
The Iranian activation of the Houthis triggered little-publicized cooperation between Israel, Saudia and the UAE on building a truck route to end-run the mess that the Houthis were creating in the Red Sea (and the efficacy of the US's rather weak-handed effort to squelch that has yet to really withstand any testing...). So, too, might Saudi Arabia and the UAE potentially be interested in having a port and airport available in Gaza in exchange for rehabilitating it and keeping it sane and out of the hands of corrupt terrorists a la Hamas and -- frankly, though it may be a bit would-be these days -- the Palestinian Authority, also known as Fatah. Let's please not conveniently forget that Fatah has terrorist roots, a terrorist past, and an active terrorist arm and which may get stronger as the old anti-Jew Abbas finally exits the political and practical scene.
I am sure someone will start yelling about democracy at this stage -- I would invite anyone who does to check their magical thinking at the door. The people of Gaza voted in Hamas. They've been its political pawns ever since, with its leaders Haniya, Sinwar, et al. raking in millions and millions of dollars in "aid" money and Hamas tunnels being built under their homes, their schools and -- yes, folks -- their hospitals. A cache of child-sized suicide bombing belts was just found by the IDF under one of these. Where's the outrage? Let's stop idealizing the scene and get something that could actually work in place. A Saudi-Israeli-UAE military cooperation, whether de facto or de jure, that also included any other willing participants in the region could finally begin to put some counterpressure on the constant striving being done by both Iran and Turkey to reassert themselves as regional hegemons in the Middle East and could offer the people of Gaza -- at LAST -- some measure of stability and an ability to rehabilitate the mess that Hamas made into quite a nice place to live, actually. And maybe, eventually, after Israelis have had a few years to get past the soul-wrenching trauma of having Israeli Jews and Arabs shot, burned, raped, tortured and killed on October 7th -- maybe eventually trade and inter-area traffic could finally be restored as well. But not now. Right now, what is needed is the potential for stability under Arab leadership, which understands a good deal more about both the region and the people of Gaza than anyone in insular Washington DC does now or ever will.
Michael, I really enjoy your posts and analysis. I actually attended your talk at OurCrowd earlier this year in Jerusalem.
You raised an important issue about opening up the Northern Sinai for Palestinian resettlement. This should be explored and Egypt should be given the right incentives to collaborate. Would like to hear more on this as we progress to a new and hopefully better future.
Amen. A word used in a devotional context like after the author’s prayer. I would prefer a more concrete program beginning with how to resist Biden’s pressure
Ambassador, I love your writing but here you are guilty of magical thinking.
I would expect that Egypt would at least take in the members of the al-Masri clan. That’s what they call a “hopeful joke”.
As a general matter, the realist in me thinks that there will be wide opposition to anything that is perceived as letting Israel off the hook, not because your vision is bad (I happen to agree with it) but because it will be seen as a way to weaken Israel and set it up for destruction by sticking it with Gaza. As we see in the media, Israel is given zero benefit of any doubt and is often ascribed malevolent motives for the hell of it.
As a matter of realpolitik, I think it fair to say that quietly the West and Sunni countries are in broad concurrence but remain quiet to avoid any eruption of the “street” beyond what has been witnessed already. These governments all understand that a defeat of Hamas is a defeat for Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Conversely, and notwithstanding the media slant, they also understand that the decision to expand Gaza into a regional war is Iran’s decision not Israel’s. While it would be helpful to know what is happening behind the diplomatic scenes, whether a harder line is being pushed, we won’t know.
So in a perfect world, if all the chips fell properly, the reconstruction of Gaza would follow Ambassador Oren’s lines, Egypt would provide temporary shelter for the displaced - though the Arab world should permit Palestinians to relocate and have a chance at citizenship in any country that will have them. This last point is important. The Arabs have always worried about what they called in the 1950s the “fragility” of Palestinian identity. Today, the phrase is around a fear of “liquidating” their identity. Well, that fear should be put to the test in the real world. Why should anyone be more Palestinian than the Palestinians? Their assimilation in the wider world would go far toward simplifying the process of integrating them in Gaza and, under a “two states for two peoples” paradigm, whatever portion of the “disputed territories” is agreed will be under Palestinian authority.
I can't even imagine the incentives needed to convince Arab governments to naturalize any significant number of Palestinians. Every one of them minus Saudi Arabia is hugely unstable (Egypt especially, with had two major political crisis in the last 20 years). They can't provide much more than a very minimal standard of living to their citizens right now. A large cohort of young people with no opportunity is precisely what led to the revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Syria.
And further for what would matter to Israel, if the Palestinian deluge has the effect of destabilizing the government of every country foolish enough to accept them, a possible outcome is a new government allied with Iran on the principles of loving God/Islam and hating Israel. Tehran would certainly make an attempt anyway.
I recall that the Irish PM and Scotland’s First Minister both recently put out the welcome mat for Gazans. Maybe it’s time to call their bluff for their virtue signaling.
The larger question is why not let the Palestinians have a say in where they wish to go and what citizenship they might wish to acquire. Based on their public statements and UN voting records, there would appear to be many opportunities in Spain and Portugal (or as the Muslims still call them collectively “al Andalus” - so they might well see it as a return home). Plus, these volunteer states could redirect their UNRWA support to this new domestic end.
Obviously, in the real world this would be a non-starter but it would highlight the hypocrisy that exists in far too many Western countries. I think Israel should publicly take at least Ireland and Scotland up on their offers. Resettlement in these countries would be only as temporary or permanent as the Palestinians desire. Again, let them decide their own future.
I see no downside.
This article perpetuates the views of the group aligning themselves with the foolish notions of coonceptzia.
That will lead israael to other October 7th events
Not too far than the road
So what is your suggestion?
Israeli rule. Period. Allow those poor Gazans a chance at a decent life, like the Arabs citizens of Israel.
I hope I could find a better use for a bona fide time machine, but a quite interesting dial to turn would be getting the Israelis to let the refugees return to their homes back in '48 when there were only hundreds of thousands of them. The state would be less Jewish but also possibly less under constant attack.
I don't think so. The general surrounding Arab feeling has been impervious to placation since the start.
To answer many of Michael Oren’s prescriptions, I believe we have to look at history. The precedents for turning barbaric, murderous, sadistic enemies into peaceful allies is there for us all to see, namely NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan. Peace requires that hate-filled enemies be defeated to the point that even the most delusional can no longer fantasize that there is any road to victory. Only then can there be peace. We must learn from history and aid Israel in every way possible to crush the Islamist fantasies of victory, or we are ensuring that there will never be peace with this common enemy of every civilized nation on the planet.
The trouble with giving the Gazans the old neutron bomb treatment is the possibility that afterwards it's the Israelis who earned the mantle of common enemy of every civilized nation.
FWIW I don't think there's a way for them to really win here.
All of what you propose (or rather, wish) is dependent on cutting off the head of the snake (Iran regime as presently constructed). Nothing constructive and hopeful is possible until that occurs. Another prerequisite, which follows the first requirement, is a change in an American administration which ends the appeasement of Iran by, at least, a military deterrence through actionable measures.
Every newscast now highlights the Hamas/Al Jazeera videos of suffering Gaza civilians, with full sobbing and tears by women & children, with special attention to crying children.
How much of this is pallywood (as in the videos from the hospital that Israel DIDN'T bomb)?
How soon the world has CHOSEN to forget the hideous atrocities of October 7, of a pregnant women cut open and feus stabbed, or a baby "roasted" to death in an oven in front of its mother as she was being raped?
I'm forced to recall my late cousin's words in her video describing the transport (she escaped minutes before arrival at the Belzec extermination camp October 28, 1942):
"Nobody heard us, and nobody WANTED to hear us."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12703453/Hamas-killers-roasted-babies-oven.html
That sounds kind of like nonsense to me. Especially given the many bodies that must have been found burned in the wreckage here:
https://english.news.cn/20231107/9f1b5a32c1544c3e95b1ed5a1596cecd/c.html
True, Wilf, but the propagandists applying moral equivalency, or worse, to Hamas and Israel are not just Al Jazeera. The hateful New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and all the liberal-left mainstream media have been the terrorists’ eager cheerleaders, but in a subtle and “regretful” way that makes them even more effective than the ravings of Islamic media.
What do you do with the 75% of Arabs in Gaza & the PA who support Hamas and the atrocities of October 7? What of the even higher approval rating of Hamas in the PA?
Did you even read the article. The Ambassador’s position is that “Gazans must be offered a quality of life totally unthinkable under Hamas”
Apparently send them to Egypt, where the government is incredibly stable and there's zero risk that they could join with local discontents and stage a revolution.
I only hope I live to see the day after, as you paint it.
What happens when Hamas wins in a free and fair democratic election?
No Arab control whatsoever. Israeli rule.
Ambassador Oren, I am currently reading Cynthia Farahat's The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood's Industry of Death. If you haven't yet read it, you should. None of the wonderful things you imagine for Gaza, or any Palestinians who define themselves by their opposition to a Jewish state, are possible as long as the Muslim Brotherhood (creators of Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) and the Revolutionary Republic of Iran (supporter of these groups) remain operational. Both Israel and the U.S. must finally face the reality that the Islamist enemy is several steps ahead and can't be wished away. Only cold, hard reality and strategies will work.
Actually, an address to the interests of the Gulf states that aren't interested in Hamas' death-wish cultism or in the regional hegemonic ambitions of Iran and Turkey might work here.
The Iranian activation of the Houthis triggered little-publicized cooperation between Israel, Saudia and the UAE on building a truck route to end-run the mess that the Houthis were creating in the Red Sea (and the efficacy of the US's rather weak-handed effort to squelch that has yet to really withstand any testing...). So, too, might Saudi Arabia and the UAE potentially be interested in having a port and airport available in Gaza in exchange for rehabilitating it and keeping it sane and out of the hands of corrupt terrorists a la Hamas and -- frankly, though it may be a bit would-be these days -- the Palestinian Authority, also known as Fatah. Let's please not conveniently forget that Fatah has terrorist roots, a terrorist past, and an active terrorist arm and which may get stronger as the old anti-Jew Abbas finally exits the political and practical scene.
I am sure someone will start yelling about democracy at this stage -- I would invite anyone who does to check their magical thinking at the door. The people of Gaza voted in Hamas. They've been its political pawns ever since, with its leaders Haniya, Sinwar, et al. raking in millions and millions of dollars in "aid" money and Hamas tunnels being built under their homes, their schools and -- yes, folks -- their hospitals. A cache of child-sized suicide bombing belts was just found by the IDF under one of these. Where's the outrage? Let's stop idealizing the scene and get something that could actually work in place. A Saudi-Israeli-UAE military cooperation, whether de facto or de jure, that also included any other willing participants in the region could finally begin to put some counterpressure on the constant striving being done by both Iran and Turkey to reassert themselves as regional hegemons in the Middle East and could offer the people of Gaza -- at LAST -- some measure of stability and an ability to rehabilitate the mess that Hamas made into quite a nice place to live, actually. And maybe, eventually, after Israelis have had a few years to get past the soul-wrenching trauma of having Israeli Jews and Arabs shot, burned, raped, tortured and killed on October 7th -- maybe eventually trade and inter-area traffic could finally be restored as well. But not now. Right now, what is needed is the potential for stability under Arab leadership, which understands a good deal more about both the region and the people of Gaza than anyone in insular Washington DC does now or ever will.
I wonder how those 25, 000 remaining Hamas operatives manage to avoid their own booby-traps and mines?
Michael, I really enjoy your posts and analysis. I actually attended your talk at OurCrowd earlier this year in Jerusalem.
You raised an important issue about opening up the Northern Sinai for Palestinian resettlement. This should be explored and Egypt should be given the right incentives to collaborate. Would like to hear more on this as we progress to a new and hopefully better future.
Amen. A word used in a devotional context like after the author’s prayer. I would prefer a more concrete program beginning with how to resist Biden’s pressure