Peloni: This was written just prior to the Hostage Deal being pushed on Israel, but the arguments put forward here are still relevant.
By Walter E. Block
It looks as if there will soon be a peace deal consummated between one of the most civilized governments on the planet and one of the most barbaric criminal entities. It will proved for the future of Gaza. However, there is no ink on the dotted line, quite yet. As of this writing, there is no such deal, at least not yet. It is not over, as they say, until the fat lady sings. So, hopefully what follows will still be of some benefit.
Israel won the Sinai Peninsula fair and square. It overcame Egypt, which unjustifiably began the Six Day War. (Israel also won the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt). This war was Egypt’s fault. It began with an act of war by that country against Israel with its closure of maritime passageways to Israeli shipping,
At the end of hostilities, the victim of this war, Israel, was in complete control of this large Sinai Peninsula land mass. Were justice to have prevailed then, the SP would have become a part of Israel at that time, and continued to the present day.
This did not occur. It was due to the fact that US president Eisenhower compelled Israel to return this territory they had justly conquered from Egypt back to that nation. He was at fault for engaging in this bit of imperialism, and the Israeli leaders were also to blame for docilely giving in to his unjust demand. It later turned out that Eisenhower listed this decision of his as one of the worst he had made while in office.
What to do with the Gazans after the war? They are a huge burr under the Israeli saddle. They have been complicit in supporting Hamas ever since the Israelis abandoned that bit of real estate in 2005. Israel can no longer afford to allow them to remain in this terrain. If Israel makes this mistake, it will suffer future such depredations as occurred on October 7, 2023, and the continuing rain of rockets will fall down around their heads. The Iron Dome cannot be expected to neutralize 100% of them. More innocent Israelis will perish. No other country would put up with any such behavior.
So, what should be done? Many critics of Israel blame that country for not having any clear plan or program for what comes next. Did the thirteen colonies in 1776 have any clear plan or program for what comes next? No. They were too busy fighting against their enemy. Why, then, it is incumbent upon this nation, fight an enemy that embeds itself in a civilian population and uses them as shields, to have any clear plan for the day after hostilities cease?
However, since there is nothing less than almost a world-wide demand for such, here is one possibility.
One possibility is that Israel should banish all of the Gazans, every single last one of them, to the Sinai. But, this area would remain under Egyptian ownership. How will the Gazans live there in this desert area? Simple, all the Europeans, who have been so concerned with their welfare, will support them until that can get back up on their feet. Ditto for the other Arab countries which have been shedding crocodile tears for the Gazans lo these many years. Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer can be relied to get onto this particular bandwagon.
However, the Egyptian government has expressed itself as strongly unwilling to agree to any such policy. According to Jordan’s King Abdullah II “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.” The reasons are fourfold. First Egypt (and Jordan too) fears that any such resettlement would be permanent. Israel would not allow the Gazans to return. Second, this would pretty much end any possibility of a two state “solution.” Three, it would be a repeat of the 1948 “nakba,” during which Palestinians were not allowed to return to Israel. And four, with Gazans in the Sinai, this would become a launching pad for Hamas’s attacks on Israel. According to Egyptian leader Sisi: “What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refugee and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted…”
As far as I am concerned, Egypt would do well to accept this policy. For the alternative would be to risk a war with Israel and go back to 1967 and have the entire Sinai Peninsula returned to the sovereignty of that country. And this time, there would be no “backsies.” No returning the SP and whatever else relatively weak Egypt loses to Israel this time around. The Suez Canal, anyone? The leadership of Israel is a lot stronger than it was during the Eisenhower administration. With stalwart Bibi Netanyahu (Senator Schumer’s favorite foreign politician) and heroic members of Knesset such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir and at his side, President Sisi will be risking an awful lot if he refuses to allow the Gazans into the SP, permanently, that is. With the events of October 7 in mind, Israel is not in any mood to negotiate, or compromise, or engage in any “agreements” forced down its collective throats.
With “friends” like the Biden Administration, who will bitterly oppose this “modest proposal,” Israel hardly needs any enemies. With Donald Trump in the US driver’s seat all bets are off.
What about the banishment of all Arabs from Gaza? That would entail the massive expropriation and forced displacement of thousands of innocent people. It would be entirely unjust and totally incompatible with libertarian principles, to which I strongly adhere, that is, if all of these people were innocents. However, a case can be made, a strong one, that virtually all of them were complicit in the evil deeds of Hamas. Certainly, they were busily celebrating its atrocities of October 7, 2023.
If Israel is to see its way out of the morass it now faces, all scenarios must be on the table, not in the sense that they are all possibilities, but that they have been explored, at least from an intellectual point of view, We cannot hold back from at least thinking about all possibilities, even if some of them, such as this one, are at the very least highly problematic.
If it were to be undertaken, where, besides Egypt, might these terrorists and terrorist supporters be sent? A possibility that has just opened up would be Syria. Another is Europe; nations on that continent have long criticized the Israeli treatment of those who have plagued it. Perhaps it is time for them to put not their money where there mouths are, and place some of their land at the disposal of the Palestinians. They have already admitted numerous Arab immigrants. Why cavil at giving them a state of their own. The Europeans have been very critical of how Israel deals with such folk. Let’s allow the world to see how they do so.
As an afterthought to my previous comment, the UNRWA funding could be put to good use here!
Here is a suggestion for Walter E. Block:
Retake the Gaza Strip in its entirety and build a nice new prison there for the so-called Palestinians. They will all be incarcerated there until their sentences are fulfilled. There will be no problem with space for the prison, since those inside should have been outside. No-one else in the world will accommodate the “Palestinians” anyway and one and all would claim that it is our problem anyway. This option has the advantage that all those
and all the other “important” governments around the world, all know better and have been learning recently that these criminals can be criminal in their countries too.
Of course, this new prison must be safe against tunneling, since these criminals are excellent architects of underground excavations right into the prisons too. The upkeep of this prison and its inmates might actually be shared with the Hamas and the PA under a very watchful eye of the Israeli administration. Indeed, they must be involved in order to prove that any mishandling of the prisoners was done with and by those authorities. Finally, the prison must be built close to the border fence so that any attempts by the local population to release the inmates could be dealt with right away.
An just to add a cherry on top, “Palestinian” criminals from Judea and Samaria could be interned there too. Win-win!!
What’s in a name anyway? In this particular case of the name “Palestinians” everything. It was a name invented for a fake nationalism on which all the Jew Hatred hangs. You cannot talk as Walter Block does in this paragraph and hope for success in any endeavour. You have to go to the source and excise it at the bud.
Begin quote
“Perhaps it is time for them to put not their money where there mouths are, and place some of their land at the disposal of the Palestinians. They have already admitted numerous Arab immigrants. Why cavil at giving them a state of their own. The Europeans have been very critical of how Israel deals with such folk. Let’s allow the world to see how they do so. ”
End quote
for those who don’t click on links:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/americans-react-to-the-damascus-blood-libel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_diaspora
Goes back way before the 20th century including Arabs who emigrated from the region before the term, “Palestinian” was invented, as in centuries, but whose denizens are now calling themselves “Palestinian” in Chile, they are Christians who went there in the 1850’s and were referred to as Turks.” 😀 Like to see that interaction.(Not long after the Damascus Affair in which Christians persecuted Jews with Muslim backing until the Just awful European powers and America! who the Turks owed money to intervened. Imperialism at its worst, eh? The event that first united world Jewry politically and got political support from the U.S.and other world powers too.) Just so there are no Jews around and they can’t travel to where there are any. There’s about 200 countries in the world. No Jews in most of them.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-damascus-blood-libel
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/americans-react-to-the-damascus-blood-libel