Gaza as an Abraham Accord Protectorate

A New Gaza –  A New Middle East.  

Gaza as an Abraham Accords Protectorate. 

Fully six months ago, I outlined my original thinking applied to the Gaza problem.

Today, you are beginning to hear the fractious words, Gaza, Israel, Saudi Arabia, fusing  together in a conversation about the future of Gaza.

Clearly, Gaza needs to be built from scratch. The rubble of its violent past has to be swept away along with its radical ideology. It must not be mismanaged by those whose principles led to its ruin. It must be led by leaders dedicated to making Gaza a peaceful and prosperous place rather than the Hamas terror state it was before.

The location and size of Gaza makes it a place that can become the Cote D’Azur of the Middle East as Beirut was before the intrusion of lethal forces in Lebanon such as Arafat’s PLO, Syria, and homegrown Hezbollah.

The Gaza project must be founded on the total removal of Hamas from power and influence. Neither should the corrupt PLO Authority control the new Gaza. They have yet to prove their worth in th territory they control, let alone Gaza. And, according to all Palestinian polls, their people do not want them.

Let me make it clear. Not only should the PA have no role in governing a future Gaza. Neither should Israel. It is unreasonable for Israel to be patrolling Gaza for the next decade although its security may demand an outside force to impose neutral law and order,

Hence, a new experiment should be infused into the spirit and fabric of the Abraham Accords consisting of Israel, moderate peaceful Arab states, together with the United States and willing democratic partners.

Let’s be honest. It’s time for a new vision. A two-state illusion is no longer an option.

The reconstruction of a new Gaza should consists of a regional board led by the UAE, Bahrain, with the addition of Saudi Arabia, and of course Israel and the United States, as its corporate management.  Egypt should be co-opted given they are an involved neighbor.

Israel’s moderate Abraham Accord partners have a vested interest, and should play a significant role, in preventing the resurgence of a radical Islam by offering their moderate form of Islam to the Muslim population in Gaza, free from the indoctrination schools and camps of the past to create a new reality of a prosperous and peaceful Middle East.

In effect, the budding State of Gaza will be a protectorate of the Abraham Accord regional partners.

There are many successful examples of small nations flourishing under the guidance of larger democracies.

The United States has five protectorates ranging from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands to Guam and Samoa in the Pacific.

With echoes in a war-shattered Gaza, after the United States defeated Japan in World War Two, including the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan became a temporary protectorate of the United States until it relinquished its control in 1952 with Japan becoming a prosperous and peaceful Asian nation.

France has several protectorates including Guadeloupe, Guiana, Martinique, La Réunion, Mayotte, Saint-Barthélemy, and even several Polynesian islands. All peaceful and prosperous.

The United Kingdom has fourteen protectorates, known as UK Overseas Territories, perhaps the most famous being the Falkland Islands in which the British came to its defense when invaded by Argentina in 1982.

The status of Protectorates is recognized under international law and the specific relationship between the “Protectorate” and the “Protector” is set out under a treaty signed by both parties.

As a political and governing system, the concept of Protectorates has been successful in the past and is currently working well in the international arena.

In the case of Gaza, the “Protectors” will be multi-layered Abraham Accord countries with the important addition of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has clung to the condition of a formal peace with Israel on the establishment of a Palestinian state. It is time for them to stop being a critical observer and get into the game. This can begin with Gaza becoming the role model for Palestinians living under their failed Ramallah leadership.

In time, once the new Gaza becomes a self-operated country, it can decide to federate with Ramallah or become an independent Gazan state. That choice will rest with the people and leadership of a new Gaza when they mature to actual independent rule. And, if it chooses, this self-governing entity can be introduced into the United Nations as a member nation in it’s own right.

The peace and independence of Gaza will be protected by its two neighbors, Israel and Egypt, with the help of the United States. All have vested interests in maintaining a peaceful Gaza.

To help Gaza develop into a modern entity, both Israel and the United States will supervise a future based educational system concentrating on languages, science, math, technology, agronomy, and not radical ideology.

The United States and Israel will develop a new curriculum for the Gazan education system from elementary schools to universities designed to give the new generation of Gazans a brighter merit based future.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE will construct new and grand mosques. They will employ the imams that will preach a moderate and respectful Islam. They will employ the teachers in the madrassahs.

Gaza should be a tourism, technology, and agricultural center.

In the past, Israel proposed a Gaza with an offshore airport, marina, and seaport with a connecting road and rail bridge to the mainland.

This ambitious project should be revived, and Gaza City should become a hotel and services-based economy.

The potential of Gaza as a demilitarized agricultural, light industry, and tourism economy with the potential of becoming a hi-tech data center to the Arab world, is enormous.

Successful Israelis, such a Mellanox billionaire, Eran Waldman, once had the vision of a tech-center in Gaza. That was before Waldman’s daughter and boy-friend were murdered by Hamas at the Nova Festival on 7 October.

Given the backing of a regional partnership, people like Waldman could be encouraged to create an oasis of regional cooperation in a new Gaza to revive the lost vision of peace for Israelis.

These projects will assure gainful employment and prosperity for the people of Gaza.

In that future, when Gazans prove themselves capable of developing their skills under the guidance of its Abraham Accord partners, they will establish their own government and decide for themselves whether to remain independent, or join a confederation with either the PA, Israel, both, or neither. That chose should be theirs alone.

If the failed PA regime in Ramallah cannot find it in their heart to realise that Israel is here to stay, it should be allowed to wither on the vine until they are willing to find a leadership not bent on indoctrination and rewarding the murderers of Jews.

That is an industry that Israel will never tolerate.

Gazans, Palestinians, can no longer be led by those wedded to regressive hatred of Jews. It needs moderate but affirmative regional leaders and original thinkers to imagine a new and better future.

So-called “experts” have bleated about a two-state solution for half a century. They failed. Their vision was nothing more than a mirage of their fevered imagination divorced from the deceptive reality of the Middle East. Divorced from the reality that deceptive Palestinian leaders never, for a moment, wanted two-states for two peoples..

They wanted one state for one people, from the River to the Sea.

So why not try a three-state solution?

A new successful Gaza can decide for itself if it remains an independent state, to confederate with whatever exists in Ramallah, or collaborate with Israel and the friendly moderate Arab states.

This, surely, is a better vision than a fifty-year-old two-state failure.

A new Gaza heralds a new Middle East. Under the promise of the Abraham Accords.

Barry Shaw,

International Public Diplomacy Director,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.