Make the Palestinians an offer they can’t refuse
Five weeks after October 7, 2023 I wrote about a massive infrastructure project that might offer the Palestinians a new opportunity. The idea was to build a canal from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea, and make it the spine of a completely new Palestinian home, extending from Jericho to, say, Tsofar.
I didn’t say it would be cheap. Part of the problem would be the need to climb 500 metres from the Gulf and then drop 1,000 metres to the level of Ein Gedi. Nor did I say the Palestinians would accept it. (Why, after all, embrace a sparkling new vision when you can remain mired in an old one that isn’t working?)
But there has to be some major rethink and maybe, just maybe, the Second Coming of America’s most objectionable president might see truculent heads being banged together—something Mr 45 and 47 seems able to do, to give him his due.
The fact is, no matter how much support the Two-State Solution has garnered among theorists with the least skin in the game, the idea is a non-starter. That’s not because no one believes in it any more, among Israelis and Palestinians; opinions can change in a moment and the impossible can suddenly become the Next New Thing.
It’s because it doesn’t make sense geographically. You cannot have a Palestinian state that is broken into two separate entities. The once-fashionable talk of bridges and tunnels was always a nonsense. Two entities means two countries and, quite possibly, two entities who are as much at odds with themselves (as the PA and Hamas have been) as both have been with Israel.
Pakistan was originally made up of two detached regions but East Pakistan is now Bangladesh. The United Arab Republic (UAR) was a political union from 1958 till 1961 but then split into Syria and Egypt. Singapore was initially part of the Federation of Malaya until tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations led it to secede in 1965 and become an independent city-state.
Geographical separation does not make for unity.
What alternatives are there, then, that would provide the entirety of Palestinians with a homeland? Here are five:
1. Jordan
Jordan, an artificial construct, already has a large Palestinian population (about 60% of Jordanians are of Palestinian descent) and shares cultural and linguistic ties with Palestinians. To many Israelis, it seems the obvious place for Palestinians to make ther home but Jordanian leaders, including King Abdullah II, strongly oppose the idea, and with limited resources, the country might struggle to absorb the numbers.
2. The Sinai Peninsula
The settlement of the Sinai Peninsula was part of a proposal in the 2010s by some Palestinian intellectuals and activists disillusioned with the Two-State Solution and the prospects for a negotiated peace. Its attraction is that Sinai is close to Gaza, making relocation easy, and the whole of the Sinai could be developed with foreign investment to support new Palestinian cities. Egypt firmly rejeced it, however, as a violation of its sovereignty and a threat to its monopoly of the Suez Canal.
3. Libya
Relocation to Libya was proposed by Muammar Gaddafi in the 1970s and could have brought huge economic opportunities to a large country with a low population density, but Gaddafi’s plan was never taken seriously and the country now seems too politically unstable and divided for any kind of major development.
4. Artificial Islands in the Mediterranean
Building islands off the coast avoids taking land from Israel, Egypt or Jordan, and modern technology is now capable of large-scale reclamation along the lines of Dubai’s Palm Islands. The cost would be massive, however, and in spite of its potential as a new Venice would not be welcomed by Palestinians.
5. Other Arab Countries
Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have vast amounts of open land, and the Gulf states are wealthy enough to finance such a move. On the other hand, Arab states strongly oppose Palestinian resettlement and many prefer the Palestinians to remain where they are, as a continuing thorn in Israel’s flesh.
None of these plans gives the Palestinians the specifics of what they say they want, which is to occupy the territory that Israel now controls, but it is possible that the uncouth man in the Oval Office could open their eyes to a new reality.
The fact is, some of the most successful countries in the history of civilisation have been the product of people cutting their ties to their homelands—especially where these homelands did not serve their interests—and moving to somewhere new. The whole of the British diaspora—America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—is the story of massively successful resettlements to terras incognitas.
Brazil was colonised by Portugese settlers. Chile was colonised by Spaniards. South Africa was the product of Dutch immigration and their Great Trek. And then, of course, there is the story of Fiddler-on-the-Roof Jews, giving up their long-established homes in Eastern and Central Europe for uncertain futures in the USA and the Land of the Bible.
Moving and resettlement isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a nation; sometimes, it can be the making of it, in spite of what the world’s political scientists and UN officials drum into the innocent minds of the young and reinforce as a culture of righteous victimhood in Gaza and the West Bank.
But movement takes mental flexibility and openness, and neither of these is an obvious characteristic of the Arab mentality. In their absence, some other element is needed the break the logjam. All I can think of is high-pressure deal-making, and for that, though I hate to admit it, Trump might be the one character in history who could bring it off. What a coup that would be.