Mogherini and the European Union’s Military Action Plan

Federica Mogherini believes that her job title “High Representative of the Union of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President” no less, empowers her to periodically remonstrate against and dictate Israel how to conduct its domestic and foreign affairs as well as to the P.A. no less, and the world what the geography of the State of Palestine of her wishful imagination must be.

Her latest dictate is: P.A’s national territory “cannot exclude Gaza but cannot include only Gaza”. A cutely worded one. Fault her thinking as I may, I certainly cannot fault her for trying to be innovative to avoid repeating the same old dictate ad infinitum ad nauseam.

And, when it comes to dealing effectively with the conflict, her fundamental shortcoming is, I dare say, an utter lack of imagination in problem-solving. Hence, I decided to give her a hand to devise a fresh approach.  Here it is.

On March 28 inst. the EU issued a press release titled”Action Plan on military mobility: EU takes steps towards a Defence Union”. The document states that “In line with President Juncker’s commitment to a fully-fledged Defence Union by 2025, the Commission and the High Representative are presenting an Action Plan to improve military mobility within and beyond the European Union”.

What I propose to her is to accomplish a lot of most worthy goals in a single stroke. More specifically, she should start improving the military mobility of the force beyond the European Union; test  the force on the ground, in a realistic fashion, and thereby expedite the formation of the Union by and most likely before 2025.

All Mogherini has to do, for a change, is to use some of the troops to be dedicated to the E.U. military force to

1. mount a surprise attack to invade Gaza to drain the swamp by
2. vanquishing all its terrorists (regardless of their respective affiliations); expelling

or gifting them to countries whose dictators are in desperate need of a larger killing machine or ship them somewhere where they can do no harm to others;

1. destroying their military infrastructure and equipment;
2. freezing and confiscating the ill-gotten wealth of the directing minds of Hamas and of the Hamas organisation, and
3. keeping the swamp fully drained at all times.

In so doing, she will

1. insure that the first part of her latest dictate can be implemented, but most importantly,
2. liberate the inhabitants of Gaza, keep them safe from periodic warfare for the foreseeable future and, I venture to say, far beyond and give them a new lease on life.

Grabbing Gaza ought to be a cinch for Europe’s finest. After all, Israel did a far bigger job in merely six days back in 1967.

Once that is done, the E.U, with the P.A’s consent or with one secured with some affectionately- a la Mogherini-, blunt talk then would then take over the territory under autonomous trusteeship for a period of say 15 years and use this time

1. to invest, all the available foreign aid and the vast sums of monies confiscated from Hamas to rebuild the short and long term benefit of the inhabitants of the territory for the  housing and health, welfare, education and economic well-being of the population;
2. disband the dysfunctional components of the UN organisations, institutions, functions and personnel;
3. reform and modernise the education system and cleanse the schoolbooks of hateful violent anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic  literature;
4. modernise the university curriculum and broaden  the opportunities to acquire professions  responsive to the current  and anticipated  future  socio-economic and cultural realities;
5. build a proper infra-structure to provide for abundant  clean energy, clean water and a modern public health system;
6. build an adult education program to provide the population with learning and training opportunities to meet the demands of local and international market place; and,
7. most importantly,
8. establish the fundamentals of a vibrant democracy  within the territory; and
9. build an economy based on the Singapore model.

This would be a situation of multiple wins for:

1. the long suffering people of Gaza;
2. the E.U companies which will undoubtedly get involved to make money by investing in Gaza and becoming an integral part of its booming international trade based on its new economic model;
3. the P.A. which will increase its revenues considerably by collecting income taxes in Gaza; and
4. the foreign donors which will no longer have to give the E.U as big sums of money as they do presently, and
5. the E.U’s Defence Union project.

In turn, this state of affairs will benefit the residents of the West Bank governed by the P.A as they will be able to

1. seek and secure educational and employment opportunities in Gaza;
2. enjoy and partake in the collective well-being of the territory;
3. have a real taste of living a genuinely democratic way of life: the rule of law;

respect of human rights, freedoms and human dignity; honest government; the right to keep the government through honest elections, unlike anything they experienced in the West Bank;

1. share these novel experiences and feelings with the folks back in the West Bank;
2. to encourage and support these folks in their fight to obtain the same things from the P.A.

(Come to think of it, even some Israelis who are quite unhappy with the political scene in Israel, may well be tempted to set up shop in Gaza.)

And,  if the E.U performs  the foregoing scenario, I am willing to wager that the  Gazans will be the last  of the people on earth who would want to make war instead of enjoying the goodness  and bounties of life in peace.

In the circumstances, who would deny Frederica Mogherini the Nobel Prize; her place near Joan of Arc and immortality in the history books to the end of times?

There is only one catch: if the people of “new Gaza” were to give as much as a faint indication that having adopted the Singapore economic model, they may just as well follow suit and adopt the whole model by becoming a sovereign country, the P.A will smell rat and, ironically enough, it will do whatever it can to prevent  the independence project of their brethren from materialising.

And poor Francesca, by then watching it all from the sidelines, would be heartbroken for having failed to accomplish even the first part of her dictate  for her good friend Abbas whom she champions as a peace lover, par excellence.