The Birth of the New Palestine Nation – Part I, The Despair of TINAL
This article is Part I of a two-article series describing how a New Palestine nation will be borne from the despair of the current situation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and from the hope of the PEIS Plan, a novel peace plan that will resolve, once and for all, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, including the Israeli-Hamas War. Part I discusses the despair.
This article addresses the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It will discuss the TINALs. TINAL stands for “There Is No Alternative Left” – a cry of despair of all Palestinians who have sought a right for self-determination, a sovereign homeland, and a life of dignity, and fought for this vision for eight decades, from negotiations to intifadas, terrorism, and full-blown wars, all without success, all without being closer to the dream of nationhood.
The following TINALs show no good alternative to the dispirited situation.
TINAL 1 – Forget About Fighting Israel
The Hamas-initiated Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel may be the pinnacle of Palestinian use of violence against Israel. It took Hamas two years to train for the attack and more than a decade to create its militant force and painstakingly accumulate the smuggled weapons. The attack succeeded because Israel knew about the plan but haughtily dismissed it. Israel will not repeat this mistake: it will nip in the bud any Hamas or any other militant group attempt to assemble men and arms big enough for an attack on the Oct 7 scale.
Many Palestinian militants undoubtedly believe that their ingenuity and determination would beat any Israeli control. In that case, there is this question: If Hamas took over a decade to assemble its Oct 7 capability under Israeli disregard, how many decades would Hamas or any such group take to build a similar capability under very watchful Israeli eyes?
There is always a Palestinian militant who dreams of an incredible plan or an extraordinary weapon that will inflict more Israeli casualties than the Oct 7 attack. This might happen. The thing is — Israel has mastered the art of the proportional response. After Hamas killed 1,139 people in its Oct attack, by May 2024, the UN estimated 35,000 Gazans were killed by the subsequent Israeli counterwar, with the war still ongoing. If an incredible plan or extraordinary weapon were to kill, say, 1M Israelis, Israeli would use all its power to strike back; such a strike could dispose of, using the same proportion of the Gaza War, 35M Palestinians; the thing is — there are only 5M Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank combined. In other words, any increase in Palestinian violence against Israelis would reduce the Palestinian population, which is the only thing that prevents Israel from annexing the territories. Israel captured the land in the 1967 Six-Day War and then did not know what to do with the population if it were to annex the land: Could not absorb ’em, could not deport ’em, could not kill ’em. For the latter, see the UN report once the Palestinians gave Israel a good reason.
The Palestinians can rightly feel oppressed by the Israeli occupation; violence is one alternative to fight back. This alternative can harm Israelis here and there, but Israeli overwhelming military superiority will prevent it from achieving the ultimate goal of the Palestinians — which is to live free and proud in their own country. On the contrary, increased Palestinian violence has justified Israeli occupation of more and more Palestinian territories in the name of security.
TINAL 2 – Forget About Negotiating With Israel
If violence is not a good alternative, how about negotiation? Forget about negotiations. Palestinians and Israelis have been negotiating since the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords — which did not result in permanent peace for the Israelis nor a viable sovereign entity for the Palestinians. The problem remains the West Bank. The Gaza Strip used to be part of the problem, but Israel renounced its territorial claim here by its unilateral withdrawal in 2015 and turning the administration back to the Palestinians. (In 2023, Israel re-invaded Gaza, but only to hunt for the perpetrators of the Oct 7 attack, not for territorial regain.)
The West Bank remains the problem because both sides want more of it for itself. The ideal solution is for a two-state solution with the West Bank and Gaza Strip constituting a Palestinian state living in peace and friendship with Israel. Forget about this solution. It has been discussed in any imaginable form and version since the 1948 partition of Mandatory Palestine. Forget about negotiation when a right-wing party holds power in Israel: Such Israeli administration may pay lip service to a two-state solution to assuage the US who still cling to this chicken-soup idea, and then undermines it. Israeli right-wingers want the whole West Bank for Israel, and any two-state agreement will delineate the formal border of the Palestinian state and effectively prevent future settlement encroachments, notwithstanding the removal of existing settlements. Politics is cyclic, and the Palestinians may have to wait for a left-wing or centrist Israeli party to gain control. Such a party may be more open for Palestinians to have more of the West Bank, but no party will give to the full Palestinian demands because of one existential issue: security. Even in the best land-for-peace proposal, Israeli insists on having a military presence in the West Bank, dominant control of the Palestinian air space to prevent a 9/11 copycat attack, and other restrictions that make any potential independent Palestinian state not even independent on the piece of paper it is signed on. With the Oct 7 attack by Palestinian militants using Gaza as a staging sanctuary, Israel will never accept a fully independent Palestinian state in which militants can use the West Bank as a staging sanctuary to make an even bigger attack on Israel.
Unless a Palestinian leadership accepts an independent state just a tad better than the current Area A that Israel currently allows for Palestinian self-governance, any two-state solution is dead on arrival: no worthy Palestinian leader will accept this treason to the Palestinian cause.
This is not to say that Palestinians should forgo negotiation in topical matters, such as the Israeli-Hamas negotiation for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, using negotiation to achieve the ultimate goal of the Palestinians — which is to live free and proud in their own country, will continue to fail in the future as it has failed in the past.
TINAL 3 – Forget About Depending On Arab Help
If violence and negotiation are not viable alternatives, what else is left?
Before the 1980s, there was no Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. There was the wider Israeli-Arab Conflict in which Israel fought three major wars and innumerable skirmishes against its Arab neighbors. If the Arab side were to win, there would be no Israeli-Palestinian Conflict since the Israelis would be pushed to the sea, and most of Mandatory Palestine would return to Arab hands. History said otherwise. The 1980s and 1990s saw the bowed-to-reality Arab acceptance of Israel’s existence, formally as with Egypt then Jordan, or grudgingly for the rest of the Arab world. The 2020 Abraham Accords brought four more countries into the fold of Arab nations that recognized Israel. In 2023, discussions for diplomatic relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries were an open secret.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the military Hamas branch in Gaza, wanted to disrupt this negative trend to the Palestinian cause. He launched the Oct 7 attack with the hope of forcing Iran, the Yemeni Houthis, and the Lebanese Hezbollah to join the fight and the rest of the Arab world to finance it. His hopes were met, his expectations were not. The Iranians, Houthis, and Hezbollah did cause major problems for Israel, but nobody sent ground troops to rescue Hamas trapped in Gaza. The Arab world pledged financial aid, but for the reconstruction of Gaza, not for continuing the war.
Some Arab entities may still be willing to engage Israel militarily, but only for their own agenda. Nobody will fight to remove Israel from existence for the sake of the Palestinians. The Arab world’s restrained response to the Oct 7 attack should puncture any delusions about depending on it to achieve the ultimate goal of the Palestinians — which is to live free and proud in their own country.
TINAL 4 – Live With The Status Quo
If violence, negotiation, and pan-Arabism are not viable alternatives, what else is left? There is no alternative left. Of course, there is one, but it is not an alternative. It is the current condition of Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and siege control in the Gaza Strip. A 2021 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute showed that a plurality of Israelis preferred this solution (over the two-state and one-state solutions), and the majority of Palestinians rejected this option.
Israelis prefer the status quo and wish that Palestinians conform to the occupation and stop seeing Israel as the enemy. The PLO practically did that. After the 1993 Oslo Accords, the PLO stopped its worldwide assassination of Jews and Israelis, retreated to the West Bank, and created the Palestinian Authority, which collaborated with Israel on security. What the Palestinians have been getting is more settlements in Area C, more restrictions in Area B, and more reduction in Area A.
There is no need to tell the Palestinians why the status quo only offers despair. Even if Israel were to try to ameliorate the living conditions of the Palestinians under its rule, it would not work. In fact, Israel had tried to do that. In its earlier occupation of Gaza, it planned to rebuild a pier for the Gazan fishermen, and when militants shot upon its workers, the project was dropped. In the West Bank, whenever Israel made it easier for Palestinians to go to work in Israel, militants would infiltrate and wreak havoc inside the country: the checkpoints ended up getting more restrictive. There is always a large faction of Palestinians who call for Israel’s destruction and use all terrorist means to thwart any Israeli effort to make its occupation “better”.
The status quo is what Israelis and Palestinians endure at the present, but it does not herald a future of peace, and by prolonging the occupation, will never lead to the ultimate goal of the Palestinians — which is to live free and proud in their own country.
THE TINAL CONCLUSION
There Is No Alternative Left from the options of the last eight decades. Continuing to tinker with them is “the definition of insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. What if “There Is A New Alternative”? TIANA is the PEIS Plan , a novel three-state solution that offers a path not taken that can resolve, once and for all, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, including the Israeli-Hamas War. Part II of this “The Birth Of The New Palestine Nation” series will be about the PEIS Plan, about hope, about a future where Palestinians will have their own country to live free and proud.