The Birth of the New Palestine Nation – Part II, The Hope of TIANA

This is Part II of a two-article series describing how a New Palestine nation will be borne from the current despair in Gaza and the West Bank and 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 presents the despair, and Part II the hope.

This article introduces to the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, refugee camps, and all around the world the TIANAs. TIANA stands for “There Is A New Alternative” – the hope that the PEIS Plan will finally end their eight-decade quest for a sovereign homeland and a life of dignity.

The PEIS Plan stands for the Palestinian-Egyptian-Israeli-Sinai peace plan. It proposes that Egyptians sell the insurgent-infected part of the Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians and use the proceeds for its stalled economy. The Palestinians sell the West Bank to Israel and use the remittance to pay the Egyptians and combine its Sinai purchase with Gaza to create New Palestine. The Israelis buy the West Bank from the Palestinians and finally fulfill their yearning for the “Land of Israel” with Judea and Samaria fully recognized.

The PEIS Plan can succeed while one-state or two-state solutions failed because it does not slice and dice the same contested West Bank; it introduces a new land: the Sinai. The resulting New Palestine will be a country that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, not curled inside its bowel, and will march to the drums of its own people into its own future, separate from the Israelis.

A book about the PEIS Plan (the PEIS book) was released a few weeks before the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack. A subsequent collection of articles explains how the PEIS Plan, initially for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, will also resolve the Israeli-Hamas War. The prevalent two-state solutions, involving only two parties, went nowhere. The PEIS Plan, with three parties who, even in the best of times, do not see eye to eye, starts with an overview article and follows with “what’s in it for you” (WIIFY) articles for each party regardless of what the other parties think. After the WIIFY articles for Israelis and Egyptians, the WIIFY for Palestinians consists of Part I (“There Is No Alternative Left“) and this Part II, presenting the PEIS Plan alternative.

Let’s explore the TIANAs.

TIANA 1 – A Territorially Viable Nation

Under the PEIS Plan, the Palestinians will buy part of the Northern and Eastern regions of the Sinai Peninsula from the Egyptians. This purchase will be referred to as the PEIS Sinai.

The first viability is contiguity. The PEIS Sinai abuts the Gaza Strip at the Rafah crossing. Unlike a two-state solution, there will be no land corridor across Israel to connect Gaza to a Palestinian sovereignty.

The second viability is size. Although the final PEIS Sinai is a matter of negotiation, the PEIS book envisions a landmass 50% bigger than Greater Israel (current Israel with Judea and Samaria) and six times larger than the constricted West Bank. This ample size will resolve one intractable issue of the Conflict: the right of return of the Palestinian diaspora. They will not return to Mandatory Palestine but to their new homeland in the PEIS Sinai. There will be many cities with different opportunities to choose from, and each family will get an urban homestead and a bonus lot in the vast Sinai desert – the value will be explained later.

The third viability is sovereignty. Unlike a West Bank surrounded by Israel, New Palestine will have full control of its airspace: planes will not have to go through Israel. Unlike a landlocked West Bank, New Palestine will have two independent sea accesses: the Mediterranean Sea in the North and the Gulf of Aqaba in the South. There will be at least two Mediterranean ports, while the country, tapered off at its southern end, will likely host one major port in the South.

TIANA 2 – An Economically Viable Nation

There will be nation-building. The immigrants and returnees will bring along their assets, to be joined with worldwide financial assistance to rebuild Gaza and transform the PEIS Sinai into the modern home for New Palestinians.

New Palestine is just across from southern Europe. It will become the maquiladora and offshoring center of Europe. In the maquiladora case, raw materials will come from Asia via the southern port, and assembled products will be sent to Europe from the northern ports. In the offshoring case, European companies will open shop in New Palestine, taking advantage of the low cost and preferential treatments, and export competitively manufactured products to America via the northern ports and the Asian markets via the southern port.

Then, there will be the exploding Middle East – not from war but economic growth. With peace reigning, an EPIc (Egyptian, Palestinian, Israeli countries) sense of prosperity will spread to all the neighbors in the Middle East, snuffing out the tired geopolitical animosity.

The vast stretches of desolate Sinai Desert will be the “oil fields” of the modern economy, with space, sun, and wind for renewable energy. (The PEIS Book also argues for nuclear and hydrogen energies.) The bonus land granted to all founding New Palestinians will derive value from this energy play.

Helping the economy will be this fact: the Palestinians have one of the world’s highest literacy rates. As for higher education, the West Bank and Gaza had 14 universities, a distance learning university, 18 university colleges, and 20 community colleges. This workforce will be the fuel for the service economy. Destroyed Gaza City will be rebuilt, more cosmopolitan than ever, and will establish itself as the business and financial center of New Palestine; it may start as the offshore resource of Tel Aviv, Israel’s financial center just 50 miles north, and it will grow to be a worthy competitor.

And then, there is tourism. New Palestine will have one of the longest stretches of the Mediterranean seashore, from Gaza to northern PEIS Sinai. With beaches and resorts, this will be the New Palestine Riviera. The southern tip, looking out to the Gulf of Aqaba, will be between the Egyptian Red Sea Riviera and the vibrant Israeli city of Eilat. There will be EPIc land tours and cruises between the three countries. The old hajj pilgrimage route from Cairo to Jerusalem, passing through many Sinai historical sites, will be reopened. Even the Sinai Desert will offer points of interest from the modern renewable energy infrastructure and old Israeli-Egyptian battlefields.

Many other economic opportunities will spring up from peace and nationhood. They will all share the same characteristic: they will be Palestinian own making, perhaps with Israeli assistance, but never under Israeli diktat. A two-state solution, if ever successful, would result in a West Bank-centered economy where even the basics, such as electricity, water, and Internet, would be delivered and controlled by Israel; such an “independent” Palestinian entity would be, at best, a vassal state.

TIANA 3 – A Demographically Viable Nation

Who are the New Palestinians? The majority will be Palestinian: stayed-put Gazans, relocated West Bankers, returning refugees, and worldwide immigrants. There are also minorities: the native Bedouins, naturalized Sinai Egyptians, and even reformed Islamic insurgents. There will be two significant groups of New Palestinians who will live in the West Bank.

The first group will be New Palestinian citizens who live in New Palestinian sovereign entities within Greater Israel. The PEIS Plan has the Palestinians sell the West Bank but allows them to keep certain major historical sites as sovereign enclaves. The most important one will be the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem (to be owned by Israel via a previous annexation and the PEIS purchase). This enclave will be the cultural capital of New Palestine. As for the administrative capital, the contested East Jerusalem will not be appropriate anymore since it is isolated from the New Palestinian mainland. The acceptance of a cultural enclave and the unsuitability of East Jerusalem will resolve another intractable issue of the Conflict: the final status of Jerusalem.

The second group will be West Bankers who decide not to relocate to New Palestine. The PEIS Plan stipulates that the land beneath the West Bank be sold to Israel, but not the private properties on top of the land. West Bankers can sell the properties any time they wish and use the proceeds as capital to start a new life in New Palestine. There will be no expulsion; they can remain in the West Bank as long as they wish as citizens of New Palestine with a special Israeli status called native residency. As described in the PEIS book, a New Palestinian native resident will have all the local rights of an Israeli citizen but none of the national rights.

TIANA 4 – A Viable Nation Of Peace

Many Israelis, fresh from the Oct 7 trauma, believe that no land deal would be possible with the Palestinians because Palestinians only wanted the destruction of Israel and the removal of the Jewish people “from the river to the sea”. That phrase will be irrelevant. New Palestine will be built from sea to sea, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, and not from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean shore of Mandatory Palestine. With the Israelis and Palestinians duly separated, the idea of killing one another for a land that is not contested anymore will be simply nonsensical.

New Palestine will inherit two conflicts: the Islamist insurgency against the Egyptian government in the PEIS Sinai and the Hamas war against Israel in Gaza. The two conflicts will go away with the PEIS Plan. There will be no more Egyptian antagonists for the Sinai Islamists, and the PEIS book describes how New Palestine would win over the isolated insurgents. As for Gaza, the war-weary Gazans will abandon the Hamas militant and now irrelevant ideology for the New Palestine nationhood, as outlined in the WIIFY article for the Israelis.

With no conflict brewing, New Palestine will be on friendly terms with its two neighbors, Egypt and Israel. The three countries will create an EPIc future of peace and prosperity that will reset the tenor for the whole Middle East.

THE TIANA CONCLUSION

There Is A New Alternative, it is the PEIS Plan, and this article has covered some of the “what’s in it for the Palestinians”. There is one last thing.

In 1988, the Palestinian National Council adopted the Palestinian Declaration of Independence to formally define the State of Palestine. The declaration proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital and specified the borders of such a state, not naming Gaza or the West Bank, but saying: “The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be”.

New Palestine, with the Gaza Strip, the PEIS Sinai, and the West Bank sovereign enclaves, including the cultural capital in Jerusalem, is where Palestinians will be for a future of dignity, independence, and prosperity. New Palestine shall be the State of Palestine.