The war objective: Un-Gaza (undo the Gaza Strip)

The war objective of Israel should be to undo the Gaza Strip: the northern part (to the north of the Wadi Gaza, about 30% of the present Gaza Strip) should be demilitarized and incorporated to Israel. The southern part (about 70% of the present Gaza Strip) should return to the de-facto control of Egypt, as it was up to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Background

On October 7, 2023, the rulers of Gaza launched a surprise attack against Israel (“surprise” to those who did not care to read or believe Hamas’ 1988 Covenant [1]). It was an unprovoked attack, on Saturday early morning, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. In a few hours – and while barrages of rockets reached the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and even as far as Tel-Aviv – several thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists breached the 1950 armistice border between Gaza and Israel, entered Israeli towns and butchered its citizens, in a rampage that surpassed the scenes of atrocities perpetuated by ISIS in Iraq. More than 1,200 civilians were killed and about 200 were taken hostages and dragged to Gaza – young children, women, and Holocaust survivors between them.

Since the year 2006, when Hamas won the elections in Gaza, this pattern of confrontations with Israel had been repeated every few years. What was new now was the territorial invasion into the Israeli towns in the South and the horrendous butchery that followed. Hamas and Iran had seized the opportunity presented by the sharp internal political divisions within Israel, and were intent on sabotaging the emerging peaceful relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

After the massacre of the Jews on Israeli soil on October 7^th, many in the Muslim countries urged the world to force Israel to accept an immediate cease fire under the mantra of avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. We went through this movie before. No demands are made on Hamas. No one raises the option of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip to put an end to the cycle of violence. This one-sided position of the Muslim world is not by chance. The reason was clearly stated on October 9, 2023, by Zaman Mehdi, the Pakistani Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, who – speaking on behalf of all the 56 states of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic States – condemned the “more than seven decades of foreign occupation”, placing thus the root cause of the conflict in the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

The Pakistani Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, addressing the UN on October 9th, 2023 (source: X, formerly Twitter).

To this day, no one in the Arab world – nor in the “progressive” Left in the Western democracies – wants to admit the reality that half the Jewish population of Israel consists of Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, who after enduring centuries of the worst kind of oppression as “dhimmis” under Islamic rule, were ethnically cleansed from the Muslim countries during the 20^th century, from Morocco, in Africa, to Iran and Yemen in the Middle East. Israel was born as a nation of refugees, who came to its shores because they had nowhere else to go. They came with nothing, except for their bare hands and traumatized minds.

The root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the opposition of the Muslim world to the right of self-determination of the Jewish people, a long-oppressed minority in the Muslim Arab world and in the Christian European world, and their opposition to the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, as clearly stated by president Joe Biden in May 2021, after that month conflagration between Hamas and Israel. [2]

In a previous article, I expressed my view that the elimination of Hamas should not be an objective of the present war. It would cost many thousands of Palestinian civilian lives, and would take a long time to achieve – if ever. I also opposed “regime change”: It should be up to the Palestinians to replace their rulers.

Undo Gaza

But there is another solution to end the cycle of war in the southern border of Israel: to undo Gaza. The region of the Gaza Strip north to the Wadi Gaza should be demilitarized and become an integral part of Israel. The region of the Gaza Strip south to the Wadi Gaza will remain under the rule of Hamas. However, with the only access to supplies through the Rafah crossing controlled by Egypt, it will de-facto fall under the rule of Egypt, which was in fact the case till the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

How to undo Gaza

Israel can take a series of practical steps to achieve this war objective. Here are some of them:

1) Allow uninterrupted and unlimited humanitarian help to enter through the Rafah crossing with Egypt and reach any Palestinians, both individuals and institutions, south to the Wadi Gaza. Avoid the difficult and friction-laden task of trying to verify that the humanitarian aid reaches indeed its right destination. No questions asked.

2) Provide and secure a humanitarian corridor to any Palestinian north of the Wadi Gaza to move to the south. No questions asked: any unarmed Palestinian that moves through this corridor will be allowed to reach the area south of Wadi Gaza, without asking what his/her political or military affiliation is. This also includes members of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, or any other armed groups.

3) Limit the military operations south of the Wadi Gaza to aerial strikes targeted to pin-pointed areas from which rockets and drones are launched.

4) Proceed to destroy all the military installations north to the Wadi Gaza, as well as any armed opposition to the Israeli Defense Forces.

Adhere to a viable political solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict

The 1993 Oslo-Accords have been proven again-and-again to be a complete failure, due to the irredentist approach of the Palestinian leadership and its claim to the “right of return” of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper, within Israel’s pre-June 1967 armistice borders. A return to the original intent of the 242 UN Security Council resolution of November 1967 is needed: the West Bank should be reincorporated to Jordan, with this re-union perhaps renamed as the “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”.

The political solution should include addressing the refugee problem: Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees, both victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict. An international aid program – similar to the Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II – should be established to develop the economy of Jordan and integrate the Palestinians in the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine. And the international community should also address a just resolution of the claims of the almost one-million Jewish refugees, who were ethnically cleansed from the Arab countries.

And, finally, proceed with a renovated vigor to achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia, under the auspices, guidance, and good services of the United States of America.

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Lexicon

wadi: a valley or ravine that is dry except in the rainy season.

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References

[1] Jaime Kardontchik, “The Hamas war doctrine and objectives”, chapter in my book “Boycott of Israel is wrong: How to fight it”, first published on June 3, 2021. Also reprinted in the newspaper “Times of Israel”:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-is-hamas-the-hamas-war-doctrine-and-objectives/

[2] Jaime Kardontchik, “The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the path to peace” (October 1^st, 2023 edition)

The book is available at Amazon, but it can be read and downloaded (pdf) for free by everyone using the following link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364057784_The_root_of_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict_and_the_path_to_peace