Episode 179 Transcript: Getting to a Palestinian State, Part 3

Transcript of today's episode on what the rest of the world can do to create a Palestinian state

One of the strange aspects of Palestinian statehood is the divergence between the protagonists and the stakeholders. That is, between the United States and Europe, for whom Palestinian statehood is holy gospel; and the Israelis and Palestinians, who don’t particularly want a Palestinian state, or outright reject it. For the West, Palestinian statehood is the ultimate goal, the key driver for Middle Eastern policies, the unquestioned answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that needs to be pushed nonstop. It sometimes reaches the point of absurdity. Spain and Ireland are threatening to recognize a Palestinian state — that is, to conjure one up out of thin air — in response to Israel’s operation in Gaza. In rewarding Hamas for its pogrom, and linking Palestinian statehood to a war that Hamas started, the Europeans are handing Israel yet another reason to view Palestinian statehood as a punishment, not as a long-term benefit for its own security.

It’s not that the two-state solution is necessarily the wrong choice. But it is a paradox. It’s the best answer for Israel’s long-term security, and the worst answer in the short-term. A peaceful, stable, representative Palestinian state would be the ideal solution. But at the moment a Palestinian state is sure to be a terrorist one.

We’ve looked at what Israel needs to change for Palestinian statehood to become reality. Israel needs to end its ambition for Greater Israel, with Jewish sovereignty over every single inch of the biblical homeland. And to do that, Israel needs to push its ultranationalist extremists back to the fringes of politics where they were before Benjamin Netanyahu elevated them to power. 

The Palestinians in some ways have a much tougher hurdle. Palestinians have to give up their commitment to the elimination of Israel as the definition of their national liberation. They have to give up violence, give up the dream that armed struggle will destroy Israel. They have to give up the right of return — the idea that as permanent victimized refugees they are entitled to move back into Israel in order to destroy it from within. This will require a wholesale change in Palestinian cultural and national identity. 

But as I’m fond of saying, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Israelis and Palestinians are the only players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if those two can take the necessary steps towards Palestinian statehood, the rest of the world will also need to take the requisite steps. Some of these countries, international organizations, human rights and refugee groups, and other institutions would be supportive of this process. But others are so committed to Israel’s elimination that they are primarily interested in keeping the Palestinians stateless and immiserated. Those spoilers will have to be pushed aside. 

Of all the many threads here, I want to focus on two big-picture ideas. The first is that a coalition of countries needs to take control of Gaza. The second is that this same coalition needs to recognize, acknowledge, rise to, and fight back against the radical Islam threatening to destroy decent civilization in nearly every corner of the globe. Without those two efforts, I don’t think a Palestinian state can be established. And that may end up being the least of our problems. 

Before we get into it, big thanks to Lynn L from Portland, Oregon, and a couple dozen other recent donors. If you felt bad about being the only person at the Passover Seder who hadn’t donated to Jew Oughta Know, don’t worry. There is still a couple days left on the holiday. So head over to jewoughtaknow.com now, and while you’re there sign up for my mailing list for free written commentary on current events and other interesting bits from Jewish history.

On to today’s episode. I'm you host, Jason Harris, and this is Jew Oughta Know.

Let’s call it like it is: someone is going to have to rule Gaza, and that someone cannot be Israel or the Palestinians. For Israel to take over Gaza means an expansion of the occupation, and puts Israel responsible for two million Gazans who consider Israel their enemy. It would be a moral, legal, military, and political disaster, one that Israel would bear sole responsibility for.

Netanyahu is under heavy criticism for not agreeing to Palestinian Authority control of Gaza after the war. The Western and Arab countries bang on about a “reformed” and “revitalized” PA that is going to run things. Netanyahu has certainly been remiss in articulating any vision for postwar Gaza, a stance that has rendered Israel strategically adrift and open to critique. But what the PA cheerleaders aren’t admitting is that a reformed and revitalized PA is years away, if it can ever even get there.

The fact remains that the Palestinians cannot govern themselves. Now don’t take me out of context. I am not saying that Palestinians have some immutable characteristics which make them incapable of self-government. What I am saying is that the Palestinians are not strong enough to prevent Hamas or other jihadists from taking over Gaza, and the future Palestinian state. Palestinians lack the weaponry, organization, political leadership, civic institutions, popular support, and all the other resources necessary to keep the jihadists at bay. So Netanyahu is correct that the idea of handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority is totally unrealistic.

So if not the Israelis and if not the Palestinians, then we have everyone else. The Western countries that profess an unwavering belief in the viability of the two-state solution. And the moderate Arab countries who equally profess their love and support for the Palestinian people, yet who have these many decades done almost nothing to better their lives. So let me suggest an old and controversial idea. Just for fun, mind you. Bring back the mandate system.

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The mandate system emerged under the League of Nations after World War One. The German and Ottoman empires were defeated, and there was a question of what to do with their various territories around the world. The idea of the mandate was that one of the victorious powers would temporarily take over a territory, administering it until that territory could stand on its own two feet as an independent country. The mandatory power had various responsibilities towards the people of that territory, and could not absorb the territory as its own colonial outpost. There were around 20 of these mandatory territories after World War One, and if you listen to this podcast then you know about at least one of them: Palestine, which came under the British. 

Once the United Nations came along in 1945, the mandates still in existence fell under the UN’s overview and were called “trust territories.” There are no longer any more trusteeships: the last was Palau, a small Pacific island that gained independence in 1994.

But let me suggest we bring this system back. The Palestine Mandate, Take 2. The mission is for someone to take over Gaza until such time that it is able to declare formal independence, meaning that it can control its own security, economic development, decent government, and peaceful relations with its neighbors. The mandate could even be extended into the West Bank as Israel begins the process of unwinding its occupation and turning over territory. 

The problem with the original mandate system is that it smacks of paternalistic colonialism; particularly in the Middle East, when the European Christian powers were given control over Muslim territories and peoples. But what would be different this time is the involvement of the moderate Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Instead of the Palestine Mandate Take 2 falling under one country, like the United States, it will be shared by multiple countries — the US, Europe, and the Arabs. And because the original mandate system required the colonial power to take the wishes of the local communities into consideration, here the Palestinian Authority can play a central role, albeit under the watchful eye of the multiple mandatory powers.

I’m not arguing for a neo-colonialist occupation of Palestinians, but instead a mechanism for the West and the Arabs to meet the sheer scale of needs that Gaza will require to function as a quasi-independent country. Writing in the Jerusalem Strategic Review, the former US diplomat Robert Silverman lays out the major categories. Security needs, humanitarian supplies, economic and reconstruction aid, civil governance, and de-radicalization initiatives. Almost none of this can realistically come from Israel, and as I mentioned, the Palestinians don’t have the capacity. Every aspect of Gaza will need to be under someone else’s oversight to avoid corruption and incompetence; to ensure the billions of reconstruction funds are spent wisely in the right places; to ensure that the school system doesn’t radicalize children with antisemitism; and on and on. If the Palestinians want the PA president to be in charge, that’s fine: but he’ll need to be a symbolic figurehead, with the coalition standing over his shoulder in every meeting and through every decision until such time that Gaza is able to declare independence and hold free and fair elections.

The hardest part is going to be security. So here’s the bad news: someone — or some many countries — are going to have to commit troops. These coalition troops are going to have to man the borders with Egypt and Israel. They’re going to have to ensure the destruction of Hamas’ smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, and monitor every item coming into Gaza. They are going to have to impose total control over every inch of Gaza, patrolling every market, every street, every neighborhood, serving as both a kind of national army and local police force. As Gaza stabilizes with time, the Palestinians can themselves slowly take over some of these duties. But this is a long haul. And they are going to get shot at by the remnants of Hamas trying to destroy the coalition’s will and ability to carry on. Whichever country or countries commit troops, there should be no doubt that some will be killed by the terrorists. 

Not surprisingly, none of this seems to be on the table. 

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As much as the United States and Europe are pushing Palestinian statehood, the linchpin is really the moderate Arab countries. Otherwise the Palestine Mandate Take 2 starts to look indeed like a Western colonialist project on behalf of Israel. The Arab countries speak Arabic, are Muslim, share the same ethnicity as the Palestinians, are local to the neighborhood and know the culture. To mitigate antagonism and the feeling of continued occupation, the Palestinians are going to need to see Arab faces in their daily lives. Put it another way: best for the Western troops to man the borders and keep out of sight as much as possible. 

But the Arab states don’t seem to want any direct role in Gaza. It’s the same story for decades: lip service to the Palestinian cause, but no meaningful efforts to make it happen. Professed love for their Palestinian brothers and sisters, but doing nothing to improve their lives for the long-run. And who can blame them? If the Palestinians get their independence with a representative, prosperous, competent government, Arabs in the rest of the Middle East might start asking why they continue to tolerate their own unelected dictators and monarchs. 

Egypt, for one, could mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by opening up its border to allow Gazans to seek shelter in the Sinai. But Egypt’s dictator refuses to do this. Egypt claims that doing so would allow the Israelis to seize the land and refuse the Palestinians’ return. Given Netanyahu’s government, it’s not an unreasonable concern. But that’s just the excuse. There are two other reasons. First, Egypt is terrified of the jihadists and doesn’t want Hamas coming in to destabilize Egypt. There are 110 million people in Egypt but only around 200,000 Palestinians — Egypt doesn’t want any more, even temporarily. Secondly, Egypt is in the uncomfortable position of having looked the other way to Hamas’ smuggling weapons into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt. Egypt would rather keep the border closed and under their tight control. 

Egypt isn’t alone. Every Arab country knows that taking in Palestinian refugees means importing Hamas into their states. That is an absolute no go. 

The Arab states have always had a deeply cynical approach to the Palestinians. Keep them miserable while declaring it’s all just to support Palestinian statehood. But if we are really going to move forward with a new paradigm to create a state, that MO needs to change. The Arab states are going to have to actually put boots on the ground, fund actual investments in Palestinian society that doesn’t go to terrorism, and, crucially, offer their full-throated and public support to this postwar coalition. They can’t do what they do now, which is condemn Israel for waging war while privately hoping that Israel will just destroy Hamas already — and then do the same for Hezbollah and the rest of the jihadists, all the way up to Iran. The Arab states can no longer have it both ways: condemning the West to their own people while happily letting Israel do the dirty work and take the blame.

So moderate Arab state involvement in Gaza is essential. They’re going to have to help run the place as part of this transitional era to independence. But just as important as who is coming in to run Gaza, is who needs to be barred from entering.

Some Arab countries need to participate in running Gaza: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. Other countries, though, have to be kept out. Qatar and Turkey are irredeemably compromised by their support for Hamas. Qatar has tried to play both sides: simultaneously hosting America’s largest air base in the Middle East and the leaders of Hamas; mediating negotiations over the hostages while refusing to use its leverage with Hamas to push them to an agreement; presenting itself as a decent middleman while using its al Jazeera media outlet to push antisemitism and the demonization of Israel. 

Turkey is even more of an ally to Hamas. Indeed, with Qatar under pressure to lean on Hamas’ leaders, Hamas is talking with Turkey about relocating their headquarters there. It’s certainly a friendly place. Turkey’s president has promised that “Israel will one day pay the price for the injustice it inflicts on Palestinians." Hamas’ bankers are primarily located in Istanbul, running their illicit funds through Turkish banks. Turkey must play no part in Gaza’s administration.

Nor should the UN Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA. They, too, are prejudiced by decades of support for Palestinian terrorism and for radicalizing Palestinian children with a deeply antisemitic education system. We know, too, that UNRWA members were involved with the October 7 massacre, and that Hamas uses UNRWA facilities for weaponry, communications, storage, and much else. UNRWA is also undermined by its mandate. UNRWA’s goal is not to help Palestinians get out of their refugee status, but to perpetuate it. UNRWA is explicitly not tasked with assisting the development of Palestinian statehood, but of preventing it by ensuring that every Palestinian born anywhere in the Middle East is considered a refugee of Israel’s creation in 1948. UNRWA thus can no longer participate in Gaza because they are an impediment to moving forward. The problem is that UNRWA also provides essential humanitarian work in health care, food security, schooling, and other services. That work will need to be taken up by the coalition countries of Palestine Mandate Take Two. Paid for by the West, as UNRWA is now, with the Arab countries doing the on-the-ground work. In other words, UNRWA’s services need to be recreated from the ground-up in an entirely new organization that is designed to assist, not hinder, the development of Palestinian statehood.

We could continue filling out the list: from antagonistic media organizations to hopelessly biased human rights organizations to even the United Nations itself, having aligned itself against Israel for the last six decades. The point is that if the West and the Arabs are this time serious about Palestinian statehood, then they will have to be ruthless about keeping out the elements that block that progress, and that insist on perpetuating Palestinian misery as a bludgeon to use against Israel. 

But at the very top of this list of who to exclude from involvement in Gaza must surely be Iran, and the ultra-violent brand of jihadism it has been exporting for decades, and which currently has Israel surrounded.

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The number one biggest threat to decent civilization the world over is jihadism — the violent branch of fundamentalist Islam which views conquest, martyrdom, and the murder of all non-believers, especially Jews, as the highest ideals and religious duty of all Muslims. This version of radical Islam holds that any land every conquered by Muslims must remain forever Islamic, from Spain and Portugal through other parts of Europe, across the Middle East, into Africa, and even deep into Asia. This world view absolutely cannot allow any non-believers sovereignty over even an inch of that land. For jihadism, the Jewish State and its ability to defend itself with a mixed army of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, represents a rupture of the highest order, an abomination of such extraordinary heights that it must be utterly eradicated through equally extreme violence. 

The chief exporter of this jihadist view is Iran, which for decades now has encircled Israel with ultra-violent radical groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and more groups in nearby Iraq, the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt, and elsewhere. Israel isn’t the only victim, of course. The United States, France, Spain, the Philippines, Nigeria, Russia, New Zealand — all and more have been struck by jihadists bent on destroying the West, reclaiming Muslim land won through settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and military conquest. Israel is the central target.

The present Israel-Palestinian conflict is a continuation of the century-long war of the Arabs against the Jews in the Middle East. And that is part of the even wider war of jihadism against decent civilization everywhere, including moderate Muslims. There’s a reason that on October 7 Hamas also murdered and kidnapped Muslims and Arab-Israelis: simply their presence in Israel marks them as supporters of the unbelievers, thus deserving of violent death. 

These jihadists cannot be swayed by war and death, because they hold such things to be desirable. The greatest honor for a jihadist is to fall in battle while slaughtering the Jew. This worldview has infected people across the entire globe. It’s most obvious on college campuses, where radical Islam and the far left have realized they share one, and only one, thing in common: hatred of the Jews and Israel. The language is changed to appeal to leftist Westerns, couched in the language of resistance against oppression, human rights, equality, anti-Islamophobia, and anti-genocide. In fact, jihadism stands against those very things as the single worst perpetrator of war crimes, oppression, Muslim persecution, and warlordism in the world today. These jihadists are the most dangerous people on earth. When they’re done with the Jews, they’ll come for all those leftists now helping them. 

This is a fight that only Muslims can win. Only Muslims can wage the cultural battle through Muslim countries, Muslim leaders, and ordinary Muslims, to reject radicalism and jihadism. Nahum Kaplan is a former journalist who writes the Moral Clarity blog on Substack. He writes that Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Indonesia have all implemented anti-radicalization programs that have had success in blunting the influence and desirability of radical Islam. This involved revamping educational programs, instituting prison rehabilitation services, closing down jihadist mosques and madrassas, and even teaching basic life skills like money management and job training to help former radicals integrate into society. 

Once again, this cannot come from either Israel or the Palestinians. As Kaplan notes, “Israel has no idea how to deradicalize a Sunni country, and the Palestinians cannot do it themselves because they are the ones radicalized. Education systems will need to be overhauled to end the Islamist indoctrination of children.” Thus the Palestine Mandate Take Two will have to establish such de-radicalization programs, again under the auspices of the Arab states who are best placed religiously and culturally. But more than that, the Mandate will have to pool all of its resources, skills, and military and diplomatic heft to prevent the influence of Iran. 

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This fight against jihadism is global, historic, and likely long-term. It is up to Muslims. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us must stand idly by to be brutally murdered. Every decent country in the world must rise to this occasion; protect and defend their non-Muslim and moderate Muslim populations; and do so without compromise or hesitation. Sooner or later the world will need to confront the cruel, radical, murderous leadership of Iran. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the aged ayatollahs will die off, and the vast majority of moderate Iranians will prevent radicals from rising in their place. But as long as Iran is able to export its radical Islam, and back it up with some of the most extreme forms of violence ever devised — the type of violence exhibited with glee on October 7 — then we can forget about a Palestinian state and, beyond that, a world at peace. There is no achieving Palestinian statehood and Israeli security without removing the scourge of jihadism from the Middle East. 

Manuel Valls is the former prime minister is France. In a recent speech, he made explicit the connection between the global fight against radical Islam and what’s going on in Israel: “it’s the same front line.” He points out that it is because of Hamas that Israel is in a permanent state of war. 

This is why Israel must defeat Hamas, and why the world must support it doing so. Only when Hamas is gone can the Palestinians hope to build a better future. The world should help them. 

As always, I’m at jewoughtaknow.com and my email is jewoughtaknowpodcast@gmail.com. You can find me on Substack, where I’m putting out additional written commentary that you can sign up to receive about once a week. Thanks for listening everyone, Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish People Live.

© Jason Harris 2024