How to Solve the Arab-Israeli Problem Part I
At least from the perspective of one Normal Midwestern Guy.
Hello everyone and welcome to the second most controversial episode of The Musing of a Normal Midwestern Guy, (the most controversial will be next week). Last time, I finished up my look at Hezbollah and the likelihood of an Hezbollah-Israeli war and any response Iran might have in order to prop up their most important non-state ally. If you would like to read it, just click the link below.
OK, here we go, I have finally come to the point where it is time to give my personal and long awaited opinions of what I think should happen to solve the Arab-Israeli problem. As I always do, I will lay out some evidence of the failure of the Palestinian Authority, then next time I will get to the nitty gritty of my plan. First a few housekeeping items:
Notes:
Political correctness is not in my DNA and will not appear in this post.
Some people might find my opinions objectionable and/or racist. I am not Islamophobic, Xenophobic or any other phobic (other than Gephyrophobic, I hate driving over bridges).
Unfortunately, my opinions do not have the rule of law, and in the end, whatever I write, no matter how insightful it may be, will change what really happens on the ground. I also am most likely full of crap and these opinions are just a waste of time and keystrokes.
My Definitions:
Israel- The current land of Israel, plus the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. In other words, Biblical Israel.
Israelis- Anyone that is a citizen of Israel whether they are a Jew, Muslim, Christian or Druze.
Palestine- A place made up by the Romans in 135 AD to punish the Jewish residents of Judea and erase any claim they had to the land.
Palestinian- A made up group of people, they’re really just Arabs. There was no such thing as a Palestinian until 1964 and most Arabs called themselves Arabs until after the Six-Day War in 1967. I will use both terms because Palestinian has become so ingrained in the language regarding them it is hard not to use the term.
PLO- A terrorist organization founded in founded in 1964, led, most famously by Yasser Arafat and responsible for thousands of Israeli deaths. The four largest groups that make up the PLO are; Fatah, the biggest, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Palestine People’s Party.
Palestinian Authority (PA)- The quasi-government of the West Bank and theoretically, the Gaza Strip. The PA was created by, historically associated with, and ultimately accountable to, the PLO (see above). Mahmoud Abbas has been President of the PA since 2005 and has not held elections since 2006.
For a more complete history of the region please read my 25 part series on the history of Israel. Just click the link below to start with Part I.
Ok, now that we have gotten all the housekeeping out of the way I can get into my opinions for the solution to his problem.
A (kind of) One State Solution
I think the only way to solve this thorny and long-standing problem is to have Israel annex the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, a one-state solution of you will, although, not the one state that most people imagined when they speak of it. Those areas would not become part of Israel proper but more like a (gasp) colony or rather, more like a protectorate. In fact there is a model that I think might work, with modifications, the British-run protectorates in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their “leaders” have proven over the 30 year history of the Palestinian Authority that they are incapable of instituting a functioning government with either an operating economy or a peaceful working relationship with Israel. 30% of the yearly budget for the PA, around $6.8 billion dollars, is made up of donations for foreign countries, including the United States. They can’t even collect their own taxes and have to rely on Israel to share tax revenue. 70% of the PA budget is paid for by the taxes collected by Israel, including income taxes on Palestinians working in Israel. In addition to their failure to establish even the beginnings of an actual state, the PA leaders have continuously inflamed their populace into violence against Israel. I think that 30 years is long enough for this experiment. The PA has had plenty of time to have gotten at least something right, but they have not. I believe that Israel should go back, albeit with significant changes, to the pre-Oslo Accords arrangement. There must be a robust de-Islamistification program, similar to the de-Nazification in Germany after World War II, and the education system will have to be completely overhauled if there is any chance at a lasting peace. It would not be an overnight process and there would be many challenges but I think it is the only way to solve this issue. In the next few sections I will look at three of the worst areas of PA performance.
Major Palestinian Authority Problems
Governmental Corruption
Nearly three decades after its establishment, the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions continues unchecked. The allegations of corruption, leveled against the Palestinian Authority, almost from day one, severely undermined the credibility of Yasser Arafat and have continued to hamper his successor, Mahmoud Abbas.
While there is corruption in Israel, just like everywhere else, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on trial for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud, it is not an overwhelming burden to everyday business. The vast majority of Israelis will never experience corruption as a factor of daily life and one not need to pay a bribe to do business. According to Transparency International, (a association founded by former World Bank employees to highlight corruption around the world), and their Corruption Perceptions Index, Israel is given a score of 62 ranking them 33rd in the world, (the US, for example, is 25 with a score of 69). The PA is given a score of 28 ranking them 136.
The bitterness and frustration of the average Arab on the street were evident from the first days of the arrival of the “Tunisian Mafia” (the term some use to describe the then Tunisia-based PLO leadership). Palestinians felt the peace process, specifically the Oslo Accords, were not about improving their living conditions or building a stable economy, but about serving the interests of Arafat and his cronies. Scenes of senior PA officials driving in motorcades escorted by bodyguards and personal assistants and reports about the lavish lifestyle of PA leaders, including Abbas’ sons,Tarek and Yasser, have further exacerbated the sense of anger and hopelessness among most Arabs.
The story of the Oasis Casino in Jericho, which opened in 1998, was and remains – in the eyes of many Palestinians – one of the most potent symbols of the corruption of the PA leadership. The casino was viewed as project by corrupt Palestinian and Israeli officials to enrich themselves at the expense of common people. It earned more than $50 million in its first year, but during the Second Intifada, in 2000, Palestinian gunmen on the roof shot at Israeli positions, and Israeli tanks damaged the building when they returned fire, it never reopened.
Besides the damage to the building, gambling is forbidden in Islam, and Islamists used the casino to depict the PA leadership as infidels and traitors. These allegations further undermined the credibility of the PA. Moreover, it was also one of the primary reasons so many Gazans ultimately voted for Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary election. When they saw no benefit from the Palestinian Authority’s “peace process” they saw Hamas as their only recourse.
The Palestinian Authority has obviously lost the faith of the people they are supposed to represent. More than 70% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign, according to recent polls. Nepotism and favoritism run rampant, while officials and their cronies shamelessly flaunt wealth attained by absconding with billions in funds meant for the betterment of their own people. It is unclear to me if the PA is really interested in actually establishing an independent state or if they just use this dream as an excuse to stay in power and continue to amass great wealth.
Human Rights Abuses
The Palestinian Authority also has a dismal record of human rights violations. There is a serious and widespread phenomenon of torture and extreme physical abuse including the maltreatment of dissidents and prisoners, as well as numerous extrajudicial killings of individuals held in their detention facilities. Nizar Banat, for example, was an outspoken critic of PA corruption. On June 24, 2021, PA security forces stormed his house, beat him with clubs, and took him away. Banat was dead within the hour, and the officials responsible have never brought to justice.
Arbitrary arrest and detention also continues to be a serious point of concern in Palestinian Authority areas, with this infringement of rights often used as a weapon against critics and opponents of President Abbas and his ruling Fatah faction.
Freedom of the press and freedom of expression over social media has been routinely interfered with by PA authorities. Journalists and media outlets critical of Abbas have faced systematic harassment and he Palestinian Authority has consistently infringed upon the rights of freedom of assembly and freedom to protest. The police regularly disrupt nonviolent demonstrations and have often used excessive force and violence when dispersing protestors, and media members covering these events.
The weakness of the judiciary system under the Palestinian Authority has also contributed to the sense of hopelessness in the West Bank. Bribes are regularly paid by the rich and powerful to receive lighter sentences and even to sway verdicts. If a judge does happen to rule against the PA, those rulings are often ignored by the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. This has contributed to an increase in anarchy and lawlessness as well as furthering feelings of powerlessness in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Incitement of Violence against Israel
The Palestinian Authority has, and continues to, engage in a massive campaign to incite Arab violence against Israelis. This has been going on since the founding of the PA, even though the Oslo Accords, expressly ordered the PA to refrain from incitement against Israel and its civilians and to take measures to prevent others from engaging in it. In 1996, only three years after the accords were signed, Yasser Arafat, then President of the PA, said:
“We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews. They are, and remain Jews.”
Here are just a few examples of PA incitement:
On June 15, 2014, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority published an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel cartoon that celebrated the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers.
On October 13, 2015, A 13-year-old Arab terrorist, Ahmed Mansara, was caught on security cameras repeatedly stabbing a 13-year old Jewish boy getting on his bicycle. Mansara was injured during his arrest and treated in an Israeli hospital for his injuries. PA President Abbas claimed Mansara was “executed”, until photos of Mansara alive and well were released, forcing the PA to admit they made up the “execution” storyline. However, the PA used the incident to justify further terrorism. A news story in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, shortly after the revelation that Mansara was alive, contained the line, “How is it that a 13-year-old leaves home with a knife in the clear knowledge he probably won’t return alive? Our children enjoy this (killing Jews) so much they prefer death to what Israel has to offer.”
In 1978, terrorist Dalal Mughrabi hijacked a bus and killed 37 Israelis; 12 of them children. The PA called the attack "The most glorified sacrifice in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle.” In March, 2015, on the 37th anniversary of Mughrabi’s terrorist attack, the PA dedicated a West Bank monument to her. The official PA TV channel had a news report that stated "On the 37th anniversary of her martyrdom, 'Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Square' was inaugurated. This square will serve as witness that our people will not forget its heroes and fighters." They repeated that report in March of 2024. Arabs have also celebrate Mugrhabi by naming schools and summer camps in her name. 61% of Palestinians think it is morally “right” to name streets after suicide bombers like Dalal al-Maghrabi and others who have killed Israeli civilians.
The incitement starts right at the top with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, when President Abbas says that “the Jews have no right to defile the the al-Aqsa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with their dirty feet. We will not allow them, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem,” he is in fact, saying that Jews have no right to even visit the Temple Mount, let alone pray there. He is also granting permission and giving legitimacy to more violence against Jews.
In January of 2023, in a deliberate ploy to inflame religious tensions over the Holy City, Abbas attempted to erase Jewish history and connection to Jerusalem by declaring, “We alone have the religious, historical, and legal right to Al-Buraq Wall” (the Western Wall).
Palestinian Authority/UNRWA Schools
There is another, even more insidious way, that the population of the West Bank and Gaza are incited to violence against Israel, that is through the UN sponsored school system. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) operates in West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, as well as in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. It provides education to almost 545,000 children in its schools. According to the UNRWA website, education accounts for 58% of their $2.56 billion dollar budget. Since its establishment, UNRWA schools have opted to teach the curriculum and textbooks of the “host country,” and they state that UNRWA does not produce its own curricula. Consequently, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) curriculum is taught in UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, UNRWA staff routinely develop their own additional materials. These teaching materials carry UNRWA’s logo, the names of its schools on the cover pages, as well as listing the contributing UNRWA staff, including school principals, vice principals, educational experts, and teachers, whose names are included with the content. This is, in every respect, institutionally created, approved, and taught material. These textbooks are openly anti-Semitic and encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom, while peace is not taught as preferable or even possible. Extreme Islamist ideologies proliferate throughout the curriculum, including in science and math textbooks.
A study of textbooks in 2017, conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) called Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program, (Read the whole report here.), finds that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study's summary begins with this: The new Palestinian curriculum, which includes new textbooks for grades 1–4, is significantly more radical than previous curricula. To an even greater extent than the 2014–15 textbooks, the curriculum teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a “return” to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.
Children are taught to be expendable. Messages such as: “the volcano of my revenge”; “the longing of my blood for my land”; and “I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land” suffuse the curriculum. Another book praises Dalal Mughrabi as a heroic female role model. An elementary math exercise asked students to calculate the number of martyrs who died during the First and Second Intifadas. A teacher’s guide to Palestinian history books instructs teachers that after a lesson on the 1948 war, that they should dock students’ grades if they don’t explicitly connect “Zionist massacres” to “Jewish religious thought.” It also has the teachers ask students “Why do the Jews perpetrate massacres?”. By referring to “the Jews” in general, as well as phrasing the question using the present tense, the question implies that perpetrating massacres is a common thing for Jews as a group. In another exercise teachers are instructed to instruct 6th graders that “The Zionists are the terrorists of the modern age, and they are fated to disappear.”
The text books also use the anti-Semitic trope that Jews influence and control money, the media, and politics, and use it for their own benefit. This lesson describes Jewish (Zionist) influence on the United States in its support of the establishment of the State of Israel, delegitimizing Israel’s foundation as a conspiracy:
Zionism’s Shift Toward the USA During World War II: The Zionists began shifting toward the USA following its contribution to the victory of the Allies in World War II and its emergence as a superpower, so it will support them in establishing the national home in Palestine, while at the same time they were taking advantage of the financial influence, the influence in media, and the political influence of the Zionists in the USA. That is the reason they held their conference in the Biltmore Hotel in New York in 1942 and decided to put the matter of helping the establishment of the Zionists’ national home in Palestine in the hands of the USA. Also, both the Republican and Democratic parties started competing with each other for the support of the Zionists in the American presidential elections.
Another example is an UNRWA-created Arabic reading comprehension exercise for 9th graders which celebrated a Palestinian firebombing attack on a Jewish bus as a “barbecue party.” In another assignment, reading comprehension is taught through a violent story promoting suicide bombings and exalting Palestinian militants in the battle of Karameh as their blades “fell on the necks of enemy soldiers” and “wore explosive belts, thus turning their bodies into fire burning the Zionist tank.” Israeli forces are described as “leaving behind some of the bodies and body parts, to become food for wild animals on land and birds of prey in the sky.” An accompanying illustration at the beginning of the story depicts Israeli soldiers in a tank, shot dead by a Palestinian gunman. See the translation below the image
Translation:
(left side of page)
Following the 1967 defeat and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and after the Zionist Occupation took over the entirety of Palestine, the Arab and Islamic nation felt defeated, disappointed, and abandoned. The following year, the Battle of Karameh took place, in which the Zionist army was crushed, which restored some sort of honor and self confidence to the nation. The Zionists entered Karameh and attacked the Jordanian soldiers and the Palestinian fedayeen with bladed weapons. The battle was not as easy a fight as it seemed to the Zionists, but a war in which fighters of both sides of the Jordan showed heroic deeds, and the enemy could not complete the goals it had dreamed about before the battle. It became convinced that the will of the militants is as firmly rooted as the mountains of As-Salt and Jerusalem.
(right side of page)
The fedayeen, despite their few primitive weapons, entered the Battle of Karameh with the fire of hand grenades and with bladed weapons. The daggers of the fedayeen fell on the necks of enemy soldiers. Some of the fedayeen wore explosive belts, thus turning their bodies into fire burning the Zionist tanks. Under heavy fire from the fedayeen and the Jordanian forces, and in the cover of darkness, the invading forces started to collect the bodies of their dead and injured in preparation for their retreat, leaving behind some of the bodies and body parts, to become food for wild animals on land and birds of prey in the sky. They were defeated, dragging their tails of defeat and failure. We will not forget the image of a burnt Zionist soldier, shackled by his commander in thick chains inside his tank, because he was too afraid to flee. The heroes hauled some of the tanks to Amman, to make them toys for the kids happy from the victory.
Discussion and Analysis
1-We will prove on the basis of the text that the Zionists underestimated the Arab forces.
2- We will explain why:
a- The Heroes of Karameh defeated the invading forces, despite the lack of weapons and manpower in their hands.
b- The Palestinians and the sons of the Arab nation race to join the ranks of the uprising.
c- The invading forces asked for a ceasefire.
I could go on and on there seems to be no limit to the number of vile things in UNRWA textbooks. Obviously this will need to change if there is to be any hope of ever having a normal relationship with the Arabs. However, there is one final thing that causes Arabs to attack Israelis. That is the payments made to jailed terrorists as well as terrorists who have been killed during their crime.
Pay to Slay
The Palestine Mujahidin and Martyrs Fund was established in 1964 by the PLO to compensate the families of dead and wounded Palestinian Fedayeen militants (if you remember they were the original fighters in the region against the British and then Israel. It means one who sacrifices himself). In 1971 it was replaced by the Society for the Care of Palestinian Martyrs and Prisoners and they expanded the program to include "military martyrs" killed during terrorist operations. The payments were expanded and made routine during the Second Intifada in 2000. In 2016 the PA paid out $170 million dollars (4.5% of their budget) to 35,000 families, an average of $4,857 per family.
In 2022, Abbas met with Latifa Abu Hmeid, the mother of six Fatah and Hamas terrorists who murdered Israelis, and stated to her, “You are our pride and glory.” Meanwhile, the PA’s official daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, published several articles lauding Hmeid, calling her a “Palestinian national emblem” and a “heroine” who “nursed her sons on the milk of heroism, honor and pure nationalism until they became unparalleled knights on the path of resistance.”
Martyr payments are exceedingly popular among Palestinians, with support for the payments as high as 91%. They have been described as "part of the ethos of Palestinian society.” Palestinian politicians and the media have elevated these payments to the point where they are "sacred in Palestinian politics," and no official dares to terminate the practice.
Below is the scale used by the Society for the Care of Palestinian Martyrs and Prisoners. One can surmise that the longer the sentence, the more horrible the crime.
Length of Imprisonment Monthly Salary
Up to 3 years $400
3-5 years $570
5-10 years $1,142
10-15 years $1,714
15-20 years $2,000
20-25 years $2,286
25-30 years $2,857
Over 30 years $3,429
The average monthly income for a Palestinian is $640, so you can see how it might be preferable to kill some Jews, sit in an Israeli jail and make more money for your family. With the addition of 3,550 Palestinian terrorists who were arrested since the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, the money paid out to the families will grow.
“Even if I will have to leave my position, I will not compromise on the salary of a Martyr or a prisoner,”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2017
You are financing Pay to Slay
On 8 March 2016, a 21-year-old man from Qalqilya named Bashar Masalha, who was living in Israel illegally, killed an American and wounded ten others in a stabbing spree in the Jaffa Port area of Tel Aviv. According to police, the assailant first attacked persons in the harbor and later went to a restaurant where four more persons were wounded. The attack lasted 20 minutes and was ended when the attacker was shot dead by the police after a chase along the beach promenade. The American that was killed was Taylor Force, age 28, a 2009 graduate of West Point. He served in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He left the Army in 2014 and at the time of the attack was an MBA student, traveling with other graduate students from Vanderbilt University studying global entrepreneurship. The family of Bashar Masalha receives payments of $1,450 a month from the martyr’s fund.
Since the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the US government has committed more than $5 billion (all that money is from US taxpayers), in economic and other assistance to the Palestinians, much of which has been used to pay Martyr payments. One of Joe Biden’s first acts after taking office was to announce the resumption of aid to the PA, in a direct violation of the Taylor Force Act. The Taylor Force Act requires that all US economic support funds for the PA be contingent on the PA’s behavior. It prohibits US aid to the PA until the State Department certifies the PA is: “taking steps to end violence,” like that which took the life of Taylor Force; “publicly condemning such acts of violence;” and “has terminated payments for acts of terrorism.” In other words Joe Biden doesn’t care about a US law that is supposed to attempt to curb the PA’s Pay to Slay programs.
Here are just a small sample of the reasons that the Palestinian Authority should not be allowed to govern anything, let alone a very complicated place like Gaza and the West Bank, of course, in reality the PA does not govern Gaza, Hamas does, at least they did before the IDF began dismantling their organization. Next time I will get into the details of my proposed plan for an Israeli protectorate of Gaza and the West Bank. I hope that everyone is learning a few things from my posts and maybe even enjoying them. Please feel free to share them with anyone who might be interested.
Chris