A Dangerous Fantasy

The problem with a popular Gaza "Solution"

A significant event took place at Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha-Umah this week. It was attended by three thousand people, mostly on the right-wing end of the Religious Zionist spectrum. Eleven government ministers were in attendance, not just from Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s parties, but even from the Likud. (There was also a speech by MK Goldknopf of UTJ, for whom it’s very easy to take a hardline approach with the Palestinians, since his children and community aren’t going to fall in combat.)

The event called for the resettlement of Gaza.

Now, one of the major problems with that is that there just so happens to be over two million hostile Palestinians living in Gaza. While the event did not focus on that rather large obstacle (itself a disturbing aspect and revealing of a lack of thinking about ramifications), some speakers did talk about the transfer of the Palestinians out of Gaza.

It’s very painful for me to write this post. Aside from it being an event that was deeply disturbing to me for several reasons, there are people that I love deeply who attended. Some of them will be reading this, and will be upset with what I have to say. But I feel a very, very strong sense of duty to say what I and most of my wisest friends believe, which is that this event was very upsetting for us. Because we believe that it was very, harmful to the interests of the Jewish People.

For now, I don’t want to dwell upon the tastelessness of the way that the event was conducted, which was with euphoria and celebration. Suffice it to say that many Israelis, including families of hostages, were deeply upset not (just) at the content of the event, but at the joyous spirit in which it was held, at a time when there are over a hundred hostages, national mourning over all the fallen, and an ongoing war. If you can’t relate to that objection, then try to imagine how you’d feel if a left-wing organization had a new idea for a two-state solution and decided that now would be a good time to celebrate it with a big party.

I’m also not going to get into the issue of the morality or immorality of transfer. We can note a few facts, such as that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians do not accept the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence - they see us as a religion rather than a nation and they deny our historical connection to the land. It’s also a fact that many of them support terrorism to achieve the destruction of Israel. At the same time, it’s also a fact that many of them have been living in Palestine for many generations, stretching back several centuries, giving them a legitimate claim to residency and even statehood - while there was no Palestinian national identity in 1948, there certainly is one now - and they understandably resent how they went from being a majority in this land to a minority without political independence. Various people choose to focus on some of these facts over others, but let’s leave that for another time.

What I want to focus upon is a single incontestable fact. Even if you believe that it is perfectly morally legitimate to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza, even if you believe that is in Israel’s vital strategic interests, even if you believe that it’s us or them, there is one fact that absolutely has to be taken into account.

It is not going to happen.

You can talk all you want about how population transfers have indeed occurred in the past. You can talk all you want about how the Palestinians are an existential threat to Israel and support terrorism. But the fact remains that they are not going anywhere.

There are several reasons for this. The Palestinians are millions of people who do not want to go anywhere, whom no country will accept, who virtually the entire world believes to have a legitimate right to be in this land, and who for which international law has decided that such transfer is illegal, and even starting an effort to transfer them would cause catastrophic harm for Israel.

I can understand the deep desire of people not to need to deal with the Palestinians, but transfer is just not happening. What on earth do people envisage? There are a few Palestinians who want to leave, and some might be incentivized with financial benefit, but the majority are (understandably) ideologically committed to staying in their homeland. So are you talking about loading millions of people at gunpoint onto buses? And then where do the buses go? Egypt and Jordan will go to war with Israel rather than accept millions of Palestinians.

And what about the international community, and in particular our allies, and in particular the US? They will never, ever accept such a thing. And why should they - it goes against their moral code (rightly or wrongly, it makes no difference) and it’s against international law. Do people seriously think that Israel can afford to become a rogue state, an international pariah? Israel is a tiny country surrounded by many enemies; we absolutely need the economic and military support that we receive from our allies.

And how many soldiers would die in such an operation? And what would happen in Judea and Samaria and Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt while such an operation against the Palestinians was happening? And with Israel’s millions of Arab citizens? Is it really in our interests to have a gigantic war on so many fronts?

And all this is not to mention that even within Israel, over half the population are strongly opposed to such a thing (and many MKs and media outlets condemned the event). You’d tear the country apart in a civil war that would make the judicial reform protests look like a picnic in comparison. Besides, there would never be enough government votes to make it happen in the first place - not everyone in Likud is so oblivious to the bigger picture.

So for all kinds of reasons it’s just never going to happen. Talking about it happening, having a huge gleeful conference about it happening, is just a waste of time and resources.

But talking about it is not just a waste of time - it’s downright harmful to Israel. It sets up unrealistic expectations and prevents us trying to figure out realistic approaches. And it causes tremendous international harm. The more political condemnations that Israel receives, the harder it is for our allies to support us and provide us with the military and economic assistance that we really do need.

I understand all the pain and all the fear and the moral outrage. I live here too. I am also traumatized at the thought of my children and grandchildren locked in perpetual conflict.

But if we’re going to endure, we have to face up to uncomfortable realities. We cannot just live in a bubble of like-minded Jews - we have to be aware of international politics and how they affect us. And we certainly can’t be confident that God wants us to pursue any particular political path. That was exactly why we suffered so terribly in the destruction of Israel two thousand years ago.

We need to be not just right, but also smart.