A Plan for the Holy Land

In the Washington Post section called “PostGlobal,” Yossi Melman of the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz suggests a plan to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, get the Palestinians a state, get Israel some peace, get the refugees some compensation, and get the terrorists out of the way. His plan has nine points, which are as follows:

1. The world has to acknowledge and declare unequivocally that Hamas is a group of Muslim fundamentalists and terrorists, sponsored by Iran. They hate Israel and don’t recognize our right to exist, not to mention the right for self-determination. They hate the U.S. and the West and see them as the source of all evil on earth. They are an anti-democratic movement seeking to establish a theocracy. They toppled the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority in a military coup.

Amen and amen.

2. If the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, really care about the fate of the Palestinians, they must stop their financial, military and political support for Hamas. The moment Hamas loses its constant supply of weapons and money from the above-mentioned states, it will cease to control Gaza.

Amen again. Personally, I have doubts that the rest of the Arab world does care about the Palestinians as anything other than a bludgeon to use against Israel. This would be an opportunity for them to demonstrate otherwise.

3. Gaza would return to its original rulers: the Palestinian Authority, led by Mohammad Abbas (Abu Mazen).

4. The rocket shelling of Israeli towns (which is a war crime) would come to an end.

5. In return, Israel must stop all its military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

These go hand-in-hand. One additional item, though, and that is that the PA would have to actually stop terrorism by Fatah and its subsidiary the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Another to put it is that all of the shooting, rocketing, bombing, and military operations would have to stop, not just the most irritating.

6. After securing a stable and permanent cease-fire, an intensive round of negotiation will be opened to conclude a peace treaty based on four central principles:
A. Israel has to agree to withdraw from all the occupied West Bank lands and dismantle most of the Jewish settlements there, while guaranteeing its security needs.

Agreed. The settlements never should have been built.

B. A Palestinian State will be declared and recognized by the UN. The Palestinian State will be fully demilitarized.

There are ways to guarantee the peace and territorial integrity of a demilitarized Palestinian state. It can be a joint venture between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and whatever outside forces (the U.S., Russia, EU) are felt to be needed to supplement the local nations. One thing that should also be done is that the United Nations is kept out of the process, and no blue helmets ever allowed to set foot in the Levant.

C. Arab States and the Arab League have to recognize Israel and form full diplomatic and commercial relations with it.

That will hurt, psychologically, but they’ll get over it, and in 10 years be a lot better off for it.

D. Israel within its 1948 recognized borders will not accept Palestinian refugees.

The “right of return” is a formula for the demographic destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. The interesting thing here is that Melman makes no mention in his plan of Jerusalem, but does refer to “1948 recognized borders.” If that means re-dividing the city, I doubt that it would fly among Israelis.

7. An International Fund has to be established, with monies contributed mainly by the rich Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia (which is also a very wealthy nation), U.S., EU, China and Japan to compensate the 1948 Palestinian refugees for the loss of their of their property. The refugees can resettle in the newly established Palestinian State and or Arab states.

This is problematic. Even if the nations mentioned were willing to put up the money, for Israel to not do so is for it to say that it bears no responsibility for those who left. While I think this is largely true (since most of those who left did so at the urging of their Arab brethren, the better for the latter to have a clear field of fire on Jews), there were incidents where people who didn’t want to go were forced from their homes. Given that, I think it only right that Israel also be a contributor to this fund. The rest of the contributors would basically be paying for one of the world’s biggest headaches to go away. It would be well worth it.

8. An international force will be deployed to supervise and implement the agreement.

Again, as long as there are no blue helmets (which are either worthless because their rules of engagement never let them actually enforce any agreements, or because they plunge into the vilest kind of corruption, or both).

9. The U.S. administration will exert its ultimate power and influence to coerce all parties to accept this international agreement. If a party or parties refuse to cooperate with the agreement, the U.S. will break off its relations with that party and together with the UN Security Council will impose sanctions.

As any good debater knows, your plan always has to have an enforcement mechanism, but I’m not sure this one is realistic, in the sense that it may allow splinter groups to hold the whole thing hostage, which has been a large part of the problem all along. But that there needs to be some kind of mechanism is certain.

This is, by and large, a pretty good plan, one that therefore has virtually no chance of being adopted by anyone. (If you want to get an idea why, check out the comments, which by and large are vitriolic, irrational, anti-Semitic, and/or mindlessly oppositional.) But one can dream.

(Hat tip: Hampton.)