Let’s be brutally honest. There is nothing honorable in being a Palestinian Arab.
From Day one they have proven themselves to be dishonest, hateful, dangerously violent, ambitiously aggressive, feverishly obsessive in what they don’t have rather than make a success of what they do. When they are not killing Jews, they are killing each other.
The fifty-year record of Palestinianism is awful and reached a bloody crescendo on 7 October 2023.
This was the day that the world should have come to its sense and said, “No more!”
The two-state experiment died that day as we saw the ultimate aim of the much- vaunted Palestinian Arab movement.
This is where it leads. This is where it must die.
It must die is the ruins of Gaza, but in these ruins comes new hope. An experiment, a possibility of a new and better future not only for Gaza but for the Middle East. The creation of an independent state of Gaza.
Put aside, for heaven’s sake, the idea of bringing in the corrupt, failed, leadership of the Fatah-PLO in Ramallah. They don’t even have the support of their own people according to recent polls and actual elections.
And let’s be brutally honest and acknowledge that the half century experiment of a two-state non solution is dead in the water.
It should not be revived because this will condemn this area of a violent Middle East to another half century of conflict. Best to offer a better non-violent prosperous newer future to the people of Gaza and use that as an example to those suffering under the failed Ramallah regime.
Clearly, Gaza needs to be built from scratch. The rubble of its violent past has to be swept away with its ideology. It must not be mismanaged by those whose principles led to its ruin. It must be led by people rejecting its violent past, totally dedicated to making Gaza a better place to live rather than looking obsessively at other territories they do not possess.
Without being overly ambitious, the location and size of Gaza makes it a place that can become the Cote D’Azur of the Middle East. The sort of place that Beirut and Lebanon once were before the intrusion of dangerous and deadly forces such as radical Islam, Syria and, yes, Palestinianism under Yasser Arafat, a man awarded the Noble Peace Prize for making a promise he never intended to keep and who continued a deadly ambition that is alive and killing today. His stain on history not only ruined Lebanon, it gave root to the dangerous and hateful radicalism preached and indoctrinated in Western academia and fed into the bloodstream of too many Westerns societies.
This Palestinianism is seen on the streets of major Western countries leaving docile governments that chanted the long dead two-state mantra without realizing that it had died way before 7 October 2023.
The Gaza project must be based on rejecting the intrusion of radical Islam and Palestinianism into the founding values of a new Gaza. These two ills would ultimately lead to a failed project.
Instead, the new experiment should be incorporated into the spirit and fabric of the Abraham Accords.
Let me make it clear. Not only should the PA have no role in governing a future Gaza. Neither should Israel have a role in its day to day governming.
Israel, though, must have a commanding presence in the creation of a new Gaza and in ensuring it does not become a breeding ground for terror again. Following the October events, it has a vested interest in insuring that the curse of Palestinianism will not strike again out of Gaza.
The reconstruction of a new Gaza should be established by a regional board led by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and the United States, and incorporating both the UAE and Bahrain into its management.
The plans and the financing of a new Gaza will contribute to a new Middle East with Gaza as its showcase of positive cooperation.
The labor involved would give gainful employment for the local Gazan workforce.
Its potential should be based on Gaza being a demilitarized agricultural, light industry, and tourism economy with the potential of becoming a hi-tech data center to the Arab world.
The peace and independence of Gaza will be protected by its two neighbors, Israel and Egypt, who both have shared vested interests in maintaining a peaceful Gaza. Both have transit points for goods, services, and people to flow in and out of Gaza for work or business.
Israel once proposed a Gaza with an offshore airport, a marina and port, and certainly Gaza City should become a hotel and services-based economy.
These projects alone will assure gainful employment and prosperity for the people of Gaza.
The potential is there. It needs a combined will and successful management to make it happen.
Barry Shawis International Public Diplomacy Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.'