Why does the world dislike Palestinian Arabs? This is the inescapable conclusion derived from the disparate treatment shown to Palestinian Arab refugees as opposed to other global refugees. Just in the last few decades, the Western world has absorbed millions of refugees fleeing sundry conflicts – Iraqi refugees, Afghan refugees, Syrian refugees, Haitian refugees, not to mention the millions of illegal migrants that the United States has welcomed from South and Central America and from distressed areas on earth. Only Palestinian Arab refugees are treated differently. The other refugees were escorted out of war zones to safe havens as international humanitarian law requires. They were not told that they must remain in the crossfire of conflict or that the world will surge humanitarian aid to them. They were not told that Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Bashar al-Assad, and other brutes would be held accountable for their welfare or suffer adverse consequences. In most cases, the nearest country accepted these refugees until they found sanctuary elsewhere. In the last two decades, more than thirty million global refugees have been brought to safety. Only Palestinian Arab refugees are treated differently. Egypt, without repercussion, was allowed to deny safe passage for Gazan civilians through its territory. Imagine how differently our defensive war against Hamas would have been waged if these “civilians” had been extricated immediately. Instead, they were forced to remain and are still forced to remain. It is not only that Hamas has physically barred their departure, which is cruel enough but logical given their effective use as human shields against Israel. It is also that the United States, as repeatedly asserted by Antony Blinken, has made it one of its strategic goals that not a single Gazan be displaced. So, they are forced to suffer and die, some through direct execution by Hamas and others by indirect execution – compelled to serve as human shields and dramatize their suffering for the world and thus besmirching Israel’s image. So why does the world dislike Palestinians? One reason might be widespread recognition of the fabricated Palestinian national identity, a fiction that is roughly a century old and invented primarily to thwart Jewish nationalism. It is not a group that has a historic homeland or national identity, which was ever independent, or that can sustain an independent state, the delusions of the world notwithstanding. Palestinian nationalism, such as it exists, has attracted a disproportionate share of the world’s attention since Yasser Arafat arrived on the world scene with his holstered gun, hijackings, bombings, kidnappings, and monetary extortion. This was for the second reason the world dislikes Palestinians: it is because in whatever country they have lived, they routinely fomented strife, violence, social unrest, and even civil war. Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait are among the Arab countries that have suffered severely since so-called "Palestinians" migrated to their countries. Gazans have no place to go because even in the Arab world they are not wanted as those countries fear the consequences of even temporarily housing these people. Nevertheless, the world’s dislike of Palestinian Arabs pales before the world’s hatred of Israel and the Jewish national idea. Much of the world – including nations deemed our friends – desperately does not want Israel to win our current wars. We have reached what may be somewhat of an impasse in the battles in Gaza and south Lebanon. Our enemies have been ravaged by our dedicated and intrepid soldiers and deterrence has been mostly but not completely restored. Gaza has been justly devastated – but its population mostly remains. And, sadly, it is inconceivable that it can be reformed or civilized such that Gazans will live peacefully with us. It is inevitable that these Gazans civilians will return to terror at the earliest opportunity, under the name Hamas or under some group that will bear a new name but retain its jihadist hatred of Israel and Jews. To think that Gazans will dwell in serenity even governing their own affairs is the sort of delusional thinking that has guided Israeli statecraft since Oslo. Since victory seems to elude us – victory traditionally defined as permanent loss to the enemy of the territory used for its aggression – we have entered one of the worst stages of war: our soldiers are daily killed trying to retain territory that has already been conquered twice before in this war, not to mention three times before in previous wars. We are bled daily by these guerrilla attacks – explosives in buildings and on roads, and the occasional sniper – without any articulated plan that can permanently change the strategic equation. We mourn our losses – but can do little to prevent future ones. These days, our enemies gain no strategic advantage by shooting their rockets, missiles, and drones at us; they just lust for Jewish blood. What can frustrate those malevolent desires? Israel has carved out a military zone in which Gazans are not supposed to enter and that too irks the world, our enemies, and our friends, which resents any limitations on Gazans’ movements. We are living the conundrum that the world demands humanitarian aid for Gazans, while that same aid will serve little purpose other than allow them to stay, eventually rebuild, and reconstitute their terror machine. It should be clear to all that much of Gaza has been rendered uninhabitable and will be so for years to come. Evacuation of Gazan civilians – in numbers that are relatively miniscule compared to the other global refugees evacuated in the last two decades – is the most moral approach to their future wellbeing, the stability of this region, and the security of the State of Israel. The entire terror infrastructure built by Hamas may never be fully discovered, so diabolical and so embedded in Gaza it is. Evacuation of those who might control and exploit that infrastructure, now and in the future, is the only way to preserve our security and prevent future brutal invasions of our land. Israel erred in not demanding the evacuation of Gazan civilians at the very beginning of the war. Instead, the government caved to world demands that humanitarian aid be rushed into Gaza, which prolonged the war, on the absurd pretext uttered by the likes of Blinken and Kamala Harris that Israel’s “number one priority” in this war must be the welfare of Gazan civilians. That is palpably false, and a standard to which no nation in history has been held. Even if were true, the true welfare of Gazan civilians necessitated their immediate evacuation from the war zone. It still does . Gazan civilians, even those of indeterminate number who do not loathe Israel and seek our demise, will never be able to break away from extreme elements in their society who preach violence, jihad , and destruction of Israel as reasonable endeavors and justifiable objective to which they should dedicate their lives and those of their children. There will be pundits and experts who will say that the world will never allow the evacuation of Gazans and will demand they all stay and rebuild, come what may. They will also say that Israel should not govern that territory but consent to local governance or maybe some Arab coalition. They will say that Israel will always have the right of self-defense if attacked – but then when Israel is attacked, as we invariably will be with rockets, drones, and missiles, they will then say that it is not worth a war. In effect, we will again acquiesce to Arab aggression against us, while knowing these hostile elements remain unreconciled to our very existence. We have been down this sorry road so many times and at such a terrible cost that one wonders why we pay any attention to these pundits and experts. If the world will not allow the evacuation of “innocent civilians” from a war zone for unclear reasons and we cannot allow them to stay for obvious reasons, then we are at an impasse. But as long as they remain, our troops and our civilian population are in danger. The war in the Lebanon will not be won militarily until Israel fully controls the land up to the Litani River and barring a Lebanese civilian presence – at least, those unvetted – south of the Litani, and it will not be won politically until the Lebanese people rise up and expel Hezbollah and its supporters from their government and their midst. Otherwise, Lebanon is rightly responsible for every aggressive act that emanates from its territory. And if this uprising causes a civil war, so be it. It would not be the first or second civil war in Lebanon. Better that they fight for a stable polity than we should fight and die because they refuse to do so. And if they refuse to expel the jihadist murderers who dwell among them, then they should be ready to pay a steep price for that reluctance, and not just in the terror stronghold of Dahiyeh. Similarly, the war in Gaza will not be won militarily or politically as long as a hostile population survives that will regroup as terrorists, recruit more avid participants from the youngsters in that population, and do not feel the loss of the land that is under their feet. There is no more vivid way of demonstrating their defeat than by resettling parts of Gaza. We must retain the tiny territory of Gaza as a symbol of victory – but to retain the land and maintain the population there is to sow the seeds of the next round of conflict, endure more rockets and incursions, and come to this same crossroads after still more deaths and desolation – ours and theirs. Could these evacuated Gazans be repatriated at some point in the future? Certainly, if and when they are purified of their hatred and amend their priorities in life accordingly. How will the world that dislikes them but hates us respond? Probably not well at first, with all the threats of embargoes and sanctions that they use now to constrain our right of self-defense. But we are first and foremost a moral people, and elementary morality demands that innocent civilians be extricated from a war zone. At every opportunity, we must hammer home the notion that morality demands not the provision of food and fuel in an environment that is unsustainable, but evacuation to more pleasant climes in which they can relinquish their fantasies of killing Jews and focus on raising their children and making a positive contribution to the societies that embrace them. Our diplomacy should be focused on advocating for this moral imperative – and it is vital to our survival as long as substantial elements in their society harbor the fantasy of destroying Israel. We ignore that fantasy at our peril. Perhaps the criminal gang known as UNWRA – soon to be expelled from Israel – can embrace this goal as their final act before its future dissolution. Rather than continue to perpetuate refugee status and actively foment terror against Jews, UNRWA can provide a new life outside of this region for the hundreds of thousands of refugees under its aegis. Evacuation of Gazans to the West will ultimately please the Arab world also, especially those who have suffered from Palestinian violence and intimidation. There is plenty of money in the Arab world to contribute to this resettlement; indeed, it will cost far less to resettle them than to rebuild Gaza. And most Gazan civilians would love nothing more than to leave. Hatred of Israel is a powerful motivator in much of the world. A strong Israel frightens the West – including secular Europe and America – as it makes the Bible and its prophecies all too real. It is high time that we shift the narrative of morality, expose the immorality of the West who also use the Palestinian Arabs as pawns, and do what is right and proper. We need to save ourselves from the Palestinian Arabs – but they need to be saved from themselves and their worst impulses. We can buy time until the next conflagration soon erupts or we can try to transform the strategic situation. That can only be accomplished through evacuation now, the moral approach. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq. was a pulpit rabbi and attorney in the United States and now lives in Israel where he teaches Torah in Modiin, serves as the Senior Research Associate for the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy and as the Israel Region Vice-President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, and is the author of Torah commentary “The Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility” (Gefen Publications).
