Paul Rotenberg lives in Toronto and is Vice-President of the Toronto Zionist Council and is editor of the TZC weekly newsletter about Israel and the Jewish World, available from tzc@torzc.org. He and his wife have five children, two of them IDF soldiers.
In the news this past week, we saw the headline: Minister Barkat: 'Emirates plan an excellent alternative to Palestinian state'.
Excellent except for all the others.
I’m not a political scientist, I studied architecture, but my architecture education taught me to think and problem solving. Faced with a situation, there are various approaches to finding a solution. The primary consideration is context, the parameters of the decision making process, a solution could be perfect in one context and remarkably unworkable in another. Within the context, historical precedent is a powerful tool and reality is a valuable yardstick, and they significantly overlap.
If you are designing a door for a building, historically we know it is best front and centre on the building, to help people find it mark it as special, so that it is apparent. Precedent and reality.
Language is also important, when you propose it, don’t call it an orifice or the place of interaction between the interior and the exterior, call it the door. Why is this relevant?
Creating emirates sounds noble, it sounds dignified. I’m sure that in an academic environment it is very well received, but Yehuda and Shomron are not an ivory tower. The proposal is based on the historical clan structure of Middle Eastern society. As the argument goes, the nation state structure, the foundation of western society, that coincidentally was probably introduced to the world by the Jews when 12 tribes established a single state under the guidance of Moses who would not allow 2 and a half tribes to isolate themselves, does not work in the Middle East context because the clans war among themselves. Therefore they must be separate isolated entities.
Examine that. The historical precedent is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Is it a parallel situation? In the UAE, each of the emirates is strung out like a string of pearls along the Persian Gulf coast, isolated from each other by kilometres of desert and swamped by massive oil wealth. There are approximately 10 million people in the UAE, by best estimates, 11% are citizens, 87% are foreign workers. The most stressful event in the lives of young UEA heirs is jockeying their supercars through the rush hour traffic of UAE nightlife. Other than that, because in a digital world no longer does anyone have the stress of standing in line at the bank to withdraw the funds to buy their next supercar, it is a peaceful society.
Is this a valid historical precedent for emirates in Hevron, or Shechem/Nablus? To a lesser extent they are also swamped in money, more foreign aid than any other people on earth, but little of it gets beyond the billionaire leaderships’ secret bank accounts. Most working age people have no jobs, and the education they got focused on how best to kill Jews. The foreign workers are foreign aid workers who employ and collude with the terrorists. To an extent, they do align with the clan model and kill each other, family feuds are legendary and last generations.
The conflict between political rivals follows the same model. Arafat had no opposition because they were all dead, Hamas and the PA try to eliminate their opposition by killing each other. PIJ, Hezbollah, IS and the head of the snake, the Muslim Brotherhood mix in only as necessary for their own survival and maybe someday, dominance. Unity is mostly limited to celebrations and the distribution of sweets when one of them manages to kill Jews as their education has taught them the Koran demands.
Though they are living in the heartland of Jewish history, where Jews have lived for 3.500 years, they strongly believe that the 19 years of ethnic cleansing that was the Judenrein Jordanian occupation of the territory (the UN term, not mine), is a better model that the previous 3,500 years or the subsequent 78. They believe it is their duty to kill as many Jews as possible to achieve that and to die doing it so as to acquire everlasting heavenly blessings.
If we have to look at a historical precedent for co-existence between the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, assuming the best of intentions, we might better look at Gaza, circa 1948. Friendly Egyptians who wanted to earn more money, in other words, those without hate but with initiative, came north to get jobs. They deliberately crossed out of Egypt to live in their enclave in Jewish Palestine so as not to have to pay Egyptian taxes, and then came 1948.
The nascent Israel pushed back on Egypt but didn’t get them out of Gaza, so the Jews were expelled to make Gaza appropriately Judenrein, and the Muslims who ended up outside of Israel were not wanted by the Egyptians, so they were stuck in between. Locked out of Israel, locked out of Egypt - what is going to happen to a population with initiative who find themselves isolated and deprived. Huddled in the south, near the Egyptian border, were they an emirate?
For 19 years they existed, with no jobs, no economy, a dismal education system and only “not too much” terrorism. Like the occupied "West Bank" they were showered with aid funds but saw little of it. For better or worse, after 19 years, in 1967 they were freed from their isolation by Israel. They welcomed the Israelis who chose to live in the uninhabited northern Gaza, though the southern Muslims were mystified that the Jews chose to live on the arid sand dunes. They welcomed the misguided Jews with gifts of bread and cakes and invited them to join them in the south, but the Jews loved the northern beaches and the beautiful windswept dunes.
It wasn’t long till the Jews found that just a metre or 2 underground there was plentiful sweet water and soon northern Gaza had a flourishing agricultural industry, in hothouses in the pest free desert environment. Again the Arabs came north for jobs, and aside from the stabbings and shootings, under Israeli control, Gaza had only some terrorist incidents and only some rockets shot from southern Gaza into northern Gaza.
In 2005 the Jews were expelled from the communities they had built and loved in Gaza by their own government to allow the Muslims to run the mecca on their own. The Muslims finally had sovereignty, would it be an emirate this time?
We all know the answer. There is no reason for any aspect of the 19 years of ethnic cleansing that was Judea and Samaria, and Gaza from 1948 to 1967 to return. In international terms, the historical precedent is that a sovereign that wins territory from a belligerent in a defensive war has no reason to return it to the belligerent. Israel has also paid with the blood of too many soldiers and terror victims for the ability to defend itself and the luxury of not having to win the same war again by retaining these territories. Nobody can take them away, Israel has not reason to give them away.
To discuss a “day after” plan intelligently the conditions must be known and the ideas must be discussed honestly. It is obvious that such emirates would be effectively sovereign, so let’s not hide behind words like emirates and call them what they would be, sovereign, isolated and deprived, and focused on the cause of their isolation and deprivation. Living, not in the vast UAE desert wasteland but cheek by jowl with Israeli communities, Israel must recognize they would be establishing a very dynamic situation.
Land locked, finite boundaries, isolated and Islamic - can you think of a worse combination? Sure, add sovereign, so that Israel can’t go in to keep peace and order, add armed, and add the evil, as they already boast they took part in October 7th and plan to do it again. Believe them, they did it at Khyber and remind us on the streets of our cities today, they did it in 1839 in Allahdad, Iran and again Shiraz in 1910, in Hevron, Haifa and more in 1929, the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. They have promised it repeatedly in Israel since 1948 but thanks to the incredible soldiers of the IDF have not succeeded until 2023.
The parameters of that dynamism, coupled with Islamic dogma and their education system does not indicate generational stability. Rather, they indicate a rapid path to another October 7th. The variables we don’t know mean that other questions can barely be entertained, let alone answered, except how long could another October 7th be held off?
Regardless, we know from historical precedent that until the point of eruption, Israel would be overwhelmed with charges of unfair and illegal checkpoints, of apartheid, and constant demand for job passes that compromise Israeli security. Israel would also be overwhelmed with ultimatums for continued aid to the deprived and landlocked emirates, especially from all the corrupt organizations that know how vulnerable Israel would be and that there’s a lot of money in the aid business.
How vulnerable would Israel be? How different are the proposed emirates from the South African townships? It’s only the small difference of semantics. Emirates or townships? Emirates are a poisonous trap no one can force Israel into, like so many decisions of the past 100 years, they are a poisonous trap no one can force on Israel, it would be entirely of Israel’s own making.
Like the Israeli dominant idea of the past 100 years, that for security Israel must offer pieces of Israel to the belligerents around it, and give them that which they could never take from Israel. Israel must recognize that security for Israel can only be created and maintained by Israel.
Like the idea that relinquishing control of the Temple Mount to a belligerent Wakf would eliminate strife, Israel must learn that Israeli control is fair and right and it the only way to create stability.
Like the thriving communities of Gaza and Ariel Sharon’s necklace of communities, Israel must know that only the ubiquitous presence of Israeli communities will bring stability and security, and the expulsion of Jews from anywhere in israel only hurts Israel and increases international doubt about Israel’s rights in Israel’s own eyes.
And like the decision to tell the world Israel could and would make peace with a people sworn to genocide against Israel. There is no harder battle Israel has to fight than changing that international mindset. Establishing emirates will not do that.
So many Israeli decisions have been made with imaginary parameters and based on dreams that defies logic. So many Israeli decisions have been made reactively rather than proactively, for the benefit of others. So many decisions show a lack of self respect and self confidence, for the benefit of the belligerent enemy hoping it will bring about a change of heart. After 1400 years that will not happen.
Israel’s founders, soldiers, civilians and future generations alike have paid too dearly for peace in their lifetime and only firm resolve and confidence on the part of Israel’s leadership will bring that.
The Day After Discussion must wait until the day after when we have conclusive results with respect to the many variables. Israel should concede nothing to a belligerent enemy, even one that claims to have changed its spots, and all decisions must be those of a victor, after a decisive victory that includes the return of all the hostages. May the people of Israel be blessed with leadership that reflects their own resolve and merit long lives under God’s protective umbrella.