An Arab Mandate for Palestine
Hamas’s leaders hope that when the war in Gaza ends, they will emerge from their tunnels to raise their green banners over the rubble — a symbolic victory for “Resistance” in the face of the misery they sowed on October 7.
Israel’s security leaders hope that when the war ends, Gaza will be temporarily divided into a patchwork of subregions administered by local clans known to Israeli security services. The Israeli military will then operate in the territory for an indefinite period on a counterterrorism mission, assume greater control along the border with Egypt and deradicalize the population.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. hopes that “a revitalized Palestinian Authority” will return to govern the territory from which it was forcibly ejected by Hamas after a brief civil war in 2007, with a view toward a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
None of this is likely to happen.
Israel will make very sure Hamas’s leaders do not emerge from the war alive.
An Israeli military occupation would generate an insurgency, bleed Israel of money and personnel, and prove politically and diplomatically unsustainable.
The Palestinian Authority is too weak to govern Gaza; revitalizing it would require not only deposing Mahmoud Abbas, its octogenarian president, but also rooting out its systemic corruption, a goal that has eluded every past effort at reform.
A Palestinian state may be appealing in theory, but Israelis have reason to fear that it could quickly devolve into a larger version of Hamastan. No plausible Israeli government, even one led by centrists, will allow it to come into being anytime soon.
So what could work? I would propose an Arab Mandate for Palestine. The longterm ambition would be to turn Gaza into a Mediterranean version of Dubai, which, in 10 or 15 years, would allow a Palestinian state to emerge on the model of the United Arab Emirates — future-oriented, federated, allergic to extremism, open to the world and committed to lasting peace.
I have previously suggested transforming Gaza into a “zone of shared interests” between Israel and friendly Arab states. More recently, a report by the Vandenberg Coalition and the Jewish Institute for National Security for America makes the case for an International Trust for Gaza Relief and Reconstruction, with a “realistic pathway to an eventual two-state solution.”
The key lies in persuading moderate Arab states that they have the biggest stakes of all in achieving a better outcome for Gaza: first, because a Hamas-controlled Gaza is another outpost of Iranian-backed militancy in the heart of the Arab world, and second, because a long-running crisis in Gaza will become a rallying cry for religious extremism in their own populations.
There is worse: An unresolved crisis in Gaza will ultimately harden Israel, shift it further to the right and put a Palestinian state permanently out of reach. It will also divide the Arab world, strengthen Iran and undermine the modernizing course that the best Arab leaders have embarked on. Those leaders should not pretend that the burden of a solution in Gaza lies entirely with Jerusalem or Washington.
The good news is that those leaders do not just have the most to lose. They also have the most to give. They have a measure of legitimacy with Gazans that non-Arab actors will never have and that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have forsaken. They have political credibility with Israel, the United States and the European Union. And they have financial, diplomatic, intelligence and military resources for an extended relief and reconstruction effort, provided it is extensively supplemented by the West.
There will need to be confidence-building measures, commitments and deadlines — not just for Gaza’s demilitarization and reconstruction but also for Israel to deliver on its end. That would begin with a halt to new settlement construction. In doing so, Israel would be fulfilling the ultimate purpose of Zionism, which is Jewish self-rule — neither rule by others nor rule over others. That is a point the current government of Israel refuses to accept — one of the many reasons Benjamin Netanyahu must not remain in office.
There are many who will object to an Arab Mandate for Palestine — those who want a Palestinian state now, those who want a Palestinian state never, and those who think we can somehow return to the formulas of the Oslo Accords and other failed peace efforts. In the last analysis, such a mandate is the only plausible way forward.
There is only one good way the war in Gaza ends.