In this thread, I suggested a solution to the "Palestinian" problem isn't all that hard:
Those threads are pretty complete, but let's just set out the basic facts of the problem.
Part One:
- The Palestinian Mandate's Levantines didn't want any sort of Jewish state or any sort of "two-state solution in 1948". The neighboring Arab states didn't want one either.
- World War Two made it inevitable that Jews would seek refuge in the region they'd held historically and up until 70.
- The British tried and failed to create a two-state solution, and then washed their hands of the matter and left.
- The Israelis won the 1948 war.
- During the 1948 war, a lot of Levantines left out of fear, rational calculation of danger, or were expelled.
- Just would have invited them back in, but the Israeli's were not in the mood for that, and the Arabs largely weren't either. That is, having fought for it, the Israeli's decided to keep what they had in every sense, and the Arabs were still dedicated to the proposition of pushing them out.
- That's now over 70 years ago and almost everyone involved in the original drama is dead.
Part Two:
- The Arabs have been happy to support a Palestinian diaspora, partially, but not to invite them into their own countries.
- The Palestinians have been unwilling to come up with a new, permanent plan, that doesn't feature, at a bare minimum, the territory that was at least partially in Mandatory Palestine.
- Gaza and to a lesser extent the West Bank were solutions that Israel was willing to put up with, but not the Levantines, even as they took advantage of it.
- The "Palestinians" have been , to a large extent, living on the Arab and Global dole since Gaza and the West Bank were created as entities subject to self rule. They don't have work, and they don't have much to do, other than to do, what people who have an income, but no work, do. . . . fill in the blanks here.
Okay now for the elements of the solution.
Part One
- The Palestinian Levantines need work and need to be taken off the dole.
- In order to do that, the pipe dream of an independent Palestinian state inside the borders of Mandatory Palestine needs to be given up on, unless Jordan, which is a Bedouin state, wishes to become that entity, and it doesn't.
So, what can be done. There are two, and only two, possibilities.
Solution Number One.
The Palestinian Levantines can be taken in by the Arab states that have work, which would include the Emirates, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.*
Yes, that's radical, but if they were taken in, taken off the dole, and got to work, within a generation or two, this problem would be over, and they would be better off.
Solution Number Two.
Create a Palestinian state in the Sinai.
That has obvious geoengineering problems, but the Israelis confronted those inside Mandatory Palestine and the states of the Arabian Peninsula have faced them as well. It's been proven that you can geoengineer these areas productively. It has been done.
And in that state, Gaza could remain part of it.
This, of course, would require Egypt to give up Sinai, but frankly, it's not making much use of it anyway.
Footnotes:
*And probably Jordan as well, as the West Bank was part of Transjordan and probably ought just go back to Jordan.
Related threads:
1940s, 1948, 70, 70s, Al Nakba, Arabs, British League of Nations Mandates, Hamas, Israel, Israeli Hamas War, Levant, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Palestinian Revolution, Roman Empire, The Holocaust
