History might suggest a different approach to the day after in Gaza.
For the first time in over 15 months, I met one of my neighbors. He drove to Gaza on the 7th of October and has been almost constantly in the army until last week. He was quite busy during the war and infrequently got home to see his wife and young children. He came with his rifle, which I assumed was his way of saying that I should keep the noise down from now on. The real reason is that if someone loses his rifle, he goes to jail for years. It is popular on the internet to show Israeli women walking around malls with rifles. They keep them with them because the risk of losing them comes with a very stiff penalty.
After formalities, we talked about Gaza. He grew up there in one of the towns Israel uprooted when it fled in 2005. He even made it back to the site of his former home, and the only thing still standing there was a tree that he had planted as a child. As a son of Gaza, he put forth a program for Gaza’s future that surprised me. History would tend to be on his side of the argument.
He pointed out that French General Ferdinand Foch stated after the Treaty of Versailles that Europe had not made peace but only postponed war for 20 years—and he was correct to the year, 1939. When the U.S. proposed the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the program included Germany and there was even an offer to the USSR, which was rebuffed. During the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-49, U.S. and British flight crews took enormous risks to feed and take care of people who were their enemies only a few years earlier. There is no question that much of what was done to rebuild Germany and Japan was undertaken to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere. But looking back, Germany and Japan have been for the past 80 years democracies, free-market economies, and good allies of the U.S. One can quibble about German politics or Japanese directed markets, but in the end, U.S. largess has more than paid for itself and given massive dividends in mostly reliable allies and partners in world affairs.
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My friend’s thesis is that Israel and the West are laying the groundwork for the next big Gaza war. His argument is that the worst thing for the Palestinians and Israel is the international aid that is coming not only into the Strip but also into the West Bank. He does not suggest starving Gazans, but he notes that as long as they receive aid and UNRWA support, they have plenty of time to think about killing Jews. He said that in many of the houses where they stayed in Gaza, there was a wealth of food, including sacks of flour that were supposed to be impossible to get. Many have noted that the Gazans after the ceasefire seem quite well-fed, their Hamas uniforms look clean and pressed, and other than the destroyed buildings and infrastructure, the people look as if they just emerged from October 6th, 2023.
My friend’s argument is that Israel and the West would be best served in setting up factories in Gaza. By putting Palestinians to work there (and no longer in Israel), and concomitantly reducing aid, Palestinians would A) have a stake in Gaza not going through another war and B) would realize that they can either choose working for a living or being terrorists on the dole. There is a famous Jewish expression that “having nothing to do leads to boredom, and boredom leads to sin”; one can adapt it to Gaza: when food and needs are provided by Western and Arab countries, there is no incentive to work, and not working gives plenty of opportunity to be involved in terror. He does not expect the Gazans will suddenly love the Jews. Rather, he believes that if they are busy and they have a stake to stay out of terror, Israel will be safer.
My first impulse is to punish Gaza and its inhabitants. I would prefer that they live in tents with water running through their shoes and not have an opportunity to rebuild if it meant that they could reconstruct their terror infrastructure. He claims that the number of people in Gaza is closer to 1 million and not 2 million. He also believes that many would leave given the opportunity, and should mass exodus become a reality, then the risk to Israel might go down, independent of any program for Gaza’s future. But, what will be Gaza’s future? Now is the time to decide.
As no Israeli will want Gazans after they actively used their work in Israel to provide Hamas with names and addresses prior to the pogrom, Gazans can either live on international aid or build some type of business infrastructure. Like the movies of old where bad guys sell weapons to insurgents and the governments they fight, the U.S. has been effectively funding both sides of the war: while providing weapons to Israel, it has until this week been giving money to UNRWA to keep the Palestinians dependent. Maybe the Palestinians will be terrified of the thought of aid not coming in, but the model of feeding them and their sitting around at 50 percent or higher unemployment did not work and may never work in the future. His argument is counterintuitive. I asked him point blank: the Palestinians ideologically hate Jews and Israel. Even if they work and have money, they will still plan how to kill Jews. Top Palestinian terrorists have included doctors and lawyers, who were not motivated by money. He believes that if there is too much at stake, Palestinians might give up on terror for fear of losing all that they have. When there is nothing at stake, then they have nothing to lose in planning another October 7th 10 or 15 years forward. His proof he claimed was Israeli Arabs: there are over a million of them, and they are no different than Palestinians, yet their participation in terror is infinitesimal compared to Palestinians involved in terror against Israel because they work throughout the Israeli economy, from bus drivers to brain surgeons.
Unfortunately, in life, we often do not know who is right until well into the future. Is the best thing for Gaza simply to keep it down and prevent it from obtaining weapons that could be directed against Israelis? My neighbor said that if Israel gives up the Philadelphi Corridor, then the clock starts on the next war. There were 100 tunnels into Egypt there. Or instead of keeping Gaza down, is the best approach to encourage foreign firms to set up shop there and keep the Palestinians busy supporting themselves? These are critical questions. And only 10 or 20 years could show if the chosen approach was the right one.
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