From time to time, gently but firmly, our friends overseas make clear to us their position on the only logical outcome of the Gaza war: "The solution in Gaza must include a Palestinian-led administration," with Gaza united with Judea and Samaria under the Palestinian Authority, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan agreed with Blinken on both the unification of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority and two small but necessary restrictions on Israel: not to forcibly expel Gazans and not to occupy the Gaza Strip in order to hold it. The U.S. nevertheless gives us the possibility of security control. In addition, the United States announced that after the war is decided and Hamas is destroyed, we will continue the Sisyphean pursuit of a two-state solution.
The "parliament" building in Gaza was blown up // Photo: Arab networks
It's a heroic twist of meaning: First, it's not a solution. The Palestinian Authority and Gaza are not one entity but two, and neither deserves to be a state. The "two-state solution," even in its most dazzling fantasy form, will still leave the struggle for another "solution" for Israel: a state of all its citizens. It's hard to be Jewish, and it's harder to be a Jewish state. There are those for whom it just doesn't feel good. Because really what the world – and we – need is another backward and violent Arab state. At the expense of the only Jewish state in the world.
In Israel, too, there are those who find the thought of occupying the Gaza Strip or expelling Gazans, not to mention resettling there, objectionable. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, as usual, agrees with the American recommendation: In an interview last week, he said that transferring responsibility for Gaza management to the Palestinian Authority is "in Israel's interest," and suggested turning Gaza into a "kind of Area B" of the PA.
In other words, a region teeming with evil, hatred and plans to destroy Israel, where from time to time IDF forces enter, seize some arsenal, arrest or kill several wanted persons, and wait for the miraculous moment when it will be possible to establish a Palestinian state that will deal with its own affairs. Until then, the land is held as a deposit to its true owners.
In the meantime, it seems that the PA is not rushing to play its role in the overall vision. It still pays wages to the families of murderers of Jews, its education system is an identical twin to the education system in Gaza, its territory is being worked on building a rocket system, it conducts combat training in built-up areas in the abandoned community of Nahal Irit in northern Samaria, and in the procedure it works on a routine of attacks in one format or another, while being committed to the vision of the destruction of the Jewish state in general and the extermination of Jews in particular.
IDF soldiers during the war against Hamas,
Still, Israel's general policy is to keep territories for this dark entity, because the golden calf of the "two-state solution" is too precious to part with. Even when it turns out that the dispute over the borders of the two (actually three) countries deepens as time passes. Once we thought we were talking about the 1967 borders, then there was a suspicion that it was the 1948 borders, and after the Hamas attack, it turned out that this was not the story either. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, this is not a two-state solution but a final solution.
This is what Hamas tried to do to us, and it still means it, and yet at the end of the war, after Hamas and its infrastructure are destroyed, we will have to decide what to do with it.
To this end, the best dreamers try to discuss the issue according to the rules of the "yes-no-black-and-white" game, only on truth. It is permissible to say anything, but not "occupation", "Jewish settlement" or "transfer", since these have become words with a negative connotation. The most Israel is allowed to say is "security control," and now go build a safe border with that for the southern settlements.
It depends on who the occupier is
We have security control over the PA, yet the attacks continue as usual, and the payments to the families of the murderers are as well. Is this an arrangement that is supposed to satisfy the settlements within the 1948 borders? Are we actually willing to accept the borders of the UN partition plan – the one in which, by the way, no Palestinian state was even mentioned?
According to moral principles formulated on a piece of paper of fine moral quality, occupation in itself is a bad thing. Especially when Israel carries it out, on land where the Jewish people are the only ones in the world to which their right is valid. But with all due respect to the negative baggage that accompanies the word "occupation" – and there have been many left-wing movements that have worked hard to attach a sense of disgust to the word – it certainly depends on who is the occupier and who is occupied.
Change direction
In the case of the Palestinians, the fact that all their acts of violence against Jews did not result in a significant loss of what mattered to them – land – only added fuel to the engine of the old hope of wiping the memory of Israel off the face of the earth. And why should they give up that hope? After all, at the end of every round of fighting, and even without it, it seems that Israel is only trying to reduce itself physically, waiting for some tectonic change in the enemy's way of thinking.
Perhaps the tectonic shift in thinking should take place here: for years we played well with yes-no-black-and-white-occupation. We tried to bargain over borders, and we tried to contain, and we tried to manage, and we tried rounds of fighting and ceasefires and hudna. It just didn't work, and never will. The mantra "two-state solution" may feel good, but it is based on questioning Israel's right to exist, as Israel itself displays insecurity about its right to the land and how it was bought.
You don't have to go to the Bible. The history of the modern era is enough. And if not, security considerations also have a place. What is the most likely solution for Gaza? One that will not endanger us and one that will make it clear to our enemies what happens every time they embark on a war of annihilation against us, and this is what happens to anyone who tries such moves: he loses not only the battle, but the great battle for territories.
The insistence on returning Gaza to Gazans places Israel in the position of a housekeeper: she occasionally enters the home of her unruly neighbor, makes a sponge there at her expense while he throws knives at her, and then returns home and hopes for quiet. It doesn't work at the level of the House Committee, nor at the level of the "two states."
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