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Barry Shaw – A View From Israel: A New Gaza for a New Middle East
What is the best post-war solution for Gaza in the context of the current fractious and dangerous Middle East?
Is it to be the breeding ground of dubious regimes such as Qatar, Turkey, or Pakistan? How did these provocative actors get wrapped into Gaza?
To have these provocateurs as members of a Gazan Board of Peace, schmoozing with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, would be laughable if it wasn’t so ominous.
Many are asking how Trump made this mistake, this error with an ominous shadow for a post-Trump future.
Instead of a dubious Board of Peace with malevolent actors like these, it should have been an Abraham Accord construct, an Abraham Accord partnership to redesign, rebuild, and transform a new Gaza for a new Middle East.
That, after all, began life as a Trump concept. He should have kept to that concept.
In December 2023, barely two months after the genocidal, murderous, raping invasion of Israel by a Palestinian Jew-hating death cult out of Gaza, and in those dark and frightening days for Israel, the Jerusalem Report published my concept of a future Gaza as a model for a new Middle East.
Again, this was before Trump began crowding out Gaza with dubious actors. He should have kept it simple.
My concept replaces a violent Gazan terror metropolis with an Abraham Accord project built on the internationally accepted concept of protectorates.
I, like many of my colleagues, were sadly disappointed when President Trump failed to apply his uniquely successful Abraham Accord concept. In the view of many, the Gaza Board of Peace with the inclusion of too many dubious actors and filled with career opportunists not personally or locally invested in the success of the venture is no substitute for an Abraham Accord Board of Peace and Reconstruction consisting of regional actors with a vested interest in its success.
The global community can certainly be invited to contribute the budget for this peace project but the main actors must be the Abraham Accord partners formulating the concept of a new Gaza for a new Middle East.
The reconstruction is not only in the planning of the physical architecture of a new Gaza but also the reconstruction of the mindset and character of a new generation Gaza. That starts in the schools and the universities.
My plan would have Israel and the United States draft the educational system from junior school to universities and training schools with the focus of preparing a next generation of Gazans to be the managers and leaders in a modern Gazan agricultural, scientific, technical, medical, tourism, banking system.
This education program will be written by Israel and the United States geared to the future of a new Gaza, translated and supervised by the Arab Abraham Accord members who will ensure that this will be integrated into the future mindset of deradicalized Gazans. A part of that education and supervision would include the concept of a peaceful Islam as practiced by the tolerant Emirates.
A new Gaza cannot be put into the hands of those who refuse to forge a rational peaceful future for its people based on an active desire to live in peace, prosperity, and partnership alongside Israel.
There can be no place neither for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who disqualified themselves from any future control of Gaza, but also not the corrupt Fatah-PLO leadership in Ramallah who indoctrinate their people into a mindset of antisemitism and the concept of a region without Israel.
The undemocratic Palestinian Authority refuses to hold an election is the certain knowledge that Palestinians would vote Hamas into power. Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah cronies operate their pernicious “pay-to-slay” policy, incentivizing Palestinians to kill Jews.
They have disqualified themselves from having this imposed on Gaza.
My concept is of a Gaza where the population will be Gazans, not Palestinians, owning their own independent nation.
Call it a protectorate. Call it an emirate. A people building their own independence but nurtured and protected by the growing Abraham Accords community, including the United States, Israel, and Egypt.
The status of protectorates is recognized under international law, and the specific relationship between the “protectorate” and the “protector” is well known. As a political and governing system, the concept of protectorates has been successful and is working well in the international arena. In Gaza, the “protectors” will be the Abraham Accords countries, with the important active addition of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
It will be a unique community in which their brand of Islam will be set by the moderate Arab Abraham Accords members who will construct and control the Gazan mosques and madrassahs.
The reconstruction will build a new society not based on radicalism but on the moderate form of Islam represented by Saudi Arabia under the Crown Prince, the UAE, and Bahrain. They will not only build the new mosques and madrassahs [Islamic religious schools]. They will employ the imams and religious teachers introducing a peaceful tolerant brand of Islam, which includes recognition of Israel and is devoid of any anti-Semitic fever.
When Israel was developing Gaza, a grand plan was proposed for an offshore airport, marina, and seaport with a connecting road and rail bridge to the mainland. This project was introduced by Israel Katz, the current Defence Minister. Formerly, Katz served as Foreign and Transportation Minister.
Gaza is ideally located to be the Cote d’Azur of the eastern Mediterranean bordering on Israel, Egypt, making it a potential geographic pivot for Gaza-based tourism and a travel junction into Egypt and Israel.
Cruise ships could moor at the marina, and people will be able to fly into Gaza, allowing visitors to not only visit the sites in Gaza, but also take trips into Egypt and Israel.
The protectorate concept will nurture Gaza into becoming a wealthy independent state, in which its citizens receive Gazan identity and passports, eventually being introduced as a new truly independent member of the United Nations sponsored by its Abraham Accords protectors, and not subjugated to anyone or any creed.
Barry Shaw is the senior associate for public diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies and the host of the YouTube show, The View from Israel. He is also the author of several well received books.
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