Trump, the Abraham Accords, and a solution for Gaza.

A new Middle East cannot be built on the failed structures of the current Middle East.

There are things that need to be swept away with the rubble of Gaza and Lebanon and given a new fresh impetus.

With the clock ticking down to Donald J. Trump re-entering the White House as the 47^th President of the United States, the same clock is also ticking down in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Which begs the question. What is the best post-war solution for Gaza in a fractious and dangerous Middle East?

My concept is to rebuild Gaza as an Abraham Accord project based on the known concept of protectorates. In Gaza’s case, not based on the support of one large nation, but a collective protectorate of Abraham Accord partners to reconstruct Gaza both physically and ideologically with the important inclusion of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia needs to put its support for Palestinian leadership on the back burner after witnessing decades of abject and violent failure exhibited both in Ramallah and in Gaza.

Saudi Arabia can no longer sit on the sidelines booing and cheering those on the pitch. It has to come down from the bleachers and get involved in the game if only to protect its own basic values against violent and deadly opponents. And they do not Israel or the United States.

Gaza’s ideological defect, deeply engrained by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, sponsored by Iran, is more important to redress than the structural rebuilding of Gaza, because, if you do not solve this ingrained defect, the walls will surely come tumbling down again.

For two decades Gaza was being controlled by a radical and authoritarian ideology that led to its physical destruction.

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 and partnership alongside Israel.

A harsh dose of reality must be applied here.

The Palestinian Authority can have no part to play in formulating a new Gaza.

The undemocratic autocratic Fatah-PLO leadership in Ramallah follows the same playbook as Hamas in indoctrinating its young into the mindset of an antisemitic replacement of Israel.

Evidence of this is the Mahmoud Abbas and PLO practice of their pernicious “Pay to Slay” policy incentivizing Palestinians to murder Jews. Payments are scaled on the importance of the murdered Israel or the numbers slaughtered. Hamas-affiliated Palestinians are included in their reward system.

It is unacceptable for Israel to have this imposed on Gaza by myopic two-state peacemakers who try to kosher Ramallah.

Other non-solutions.

It is suggested that Israel should control Gaza, but who is going to rebuild it? I doubt that hard-working Israelis are willing to foot the bill, and no international partners seem willing to participate if Israel takes permanent charge of Gaza.

Some Israelis see Gaza as an integral part of ancient Israel, but they are as eyeless in Gaza as the legendary blinded Samson. Most Israelis do not want to see their grandsons patrolling the streets of Gaza with two million Arabs and a few thousand Jews for decades to come.

There are some who propose easing Gaza into a Jewish majority by offering Gazan families humanitarian repatriation of $250,000 and free flights to whichever destination they prefer. These dreamers have yet to tell me who is going to donate billions of dollars needed to fund this hallucination.

Failing all others, the best solution for Gaza is my concept of a new Gaza to be constructed as an Abraham Accord Protectorate.

President Trump, Saudi Arabia, and Gaza.

It was highly unlikely that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Sultan would take the courageous initiative to join the Abraham Accord partners in a Gaza venture until Donald Trump was re-elected as the next President of the United States. Now all options are on the table.

Trump the peacemaker will be keen to extend his successful Abraham Accord initiative by bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold and what better way to put this to the test than by rebuilding Gaza.

It is in Saudi Arabia’s interest to actively pull Gaza away from its Iranian influence by actively helping to remove a conflicting radical version of Islam that has taken root in Gaza and do so in partnership with others under the protection of the United States.

Gaza is the model for a new Middle East. A partnership of genuine cooperation in the form of an Abraham Accords Protectorate.

Protectorates:

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 Accord countries with the important active additions of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

There have been examples of Protectorates having the specific task of deradicalizing populations defeated in major wars.

After World War Two, the Allies sheltered West Germans from the threat of the Soviets while the reconstruction included a denazification program that brought Germans into the Western democratic world.

The United States had to deploy two atomic bombs, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to force Japan’s surrender.

Japan came under an American protectorate that not only helped rebuild Japan but, essentially, deradicalized the Japanese while nurturing a new leadership into a future of peace, progress, and prosperity.

An essential element of the reconstruction of a mainly Muslim Gaza must be the creation of a new society not based on radicalism but on the moderate form of Islam represented by Saudi Arabia under its Crown Prince, and the UAE and Bahrain.

Not only will they build new mosques and madrassahs. They will also employ imams and religious teachers to introduce their brand of Islam which includes recognition of Israel.

A modern education and training curriculum, created by American and Israeli educators, will turn Gaza into a modern state based on technically advanced agriculture, tourism, business, and hi-tech.

Eyal Waldman.

It is little known that Eyal Waldman, a pioneering Israeli hi-tech billionaire, employed Gazan men and women at his Mellanox Technologies center in Gaza until his daughter, Danielle, was murdered at the Nova Dance Festival with her boyfriend, Noam.

Waldman, a peace activist, can be persuaded to invest again in a new Gaza, particularly if his investment is protected by the Abraham Accord partners.

Tourism.

Gaza is ideally located to be the Cote d’Azur of the Middle East bordering on Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, making it a potential geographic pivot for Gaza-based tourist travel into Egypt and Israel.

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 Israeli Defense Minister. Formerly Katz was both Israel’s Tourism and Foreign Minister. He is projected as a potential future Israeli Prime Minister, and he originally unveiled this ambitious project.

The new State of Gaza.

The protectorate concept will nurture Gaza into becoming an independent state with its citizens receiving Gazan identity and passports and eventually being introduced as a new member of the United Nations sponsored by its Abraham Accord protectors.

For this to arrive it needs to create its own leadership and its own parliament. Enter…

Mohammad Dahlan.

Mohammad Dahlan, now a UAE billionaire, was born in Khan Younis, the epicenter of Hamas’s last violent spasm in Gaza.

Dahlan received a BA in Business Administration from the Islamic University of Gaza.

A young Dahlan was arrested by Israel for his involvement as the Gaza leader of the Fatah youth movement.

After the signing of the Oslo Accords, Dahlan was made head of the Preventive Security Forces in Gaza. With a force of 20,000 men, he became one of the powerful Palestinian figures dealing regularly with the CIA and Israeli intelligence officials.

Dahlan expressed dissatisfaction over Arafat’s lack of a coherent policy that would lead to a better future for his people.  He divorced himself from the anti-Israel terrorism of Arafat.

Dahlan was a member of negotiating teams for security issues in peace talks, attending the Camp David Summit in 2000.

In 2006, Dahlan was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Palestinian legislative election as a representative for Khan Yunis in Gaza.

Dahlan took a tough stance against Hamas, calling their 2006 election victory a disaster and threatening to “haunt them from now till the end of their term.” 

On December 14, 2006, gunmen attempted to assassinate Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hamas accused Dahlan of orchestrating that attack.

On January 7, 2007, Dahlan held the biggest-ever rally of Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip, where he denounced Hamas as “a bunch of murderers and thieves.”

In response, Hamas accused Dahlan of bringing Palestinians to the brink of civil war.

In March 2007, despite objections from Hamas, Dahlan was appointed by Mahmoud Abbas to lead the newly re-established Palestinian National Security Council, overseeing all security forces in the Palestinian territories.

Vanity Fair revealed that, after the 2006 elections, Dahlan had been central in a U.S. plot to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power claiming America provided money and arms to Dahlan, trained his men, and ordered him to carry out a military coup against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas forestalled the move and won a bloody civil war against Fatah-PLO in Gaza and controlled it since.

In 2007, the Bush Administration exerted heavy pressure on Abbas to appoint Dahlan as his deputy.

By June 2011, Mahmoud Abbas saw Dahlan as a serious political rival and expelled him from the Fatah party claiming that he had murdered Arafat.

Dahlan moved to the United Arab Emirates, where he became a billionaire and a respected close associate with the Crown Princes of the UEA, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

Dahlan played a crucial role in crafting the Israel-UAE peace agreement and represented the leaders of the moderate Arab states in negotiating on their behalf in trouble spots in the Middle East and Africa.

Although some elements may initially be resentful of his return, there is no doubt about his legitimacy in Gaza in order to lead Gaza into a future of peace and prosperity based on his personal example.

Mohammad Dahlan is the ideal candidate to be the Senior Executive of the Gaza Abraham Accords project, and potentially to become the head of the future State of Gaza.

A new Gaza as a model for a reformed Ramallah.

This may upset myopic diplomats who have wasted decades dragging the dead camel of a two-state non-solution through the burning sands of the Middle East.

People got it the wrong way round. Now a comprehensive new vision is needed, and Gaza must be that model.

Its success can later be replicated in the failed regime in Ramallah.

If myopic diplomats thought that a two-state solution was a good idea, then consider a three-state solution as an even better idea.

Let’s not waste the next fifty years dragging their dead camel further into the burning sands of a fractious Middle East.

A new Gaza heralds a new Middle East under the promise and protection of an Abraham Accords Protectorate led by President Trump and Saudi Arabia.

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

[email protected]