Israel should gird its loins and put the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty.
The Abraham Accords are generally considered successful. Countries once either at war with Israel or without diplomatic relations have come to interact with the Jewish state just like other states in the world interact. We had a great time in Dubai, renting an apartment on the 20th floor overlooking the marina. The country is clean, the roads are world-class, though there are a lot of speed cameras, and we were treated courteously wherever we went. We had plenty to do from our arrival until we finally went home. I would go back there in a second.
With the above said, I have to tell the Israeli leadership to very forcefully but kindly tell the leaders of the UAE that they cannot entertain their request regarding Israeli sovereignty over the “West Bank.” A forgotten fact from the original signing of the Abraham Accords is that Israel was then poised to declare the lands taken from Jordan from a defensive war in 1967 to be under full Israeli legal control. The issue of what to do with the “territories” has been a thorn in the side of Israeli governments from the moment that the land fell under Israeli rule. It’s like a person being given 5 gold bars and he spends his days and nights confused as to what to do with them: sell them, hide them at home, deposit them with a bank, melt them down into jewelry, etc. The world told Israel that it had to give the land back but not for nothing: it would get peace! Sinai was a very valuable piece of property: oil reserves, air bases, and great scuba resorts. Israel gave it back to Egypt and got some pieces of paper and a very cold peace with its neighbor to the south. Egypt pointedly did not want Gaza back when Menachem Begin offered the same. Israel gave back Gaza to the Palestinians and got rockets, terror and in the end a pogrom. The 900th soldier has died since the original attack on October 7, 2023. So what should Israel do with the West Bank (and my apologies to those who correctly insist on Judea and Samaria; the West Bank is familiar to far more people).
A new map put together by an Israeli minister would give Israel 82 percent of the West Bank, with Palestinian enclaves reserved for the big cities like Hebron, Jericho, and Nablus. The howling and teeth gnashing started immediately. The UAE, normally a relatively quiet diplomatic player, stated that should Israel move forward on absorbing the West Bank, then it will cause a break in relations between the two countries and an end to new countries in the Abraham Accords. And whereas in the first round of the Abraham Accords, Bibi Netanyahu had to drop the plan to normalize Israeli law in the area, this time around is different: this song is over. If Israel wishes to control parts of Gaza, it needs to fold the West Bank into Israel and end all discussions of a Palestinian terror state and whose land is it anyway. Israel won a defensive war and in every other part of the world, the winner after being attacked gets to keep what it took. The U.S. had lots of holdings in the Pacific that it took via blood and treasure from the Japanese, who attacked first at Pearl Harbor. As many write on the internet, “Don’t start wars that you can’t win.” It would appear that the Trump administration is not opposed to Israel's move.
As I stated above, I like the UAE. For Muslims, they show enormous tolerance for other religions and peoples. I believe that the relations between the two countries are valuable, but the time has come to put an end to the Palestinian terror fantasy. Israel should make the facts clear:
“For nearly 60 years, we have tried to find a way to live peaceably with the Palestinians. They have initiated two intifadas and an outright pogrom. We today apply full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. There is no Palestinian partner for peace.”
The moderates want to kill the Jews no less than the radicals. The Palestinians will have their towns which will be avoided no differently than in all major urban areas. In the day, Watts, Harlem and the south side of Chicago were off-limits for many of the locals. So no olive picking in Nablus, and a visit to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is under police and army protection. The Palestinians had a state in Gaza. There were no Jews or foreigners present. They were in complete control of the direction of the enclave. And they dumped the civil stuff onto UNRWA while they prepared to slaughter Jews. It’s either Israel or the Palestinians, period. There is no happy intermediate where Israel and Palestine live side by side like the U.S. and Canada. No woman has ever been 1/3 pregnant, and no person has cancer and is cancer-free at the same time. There is no relationship between Israel and the Palestinians that can be stable, productive, and safe for the Jews. Many Jews in the West Bank offered to take Palestinian citizenship should a state emerge. The Palestinians demanded Judenrein. Either Israel puts sovereignty onto the West Bank or prepares for the next big wave of terror from Tulkarm and Nablus.
As to the UAE and other countries that will throw up their hands, answer them politely but forcefully. One does not need to dig very deeply to understand how the Gulf states treat their massive numbers of foreign workers who keep the places running. We saw their buses that bring them from far away into Dubai to work and then take them back again in the evening. No country is perfect, and Israel has to quit this international beauty pageant where everybody has to like her. Israel has to take care of its interests. If flights to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain end, so be it. Israel will not be the sole loser. Those countries benefit enormously from tourism, investment opportunities, technology and intelligence. They want to go it alone in a dangerous neighborhood, that is their business. In my opinion, they’ll be back. Even Turkey with all of its snorting and threatening in public still has ships coming to Israel. Many Israeli firms do production in Turkey. Turkey needs the money.
So let’s not do an Abraham Accords redo. This time, apply sovereignty and move on. The Palestinians were offered peace but chose war and death. Let them sit in their enclaves and talk about the country of Palestine that never existed. The Palestinians chose to be losers. The ones who can have left or will leave. The rest can talk endlessly on how badly they have been treated. They were offered numerous opportunities for peace, but since each one of them included a living and thriving state of Israel, they turned them down. It’s time to pull the plug on the two-state solution that has cost thousands of Jewish and Palestinian lives. It’s time to end the nonsense. It’s time for Israel to act like it means it. Make the West Bank Israel for good.
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