Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to govern Gaza post-war is a recipe for disaster.It's time for him to think more about the people than just thinking about how to save his own head from the political guillotine.
Between 1967 and 1988, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation had little chance of improving their economy. They never had the luxury of growing up in different aspects of their lives simply because living in a profession could never be a natural and normal thing. Nevertheless, Palestinians living in the West Bank, areas conquered by Israel in June 1967, including the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, manage to make a living well enough to send their children to school and university. I have to say that it was. , set up a business, buy luxury cars, go to fancy restaurants, and even build spectacular homes and buildings.
Let's not deny it. Many Palestinian families have succeeded in growing their businesses. Workers worked day and night to ensure a respectful standard of living for their children. On the other hand, some people were unable to bring bread to their families due to their other jobs. All these divisions resemble the same as other divisions of society, with only one difference. That means Palestinians live under occupation. Some people are independent in their own countries.
When Israel's late Prime Minister Shimon Peres came up with the concept of economic peace in the Middle East, many misunderstood his message as an alternative to true peace between Israel and the countries of the Middle East. I don't know what Perez was thinking at that moment. I wanted to believe that he was trying to say something that I understood or wanted to understand. The point is that economic development is just a bridge between countries waiting for new ties that can jump out of hostility and into a pool of zero hostility and bring them closer together.
Countries that were previously at war then needed economic prosperity to strengthen their mutual friendship. However, occupiers cannot use economic prosperity to seduce the people under their control to continue living under occupation forever. On the surface, life seemed as normal as possible. However, behind the scenes, acts of resistance, both mass and armed, have always continued in parallel. No matter what daily life looked like under Israeli occupation between 1967 and 1987, violent popular resistance to the occupation was ever-present. His single-car accident in December 1987 sparked the first major intifada against Israel and forever changed the dynamics of life under occupation. Since then, everything looked different.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel in 1993 and co-signed the Oslo Accords. The five-year interim agreement, now in its 30th year, is still far from achieving peace. A lot has gone wrong since the signing of the Oslo Accords. Each time the peacemaking process stalled, Israeli officials aligned themselves with Mr. Peres' dreams of economic prosperity, ignoring and later burying the two-state solution and reinforcing Israeli control over all of Mandate Palestine. I thought this was the best way to make it permanent.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is no different from his predecessor. More precisely, he was the most ardent supporter of Peres' theory. All because he provided him with further means of destroying the Oslo Accords peace process, which he has repeatedly boasted he would destroy.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has always said that Gaza's independence from the West Bank is the ideal means of eliminating the geopolitical unity of the Palestinian territories designated as the base of an independent state along the June 4, 1967 lines. I've been thinking about it. He is so obsessed with this idea that he has asked Qatar to fund Hamas's rule in Gaza and keep it there for years, even though Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who supports a two-state solution, It only weakened the president's case.
What happened on October 7th is an attempt to assume that Palestinian Gazans can live under Israeli control, while at the same time condoning Hamas's ruthless oppression of “all Palestinians who are not part of us” as Hamas's subordinates. This is a direct result of this foolish approach that we were forced to take. I would say (The extended siege of the Gaza Strip was the worst form of governance used by Israel to isolate the Strip from the outside world.)
More than half a year has passed since October 7th, and the war that followed continues to this day, with no signs of ending anytime soon. Throughout this period, Prime Minister Netanyahu has refused to address the issue of the day after the end of the war in Gaza. Even his senior officers were left in the dark and unable to formulate a strategy for the war against Gaza, as there was never a clear goal for the war against it.
Israeli policymakers chose the comfort zone of ignoring what was next because they were busy with things that were more important to them and their boss, Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has only recently been reminded that he has an obligation to give the Israeli people an answer to the question of what will happen next in Gaza. He recently announced plans for a post-war administration to be run by a group of local Palestinians.
Back to square one. Rather than seeking a political solution with the PLO and ending the conflict with a two-state solution, Netanyahu wants to repeat the same mistakes he made against Hamas. But this time he wants another proxy group more submissive to him than Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's three-phase plan promises Gazans to prosper in the region, but makes no mention of ending the Israeli occupation or establishing a Palestinian state. His plan assumes that the Palestinian Gazans, or anyone else who will survive after this ugly war, will be satisfied with a plan that will water their mouths and end their political and national aspirations. are doing. What kind of nonsense is this?
Gazans will wake up one day to find that their decades-old dream of independence has failed and they will launch a new intifada against Israel. This is even worse and more painful than what happened on October 7th. If the Israelis continue this occupation that Saturday, they must consider it a warning shot for what might happen next, no matter what disguise it is under.
Prime Minister Netanyahu's plan outlines a three-step program to return Gaza to autonomy and eventually reintegrate it into the regional economy. He has also suggested that countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia will pay for his dream to become a reality. The Emiratis promptly slapped him in the face. They said they would not build a single stone in the war-torn Gaza Strip without a political vision that would lead to an end to Israeli occupation and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Prime Minister Netanyahu's arrogance towards Arab countries, including the UAE, which sponsored the Abraham Accords solely to appease him and his old friend President Trump, has become a weapon of self-destruction. He is a leader obsessed with power.
Incidentally, Prime Minister Netanyahu made the same mistake a few months ago when he asked the UAE and Saudi Arabia to provide the funds needed to repair and rebuild the Gaza Strip. In a joint statement released soon after, the two countries said they would not pay a penny to Gaza unless there was a clear vision to end the war and establish an independent Palestinian state.
Israel needs proper leadership that understands the limits of military power and is no more than a bunch of crazy, selfish, self-centered, short-tempered fanatics and far-right ministers led by a prime minister who can care. He doesn't talk much about his country, which is not a collection of leaders. Prime Minister Netanyahu, by contrast, is only concerned about his own political future and is seeking any way to save his head from his political guillotine.
