The Gazan Protectorate
What to do after the catastrophe.
Israel, via the IDF, is currently doing to Hamas-run Gaza what the Western Allies, plus the Soviet Union, did to Nazi Germany and the US, with Allied assistance, did to militarist Japan. In both the latter cases, the inflicting of massive military catastrophe on the states in question worked. German and Japanese militarism was smashed and German anti-Semitism reduced to a pale shadow of its former self.
The strategy of military catastrophe worked not merely due to the scale of the military catastrophe, and subsequent occupation. It worked because both Germany and Japan were provided with an alternative path — liberal democracy within the Western alliance structure — to what had ended in catastrophe.
The head of the IDF has raised the central question about the war in Gaza: after the catastrophe, what next? In the words of the Times of Israel report:
Military chief Herzi Halevi has warned Israel’s leaders that gains made over three-plus months of fighting in Gaza could be squandered due to the lack of a plan for postwar management and security of the enclave, according to a report Monday.
The alleged comments by Halevi in recent weeks were reflective of consternation among military analysts and others regarding the lack of preparation for a so-called “day after” in Gaza…
Israel is still living with the consequences of not having an “after the occupation” strategy in 1967. So, this is my proposal for what to do next.
Israel declares a protectorate over a self-governing Gaza. The residents of Gaza will be able to:
Work in Israel.
Have Israeli travel documents.
Vote for the Gazan Legislature. (I recommend adopting the Tasmanian electoral system.)
There would be some conditions, however.
Folk would not be permitted to stand for office, or be employed by Gazan Authority, if they advocate violent overthrow of any internationally recognised state.
This provision should not name Israel specifically. Such an “Israel is special” approach shoved in Arab faces would be unwise. Moreover, it is a provision that is also protective of other states in the region.
Folk cannot do or have any of the above, or be employed by Gazan Authority, if they claim status as a Palestinian refugee through right of inheritance.
The status of hereditary refugee, and the income that flows from that, is the biggest block to an Israel-Palestine peace. Residents of the Gazan Protectorate need to be forced to make a choice between dwelling in the past or working to build a Gazan community.
Set a date after which the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) would be barred from operating in the Gazan Protectorate.
These measures would siphon out those committed to their “we hate Israel” inherited refugee identity. It would leave in those committed to building a Gazan community. The idea is to enable the building of a future for the Gazan community with a new basis for dignity.
Sacred values
There are many sacred values tied up in the Israel-Palestine conflict:
Research in Israel and Palestine found that attempting to negotiate with sacred values using material incentives can backfire by increasing moral outrage and willingness to use violence against the other side. Conversely, offering symbolic concessions decreased the outrage and increased willingness to negotiate and speak with the opposing side to find a compromise to the conflict.
The research of Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran and their colleagues has identified that, when it comes to sacred values, folk act as devoted — rather than (instrumentally) rational — actors. What makes sacred values sacred is resistance to trade-offs against them.
Shared rituals seem to strengthen that sense of sacredness. The importance of cooperation in human reproduction and subsistence strategies led to the evolution of our normative capacity. It is not, therefore, surprising that mechanisms enabling us to act with considerable, even extreme, group adherence were selected for.
Their 2013 study identified various sacred values for Palestinians.
Those that are pertinent to Gaza in its relations with Israel — rather than choices Gazan voters might make about their internal government — are the right of return and Palestinian sovereignty. The latter is something that a self-governing Protectorate would have some of, with the possibility of more being achieved over time.
Israel cannot accept a hereditary right of return imposed from outside. Nor, of course, does any sovereign country anywhere. The notion of a hereditary refugee is all about not accepting Israeli sovereignty.
The passage of time since 1967, and even more since 1948, means that the number of surviving actual Palestinian refugees is much more manageable. Some form of a right to visit Israel could be extended to such persons. Perhaps also involving events where Palestinian and Jewish refugees talk to each other about their experiences.
Having the Nabka acknowledged in way that integrates with building a Gazan community would seek to incorporate acknowledging sacred values as part of the commitment to building a Gazan community with a better future.
So, that is my, “after the catastrophe” proposal for Gaza.
References
Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran, Douglas Medin, and Khalil Shikaki, ‘Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict,’ PNAS, May 1, 2007, vol. 104, no. 18, 7357–7360.
Hammad Sheikh, Jeremy Ginges, Alin Coman, Scott Atran, ‘Religion, group threat and sacred values,’ Judgement and Decision Making, (2012) 7(2), 110-118.
Hammad Sheikh, Jeremy Ginges, and Scott Atran, ‘Sacred values in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: resistance to social influence, temporal discounting, and exit strategies,’ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, September 2013, 1299, 11–24.
Jordan E. Theriault, Liane Young, Lisa Feldman Barrett, ‘The sense of should: A biologically-based framework for modeling social pressure,’ Physics of Life Reviews, Volume 36, March 2021, 100-136.
All good, except that I worry that sensible and intelligent people like Warby...do not understand the Middle East or Islamic mindset.
The Sunnis and Shiites have been slaughtering each other for 1,400 years.
As soon as the secular-socialist strongman (and lunatic) Saddam Hussain was deposed, they went at it again in spades in Iraq---despite decades and decades of indoctrination by Saddam that religious differences were to be minimized.
What happened on Oct. 7 was not an aberration, but a tradition.
Forgotten today, but three million ethnic Chinese, communists and "unbelievers" were massacred in Indonesia in 1965-6 by Muslim youth.
In Germany and Japan there were remaining social structures and institutions that could be leveraged.
I wonder about Gaza, and Islam (as practiced) more generally.
If decades of secularizing rule by Saddam Hussain could not quell Islamic holy warriors---even against fellow Islamics---what will work in Gaza?
Lorenzo, As well-thought out and as practical as anything I have read. Yet, as long as the West and Iran, Qatar etc. keeps subsidizing intransigence and a poisonous educational system, how will things change?