The time may be right for an international protectorate on the West Bank and in Gaza, creating a homeland for Palestinians and providing strategic security for Israel. Troops from a multinational coalition led by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would replace Israeli troops. For Palestinians, this would end the hated IDF occupation; for Israel, it would place its existential security in the hands of troops from a broad and powerful international coalition.
April 25, 2024
The promise of the proposed multinational protectorate approach has just been demonstrated in an ad hoc way as multiple nations coordinated with Israel in the successful repulse of the recent Iranian missile and drone attack.
Two weeks ago, Joe Biden okayed more weapons for Israel to use during the U.N.-mandated Gaza ceasefire that Biden then greenlighted. Huh?
April 2, 2024
Yes, you read that correctly. As widely reported, Biden okayed the U.N. resolution for an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza on March 25th. Few knew that, over the prior weekend, Biden had certified Israel as being in compliance with U.S. law and U.S foreign policy regarding acceptable use of U.S.-supplied weapons. So, more bombs and artillery shells are headed to Israel for... Somewhat incoherent, right?
Wednesday, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Senate Republicans via video link. Netanyahu’s only friends in the world seem to be Republicans in the U.S.
March 20, 2024
Republicans seem to have forgotten the example of Ronald Reagan. When Israel began heavy bombing of West Beirut nine weeks into its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, President Reagan called then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and expressed ''outrage'' at the ''needless destruction and bloodshed.” Begin halted the bombing the next day.
March 28, 2024
Biden is no Reagan. He has been characteristically timid and feckless in his attempts to rein in Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has adopted a non-negotiable stance on his invasion of Rafah, despite that it will achieve none of his stated objectives. Backing down will constitute a dramatic rebuke for him – and, unfortunately, the nation he leads. How to prevent the assault on Rafah without Israel losing complete credibility?
With casualties in Gaza exceeding 100,000, the obliteration of the territory and the reduction of Gazans to such a state of desperation that over 100 died trying to access a rare aid convoy, the parade of horrors has been so continuous that there has been virtually no time to consider the fundamental justification of Israel’s invasion. It is assumed to be self-defense, but it is not.
March 7, 2024
It is widely acknowledged that the Netanyahu regime and the Israeli defense establishment were grossly negligent in failing to defend Israel on October 7th, when effective defense would have required so little. Few have applied the same logic with a future view. With all the military might that the U.S. supplies – fighter jets, tanks, howitzers, bombs – Israel is only exposed to Hamas fighters with their homemade weapons if it lapses into another instance of such gross negligence.
Palestinians cry “From the river to the sea,” while Israelis seize and settle the land from the sea to the river. The Times of Israel reports that an Israeli cabinet minister and his father, a rabbi, suggest the option of nuking Gaza and eradicating Palestinians, unavoidably evoking the Final Solution and the Holocaust.
The massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, where 130 Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7th, recalls the documented 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where Jewish guerrillas executed over 100 Palestinian men, women and children.
Hamas and Hezbollah seem tragic descendants of last century’s Jewish guerillas, the Urgun and Lehi.
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Palestinians enjoying peace and tranquility in their own homeland from the river to the Green Line is the best way to defang the terrorist movements. How many families living in genuine peace will offer their children to be suicide bombers? To be terrorists? To live in tunnels in Gaza or caves in Southern Lebanon? Peace is the greatest threat to terrorists. It is time to carry out the threat.
After Hamas's heinous attack on Israel, President Biden - wisely - has been talking about peace in the Mideast, even as hostilities rage in Gaza, the West Bank and at the Israel-Lebanese border. Without a peace settlement, these hostilities are open-ended, as they have been for decades. Yet, Biden has resurrected the old idea of a Palestinian state under the Palestinian Authority. That plan is a dead letter. Instead, we should try an entirely new approach, a permanent international protectorate on the West Bank.
October 25, 2023
The protectorate would be established and governed by a multinational coalition which would take control of the West Bank and demilitarize it completely, replacing Israeli Defense Forces with international peacekeeping troops.
The Palestinian state is a casualty of two realities. First, Israel could never accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank high above Israel which is but six miles wide at its narrowest point. That would be an unacceptable existential risk for the Jewish state.
Nor would the Palestinians accept the emasculated version of a state contemplated in failed negotiations to date, a small demilitarized entity with IDF troops stationed on all its borders. That would be little different from the current status quo. Peace negotiations over the years have bogged down in fatally complex detail in attempts to square the circle of these irreconcilable positions.
