A four-step plan for peace in Gaza

[Redstone]

(Mods, you can move this to Israel/Palestine if ou want to, of course. But please read it all first, and you might agree that it belongs in GD.

In order for this plan to work, Israel must immediately begin bombing Gaza (please keep reading)...with food. Israel has many cargo planes, and plenty of food. They should package tons of food, attach the packages to parachutes, and airdrop into Gaza City, other towns and villages, and the U.N. refugee camps. Israel should also paint the Red Crescent on a cargo helicopter (so it doesn’t get shot down), and deliver a slingload of medicine to the roof of the hospital in Gaza City.

This should be a protracted campaign, every day for five days. That’s step one.

Step Two would be an immediate, unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal from Gaza, in order to give Step Three a chance to work. They’ll have nothing to lose by doing so. Israel would also re-open the border crossings to allow supplies to be delivered into Gaza.

Step Three is for the United States to issue a direct appeal to the populace of Gaza, employing radio, television, and air-dropped leaflets, outlining the American proposal. The proposal would require extraordinary effort on the part of all ordinary Gazans, but if they truly want peace and prosperity, they’ll make that effort.

The first element of the proposal is that the citizens of Gaza would be required to remove Hamas from power. Only the citizens of Gaza can accomplish this. Israel cannot do it. America cannot do it. Fatah cannot do it, but once Hamas is removed, Fatah can re-establish its legitimate place as the Government of Gaza. Fatah, additionally, would be required to commit to supporting and carrying out the plan contained in the proposal in advance, and agree to be held accountable if they do not follow through on their promise.

Step Four, with its proviso, is the plan that, if carried out, would provide a lasting peace benefiting both Gaza and Israel, and raise the Gazans from their current state of abject poverty and hopelessness. But they would not gain those benefits without concerted effort and cooperation on their part. It would be their own opportunity to seize or lose.

The United States will offer, after Hamas is removed from power, to initiate a modern version of a Marshall Plan for Gaza. We would divert ten billion dollars per year, for fifteen years, from the financial aid we provide to Israel. We would add another ten billion dollars per year diverted from our spending in Iraq, since we’re winding down operations there. We would use that money to build infrastructure, schools, hospitals and other projects in Gaza, hiring Gazans to do the work in order to provide them with jobs and job skills.

But the most important things we would build would be factories. None of the projects mentioned above would be viable in the long run without establishing a real, productive economy in Gaza. This would also ensure that young Gazans educated in the new schools would remain there rather than emigrating, because they would have job opportunities at home.

The proviso to Step four would be essential to ensure cooperation by the citizens of Gaza: Immediately upon inception of the plan, for each rocket or mortar shell that is fired from Gaza into Israel, five hundred million dollars would be deducted from the funding for that year’s plan. That means, simply, forty rockets and there’s no money that year.

That proviso is what would guarantee that the plan would work. If you’re a Gazan, and you know that your neighbor is building rockets - endangering the funding for a new school for your children, and your job building that school - aren’t you going to be inclined to turn that neighbor in to the police, rather than turn a blind eye?

I think you would. I think most Gazans would. The proviso would be a strong incentive, indeed.

A modest proposal in terms of money, though requiring a great deal of commitment, cooperation, and effort from all parties involved. But what is the value of any price paid, by any party, compared to the incalculable cost of lives and resources that will inevitably be lost in the future if nothing changes in Gaza?

All we, and everyone else involved, can do is to try. If the plan fails, as least we can say we tried. And doing nothing would be accept failure as inevitable. That’s not the American way.

Redstone

[GoesTo11]

1. Overwhelming force?

$20B/year for 1.5 million people comes out to $80,000 per year per family of six (of course, it would have to be distributed to the people rather than given to the government with a "trust us" approach to distribution). That would make them the richest country in the world. Wonder if they'd go for it.

[Redstone]

6. We wouldn't be giving them the money. We'd be spending it to help them

build a country, because they don't have the money to do it themselves.

Redstone

[Xithras]

2. You do realize that Hamas, and not Fatah, is the legitimate government?

Fatah can re-establish its legitimate place as the Government of Gaza

Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006 by such a wide margin that they were able to form a majority government on their own, and Fatah responded by resigning the government and walking out of Parliament. Just about every country in the world responded to the elections by refusing to recognize a government that openly advocated, financed, and was run by known terrorists, and instead put money and effort into propping up Fatah. This problem boiled for several months until a brief civil war broke out in June 2007. Hamas-supporting troops (and many citizens) were driven from the West Bank in a western-funded Fatah takeover, and Fatah supporting troops, politicians, and citizens were killed or driven from the Gaza strip by Hamas supporting troops. It was a civil war that ended in stalemate.

This throws a monkey wrench into your proposal. Hamas, and not Fatah, is the legitimate elected government of Palestine. Your proposal would ask the people in Gaza to oust the government they voted for in favor of a government that OTHER countries find more palatable. I don't see that happening.

[pampango]

3. Good point. I don't see why the rest of the proposal ("Marshall Plan" and penalties

for rocket launches) couldn't go forward. If Hamas kept firing rockets, they might just wear out their welcome in Gaza. If they stopped attacking Israel, they wouldn't be the same Hamas anymore and Israel would have solved the problem that led to the current invasion.

[Xithras]

5. But Hamas would never allow the plan to start.

Hamas is an extremely conservative religiously based party who's entire claimed reason for existing is to erase Israel from the map by killing all Jews and converting the entire Israel/Palestinian region into a strict fundamentalist sharia-oriented nation similar to what existed in Afghanistan. The primary difference between the two parties is that Fatah is willing to work with Israel and come up with a peaceful resolution that recognizes Israel's right to exist while Hamas claims that peace will only come when the Jews are driven into the sea.

Hamas isn't going to allow western outsiders, who they see as Zionist shills anyway, to come into their country to build schools, roads, and factories. If they agreed with those ideas, they'd be Fatah members and wouldn't have opposed them in the first place.

[Redstone]

8. It's been said that Hamas likes dead Palestinians even more than dead Israelis...

because dead Palestinians solidify Hamas's political security, given the sympathy generated worldwide when the Israelis kill Palestinians (especially civilians).

And I suspect that's true. (Which is not to say that Israel does not have culpability of its own.)

Jesus, this whole situation is just SO depressing. I hate, I just HATE seeing civilians (ESPECIALLY children) die in war. I hate war itself.

God help us all if no answer is found.

Redstone

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

4. I agree with all, but I think Step 5 is necessary

An agreement that the first person to break the truce in a meaningful way (meaning, one attack here or there doesn't count - that will be part of the healing, unfortunately) as determined by an independent international panel will be crushed by international forces, whether it's Israel or Palestine. There must be an assurance in place that if either side stops fighting that they will not be trampled by the other.

That, as I see it, is fundamentally the biggest problem. Israel truly believes that the Arabs will destroy them once they choose peace, and so do the Palestinians. Both have legitimate reasons for believing that will be the case. Protection of each must be ensured by a third party.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we were to do these things. That would stop the war on terror not just there, but here as well.

Edited to remove 6 - it's already in your plan.

[Redstone]

7. Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, there would have to be restraints on Israel

as well. Operating under the principle of "We're paying for it, so we get to make the rules," any agression by Israel should also result in a cut in the fnancial aid that we send them.

Redstone