European Union’s offer to Gaza

By Dogan Akman

According to Yami Roth writing in the April 16 issue of Maariv, republished in the Jerusalem Post of April 17, the EU proposed to Hamas to stop its armed struggle against Israel, for at least, five years, in exchange for the EU’s promise to rebuild Gaza.

More specifically, the EU would establish  a body or institution in Gaza  that will operate in Gaza and assume comprehensive  authorities and critically just as importantly, run all the humanitarian affairs in concert with the financial aid provided by the EU which will presumably  integrated by the financial resources provided by other countries.

According to Roth, the plan would remove the P.A. out of picture during its execution and indeed the plan is meant it to provide a possible scenario in the event Abbas makes good on his threat to withdraw all support to the Gaza strip under Hamas.

If the EU thinks Hamas would go for the scheme, clearly, it has finally taken full leave of its senses, or at least  from the little they could still claim.

The fundamental fatal flaw of the proposed plan is to facilitate and bring about the eventual goal of national Palestinian reconciliation instead of  empowering Gazans, among other things: a) to begin to run their lives and society with an democratically elected government and a loyal opposition, free elections; b) to establish a judicial system that is not beholden to a particular power structure; c) to insure their  personal safety and  security ,and d) last but not least to develop an economic system that  will enable them to enter the international markets and become competitive.

The fact of the matter is that Hamas and Abbas/Fatah are fundamentally and fatally irreconcilable.

And needless to say, until Hamas and the other terrorists operating out of Gaza are gotten rid of once and for all, Israel cannot be realistically expected to sign a peace agreement with the P.A.

The only way to reconcile Gaza and the P.A. is for the E.U in tandem some Arab countries to get rid of Hamas and all the other terrorists groups in Gaza, destroy their military infrastructures and their armaments and make sure that they do not re-surface in the West Bank or anywhere else to carry on with their evil design.

With this in mind, I proposed the following action plan in one of my previous blogs.

Mogherini and the European Union’s Military Action Plan

Federica Mogherini believes that her job title “High Representative of the Union of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President” no less, empowers her to periodically remonstrate against and dictate Israel how to behave  towards the P.A. and to  tell the world what,  in her wishful but unimaginative  thinking, the geography of the hypothetical  State of Palestine must look like.

One of her recent dictate is: P.A’s national territory “cannot exclude Gaza but cannot include only Gaza”. A cutely  worded one. Fault her thinking as I may, I certainly cannot fault her for trying to be innovative to avoid repeating the same old dictate ad infinitum ad nauseam.

And, when it comes to dealing effectively with the conflict, her fundamental shortcoming is, I dare say, an utter lack of imagination in political problem-solving. Hence, I decided to offer her my humble to devise a fresh approach.  Here it is.

On March 28 inst. the EU issued a press release titled “Action Plan on military mobility: EU takes steps towards a Defence Union”.

The document states that “In line with President Juncker’s commitment to a fully-fledged Defence Union by 2025, the Commission and the High Representative are presenting an Action Plan to improve military mobility [of the EU]  within and beyond the European Union”.

What I propose Mogherini  is  a way to  accomplish a lot of most worthy goals in a single stroke. More specifically, I suggest  she should start  by improving the military mobility of the force beyond the European Union; test  the force on the ground, in a realistic fashion, and thereby expedite the formation of the Union by and most likely before 2025.

Towards this end, all Mogherini has to do is to use some of the troops to be dedicated to the E.U. military force to

1. a) mount a surprise attack to invade Gaza, to drain the terrorist swamp by
2. i) vanquishing all its terrorists (regardless of their respective affiliations); expelling or gifting them to countries whose dictators are in desperate need of larger killing machines or ship them somewhere where they can do no harm to others;
3. ii) destroying their military infrastructure and equipment;

iii) freezing and confiscating the ill-gotten wealth of the directing minds of Hamas and of the Hamas organisation, and

1. iv) keeping the swamp fully drained at all times.

In so doing, she on behalf of the EU will

1. a) ensure that the first part of her latest dictate can be implemented, but most importantly,
2. b) liberate the inhabitants of Gaza, keep them safe from periodic warfare for the foreseeable future and, I venture to say, far beyond so as to give them a new lease on life.

Grabbing Gaza ought to be a cinch for Europe’s finest, particularly if some Arab countries join the military expedition at one point or another. After all, Israel did a far bigger job in merely six days back in 1967.

Once that is done, the E.U, with the P.A’s  full consent, or one secured with some sweet- a la Mogherini-, blunt talk, would then take over the territory under an autonomous trusteeship for a period of say 15 years and use this time,

1. a) to invest, all the available foreign aid and the sums of monies confiscated from Hamas’ bank accounts, to rebuild Gaza for the short and long term benefit of its inhabitants ;
2. b) disband the dysfunctional components of the UN organisations, institutions and of their respective mandates;
3. c) reform and modernise the education system and cleanse the schoolbooks of hateful violent anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic contents;
4. d) modernise the university curriculum and broaden the opportunities to acquire professions responsive to the current and anticipated future socio-economic and cultural realities;
5. e) build a proper infrastructure to provide for abundant clean energy, clean water and a modern public health system;
6. f) build an adult education program to provide the population with learning and training opportunities to meet the demands of local and international market places; and,
7. g) most importantly,

-establish the fundamentals of a vibrant democracy within the territory; and

-build an economy based on the Singapore model.

This would be a situation of multiple wins for the:

1. a) the long suffering people of Gaza;
2. b) the E.U companies which will undoubtedly get involved to make money by investing in Gaza and becoming an integral part of its progressively booming international trade based on its new economic model;
3. c) the P.A. which will increase its revenues considerably by collecting income taxes in Gaza; and
4. d) the foreign donors which will no longer have to give the E.U as big sums of money as they do presently, and
5. e) The E.U’s Defence Union project.

In turn, this state of affairs will benefit the residents of the West Bank governed by the P.A as they will be able to

1. a) seek and secure educational and employment opportunities in Gaza;
2. b) enjoy and partake in the collective well-being of the territory;
3. c) have a real taste of living a genuinely democratic way of life: the rule of law; respect of human rights, freedoms and human dignity; honest government; the right to keep the government through honest elections, unlike anything they experience in the West Bank;
4. d) share these novel experiences and feelings with the folks back in the West Bank; to encourage and support them in their fight to obtain the same things from the P.A.

In the event  the E.U can performs well its part the foregoing scenario, I am willing to wager that the Gazans will be the last of the people on earth who would want to start making war again instead of enjoying the goodness and bounties of life in peace.

In the circumstances, who would deny Frederica Mogherini the Nobel Prize; her place near Joan of Arc and immortality to end of times in history books?

There is only one catch: if the people of “new Gaza” were to give as much as a faint indication that having adopted the Singapore economic model, they may just as well follow suit and adopt the whole model by becoming a sovereign country, the P.A will smell rat and, ironically enough, it will do whatever it can to prevent the independence project of their brethren from materialising.

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The author was born and schooled in Istanbul, Turkey. Upon his graduation from Lycee St. Michel, he immigrated to Canada with his family. In Canada, he taught university in criminology, social welfare policy and  research methods. He published a number of articles in criminology journals. After a stint  both as a (lay) Stipendiary Magistrate and later (as a legally qualified) Judge of the Provincial Court (criminal and family divisions) of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, he joined the Federal Department of Justice working first as a Crown prosecutor, and then switching to civil litigation and specialising in aboriginal law. Since his retirement he has published scholarly articles in Sephardic Horizons, e-Sefarad and wrote one chapter in an anthology edited by Rifat Bali titled This is My New Homeland; Life Stories  of Turkish Jewish Immigrants, Istanbul: Libra Kitap, 2016, pp.35-75. A number of his papers may be accessed through  of Academia, edu. He is a blogger at the Times of Israel.