A Most Humane Solution for All Peace-Loving Gazans

By Vinay Kolhatkar and Walter E. Block

Descriptor: The most humane solution to the war in Gaza is so obvious that no one will talk about it.

Imagine for a minute (well, reflect on it for an hour, say), that you are a UN-appointed negotiator for a key conflict in the Middle East. It has been going on for several decades in a hypothetical place called “Germanaza.” Over that time several terrorist incidents have occurred, as have several retaliations, and this has resulted in much loss of life.

The Obvious Solution to Germanaza

But you have a solution. It’s so easy that you wonder why it was never implemented. But it would be nice to get that Nobel Peace Prize, a final colorful feather in your cap before you retire to a respectable life of the half-a-million dollars-a-gig talk circuit.

Two million Germans are displaced. No one quite knows why, but it had to do with World War II. You see, immediately after the war, the Americans and the Russians kicked out of both Germanys, East and West, anyone remotely related to Adolf Hitler. Third cousins, fifth cousins, and even friends of fourth cousins…all thrown out. Their crime? Nothing really, they weren’t even Nazis. They were at most just distantly related to Hitler.

And the task of putting them somewhere was assigned to…you guessed it, Great Britain. And the British, bless their foresight, thought that they should live right next door to Israel, you know, we needed to test whether Jews would get along with Hitler’s clan immediately following the war. Well, thought the British, Israel being a secular peace-loving country, it’s not going to hang thy sons and daughters for thy father’s crimes. Israel wasn’t happy, but it kept its word. For a while, the German clan lived peacefully and industriously. And they produced a lot of children, all blond and blue-eyed and beautiful. It was tough, with the land being small and infertile, but the German clan was determined. By the turn of the century, there were two million of them.

Then a few of them became terrorists. They started planting bombs in Israeli civilian targets like buses, shopping malls, and music festivals. Israel retaliated carefully, taking due care not to harm innocent civilians. But the terrorists would hide inside hospitals and schools and childcare centers, where any drone attack on them was bound to kill a few of those blue-eyed German babies. And now the most recent generation of this Germanic clan (yes, they still speak German) is fully brainwashed into hating Jews so much that this whole togetherness has become impossible. Retaliatory Israeli bombs have destroyed residential buildings, offices, schools, and hospitals in Germanaza.

What is to be done?

Even Donald Trump knows you went there with cards. In fact, you hold the ace of spades. Just before flying down to Germanaza to meet the clan, you met with the German Chancellor. And the Chancellor agreed with you that it’s time. “The time has come,” she said, “to return all these Germanic-speaking, German-culture-aficionado, German-beer-drinking folks back home. Eighty years of exile is enough. Native Germans have long since forgiven this clan.”

And you know that outside of Gamas (the name of this intifada terrorist group), everyone else would be thrilled to finally go home to where they belong. For three generations, they have prayed for this day to arrive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delighted. You exit Germanaza a hero. You are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The exodus begins. Lufthansa and the port of Hamburg make special “Welcome Home” arrangements with balloons and military bands. There is but one simple condition: those anti-Semitic Germans (Gamas) who wish to continue to martyr themselves can stay behind and become martyrs. Those who wish to live peacefully and industriously can’t wait to pack their bags and go to where their culture thrives, to finally go home and be accepted. No one stays back except the Gamas folk. They are all arrested for just a few years with judges being only too ready to commute their sentences should they agree to board a plane to Germany. Their crimes are pardoned in Germany where everyone can start afresh. Germany’s productive, peaceful society grows even on the Gamas folk when they return to their fatherland, and they relinquish their terrorist ways.

We are all agreed then, that in this hypothetical case, Germany should open its borders to the German clans, exiled for no good reason.

Isn’t this a lovely fairytale? Did anyone complain of ethnic cleansing? No.

Yet, the parallels are ominous. There is no centuries-long connection that Gazans have to the Gaza Strip, holy or otherwise. The only Palestinians who have long-dated connections to that land, are Jews. Jews are Palestinians, as Golda Meir vigorously asserted.

Now, where is this modern Germany that awaits peaceful Gazans? It’s right there, actually. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (“the Gulf Six;” associate-member Iraq was kicked out after invading Kuwait) occupy a total area of 2,570,470 square kilometers (km2) with a population of approximately 60 million, more than half of which is in Saudi Arabia. (By the way, Germany covers a land mass of 349,250 km2 with a population of roughly 84 million). The Gulf Six (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) are much larger (in aggregate) than Germany, yet less populated. They always want more people—workers specifically. Migrant workers in the Gulf Six had increased to 28 million by 2017. Why can’t two million Gazans be part of that process?

The Gulf Cooperation Council: Give Us More People

The GCC is an economic union, with its own military arm. There is a common market among the six, but the goal of monetary union was not realized. If it occurs in the future, the GCC monetary union would be the second-largest supranational monetary union in the world, measured by the GDP of the common-currency area. A common electrical grid is in the making. Qatar remains the black sheep of the six. On 5 June 2017, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt had officially cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region,” including the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, ISIL, the Houthis, and Iran-supported terrorist groups in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province.

In the Comparative Migration Studies Journal, researcher Udaya Wagle states: “Almost every country [in the GCC] has witnessed growing labor migration, with its share in the population swelling from 25 to 76 percent during the 1990s to 36 to 88 percent during the early 2020s.”

The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington says:

The GCC countries are a popular destination for migrant workers primarily due to their high per capita incomes. The GCC countries need to import labor for two primary reasons. First, their formal education systems are young and they need to import skilled labor to grow. Second, there is a cultural aversion to certain types of low-skilled labor, so they also need to import unskilled labor. Foreigners account for at least 75 percent of the labor force in all but Saudi Arabia.

To be sure, there has been much international criticism of the conditions of unskilled migrant workers in the GCC (the skilled make more after-tax money and enjoy more luxuries than they do in their native countries). But to make an honest living, having your children attend school or get higher education, and living in security cannot be compared with the significant danger of being bombed out of existence or limbs at any time.

The official language of the GCC is Arabic. And the primary language spoken in Gaza is, you guessed it, Arabic.

But wait, you say. This hypothetical Hitler clan was Christian, going back to a predominantly Christian nation. The GCC states are not secular. The official religion (and practiced by over 90% of the residents) in each of the GCC Six is Islam. And, according to the CIA, “Sunni Muslims make up 99.8 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip.” What about religious sites? The two most sacred sites in Islam are, you guessed it, Mecca and Medina, both in Saudi Arabia, which is predominantly…you guessed it, Sunni.

No risk of Sunni-Shia conflicts either. A marriage made in heaven!

A Benevolent Nation?

The fifth of the Five Pillars of Islam, is Hajj: to make a pilgrimage made to the Kaaba, the “House of Allah,” in the sacred city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia at least once during a person’s lifetime if the person is able. Which brings us to what the Australian multicultural SBS network says of the awesome arrangements:

1. More than two million pilgrims are taking part this year [2017], according to official figures, compared to 24,000 in 1941.
2. More than 100,000 security personnel have been mobilized to keep pilgrims safe, the Saudi interior ministry says.
3. Some 17,000 civil defense employees backed by 3,000 vehicles are also helping with security.
4. Thousands of security cameras have been set up along the pilgrimage route, according to a civil defense spokesman.
5. Tens of thousands of air-conditioned tents have been set up in Mina, between Mount Arafat and Mecca, to house pilgrims.
6. The Saudi Red Crescent has mobilized 2,468 employees and 500 volunteers, who will work with 326 ambulances and eight helicopters.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 aims to increase overall annual pilgrim numbers to 15 million. Other objectives include increasing employment opportunities for the disabled (7.7% in 2016 to 12.6% in Q2 2023).

A benevolent nation? Or an ambitious one? The document calls itself the latter in a nonpolitical way, but it is undoubtedly benevolent toward its official faith—the third pillar of Islam includes looking after common faith-based communities in need.

Since the 1950s, Saudi Arabia has spent more than $100 billion to increase pilgrimage facilities. Issues like housing, transportation, sanitation, and health care have been addressed and improved greatly by the government: think air-conditioned tents, e-visas granted in quick time, special flights and packages even from other countries like Jordan, e-bracelets, and “Fatwa” robots to provide religious advice.

The Obvious Solution for Gaza

Let’s be humane. Let these exiles return to where they can live in security, with numerous employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for adults, and educational opportunities for the young.

What about Hamas? Like we said about the hypothetical Gamas, they can choose to fight and die. Or get arrested and get commutation upon deportation. If, like everyone says, 99% of Gazans are peaceful and innocent, why exactly do such peaceful and innocent people not want to go to such a “modernizing Germany” that awaits them? Why stay where they are in horror, rubble, and terror?

Muslims will continue to be the largest minority in Israel (18%), so let’s not raise the usual first objection with the virtue-signaling phrase of ethnic cleansing. Not when it could stop a bloody start-stop-start war going on for over half a century. The Jews know more about it than do any of the rest of us.

Objection two, you say, is that the GCC does not want them. But doesn’t the GCC want to end the needless and horrifying war once and for all? Why don’t they care about these decent human beings? Especially their own? If Qatar is the “house of terror” black sheep, why don’t the big five kick them out of the GCC, or at least out of this deal? Why are they, the GCC, so heartless in such desperate times?

Or is the ulterior motive to get Israel framed as a genocidal state, eliminate the Jews in entirety or drive them out of the Middle East, and tens of thousands of dead Gazans are merely fodder for the cause? You know, you just had to ask that question eventually. Because that ulterior motive is the only one that explains the actions of the GCC Six in not making a humane offer to save their own folk.

A Friendly Amendment to the Foregoing—What If the Gazans Are Not Peace-Loving?

To be fair to the six Gulf States, the putative new homes for the Palestinian Gazans, we must answer objection three and take cognizance of the fact that these people have a history of biting the hands that feed them: to wit, trying to unseat their host governments. It’s only fair that we incorporate this fact into our analysis.

For example, in 1970, a conflict known as Black September, erupted in Jordan, stemming from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s attempts to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy and gain control of the country, leading to a civil war between the Jordanian army and Palestinian forces.

How can we ameliorate this threat to the Gulf States? According to that old axiom, in unity there is strength. Given that this is true, it logically follows that in disunity, there is weakness; there is disarray. If all of the Palestinians were seconded to any one host nation, this would indeed constitute a dire threat to their present political accommodations, even in a country as large as Saudi Arabia with its 34 million population. If you doubt this, ask the Israelis about the danger that can be imposed by some two million of these people. The solution then is clear: they must be divided into six parcels and resettled in these counties in proportion to the host population.

Here is an even better option. There are only six Gulf States. But there are now no fewer than 22 in the League of Arab States: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Their total population is 482 million. If each of them would only take Gazans equal to 0.4% (2/482) of their populations, the danger would be even further vitiated. Given their history, they may still constitute a threat, but much less so. This assumes the worst case, that all Gazans mean harm, whereas if it’s true what the media says, that 99% of them are just peace-loving civilians caught in the crossfire between Hamas and Israel, then the problem reduces substantially. See realistic estimates of Gazan attitudes here.

Do all these Arab countries owe a debt to Israel which might well be repaid in this manner? A case for this conclusion can easily be made. Arabs have been plaguing Israel, intensively, ever since Israel came into being in 1948. They could not do any such thing before that time, since there was no such Jewish country in existence then. But they made up for this lacuna, before that time, by engaging in pogroms against groups of Jewish civilians.

Winston Churchill, then prime minister of the UK, famously said: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” We say in like manner that in the Middle East, “Never have so many (Arabs) owed so much to so few (Israelis).” Churchill of course was referencing what the entire population of his country owed to the UK military. We refer to the many, many Arabs who have plagued the Jews in the Holy Land for so long. They owe it to the Israelis to take in these Palestinians (only 0.4% of population each).

Peace. Safety. Meaningful lives, not mired in revenge and hate. How is that not humane?

Bios:

Vinay Kolhatkar is an author, podcaster, and Chief Editor of The Savvy Street, a public intellectual e-zine.

Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University, senior fellow of the Mises Institute, and regular columnist for LewRockwell.com