What about After this Gaza War?

That’s the question that is percolating a lot in the media even though it seems premature due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. But trying to answer this question could lead to a ceasefire and perhaps some sort of negotiation.

This war is causing results that make my proposal for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict look increasingly more viable. It is contained in my book published 33 years ago and entitled Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia. Here is my proposal: a state of Palestine be created solely in the coastal plain as a very expanded Gaza Strip with Israel annexing all the West Bank. Of course, this proposal, based on historical precedent just Israel’s Proclamation of Independence demands, requires a transfer of peoples. I insist that you can change demographics, but you can’t change history and religion that is based on history as well as a sacred text. The the latter is what many of those Jewish settlers are thinking to their Judaism.

One such result of this war that favors my proposal is that since the war began on October 7th, the Israeli government has removed about 125,000 Jews from their homes, most of them situated near the Gaza Strip, and is housing them in about 250 hotels located inland. It is because these residents expressed fear of being attacked by Hamas militants again. In my proposal, I envision the Gaza Strip being declared as a Palestinian state and that it would be enlarged especially eastward and northward in a possible land swap with West Bank territory.

Another such result is that many of the half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank, whom the government of Israel allows to to have weapons and even provides some with weapons, are becoming increasingly hostile toward the 2.7 million Palestinians living there whom the government of Israel does not allow to have weapons. If this situation increases, West Bank Palestinians will increasingly want to live elsewhere than in the West Bank if given an option, such as in an expanded Gaza Strip.

And US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last Wednesday that the US will work toward the realization of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for the establishment of a Palestinian state. He also said, “No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.” All of this sounds to me like the Biden administration may be thinking of declaring in the future that it favors a Palestinian state beginning in the Gaza Strip.