Europe Backs Arabs’ Reconstruction Plan for Gaza

Riviera of the Middle East

Recent Middle Eastern events are making my proposal for an alternative, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more plausible. It is that something happened today that likely renders U.S. Donald Trump’s delusional announcement last week another dead-on-arrival solution. The real estate mogul proposed that when the war in the Gaza Strip, between Israel and Hamas, comes to an end, that the U.S. take ownership of Gaza, remove all Palestinians from it, and make it the “Riviera of the Middle East.” He even had the audacity to present pictures of his vision that included photos of him as its creator.

New Arab Plan for Reconstruction of Gaza

As soon as Trump announced this plan, Saudi Arabia and nearly all other Arab nations in the Middle East dismissed it as a farce. They remained committed to the belief that to solve this Gaza turmoil—in which Israel reportedly has killed over 45,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—Palestinians must continue to have their home in Gaza. Why? Arabs of the Middle East strongly favor Palestinians having their own state. And these Arab heads of state know quite well that if they abandon hope for a Palestinian state, that will cause much chaos, if not civil war, in their own nations. That is something that they are not at all willing to allow, especially since it could mean the removal of them as rulers of their countries.

Ever since Trump made his Riviera proposal—which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was a good idea since he constantly acts against the idea of creation of a Palestinian state—both heads of state in the Middle East and Europe have been meeting to discuss how to overcome Trump’s delusional Riviera of the Middle East plan.

So, Tuesday, Middle East rulers met in Cairo, Egypt, and proposed a post-war reconstruction of the Gaza Strip to which Palestinians would return home there. They further announced that they would finance $53 billion for the plan’s cost. And they submitted names of Palestinian technocrats who would serve on a committee to administer this plan until the Palestinian Authority—which governs Palestinians in the West Bank—became able to take over that Gaza administration as well.

Europe Supports Arab Plan

And today, four European heads of state of France, Italy, UK, and Germany announced they rejected Trump’s plan and fully supported this new, Arab plan for Gaza. They said they were “committed to working with the Arab initiative;” they appreciated this “important signal” of the Arab states for developing the Gaza Strip; and they warned Hamas “must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel anymore.” Arab rulers already had established this rejection of Hamas. And these four European leaders further supported the proposal that the Palestinian Authority eventually govern the Gaza Strip, which it did prior to 2007 when Hamas took over.

The New Philistia Proposal

If this Arab and European proposal for Gaza happens, it will represent another step toward the alternative, two-state solution I put forward in my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia, published 35 years ago. (No book had ever been written, and still hasn’t, which adopts this alternative, two-state solution.) My proposal is that a land swap and transfer of peoples occurs, resulting in a State of Palestine that is a very expanded Gaza Strip, in only the coastal plain, and Israel annexes all of the West Bank. This result should be an equal land swap. For that to happen, Egypt must forfeit the northeastern Sinai. This geographical arrangement would be similar to the location of the nations Israel and Philistia in antiquity. I call it the New Philistia Proposal.

There are two way to view my proposal: secular and sacred. Regarding secular, my book has an entire chapter that sets forth the benefits of this proposal for both sides, proving this proposal makes the most sense. Regarding the sacred, this proposal is not original with me; rather, I discovered it in 1981 in my study of Bible prophecy. Thus, I believe there are about ten verses in the Tanakh (Old Testament) indicating there will be a Palestinian state during the end times, and this is about where it will be located. The foremost verse indicating this is Isaiah 11.14 with the realization that verses 1-4 indicate that Isaiah 14 is a major messianic text in the Tanakh, which Jews generally have believed even prior to the Common Era.