This article was originally published in Israel Hayom on February 17, 2025.
In the absence of an adequate solution to the Palestinian conflict, the Trump administration is continuing its efforts to provide the Jewish state with absolute security and the Palestinians with solutions to improve their daily lives. The visit these days of the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is very significant. It demonstrates a strong determination to resolve all the problems in the region while imposing reciprocal concessions on all parties.
The conflict with the Palestinians remains thorny and unresolved as long as fundamental problems are not resolved first and foremost: the end of belligerence and terrorist attacks, the humanitarian case of refugees, and the status of the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.
The Abraham Accords have changed the geopolitical situation, but everything can collapse if we continue to ignore the role of religious and financial influence of Saudi Arabia, and refuse to find a pragmatic solution to the Palestinian problem. We should therefore bring concrete and courageous initiatives while safeguarding defensible borders and the non-return to the 1949 armistice lines.
We hope that Westerners, the Christian world, and moderate Muslims will be more understanding and united because our fight is identical to that of the free and democratic world. In the fierce fight against terrorism, each state has the right to defend itself by all means. The Islamists in Paris, London, Brussels, Munich, and Jerusalem are inspired by the same religious motivations, by the same extremist ideology, and by the cult of death.
However, let us also face reality. More than 70% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were born after the 1967 war and have known only the Israeli administration. In reality, they prefer to live in an Israeli framework with all the socio-economic advantages than to suffer and continue to delude themselves about a future independent Palestinian state that their leaders have been promising in vain for several decades. Aware that they cannot defeat Israel on the battlefield or in the international diplomatic arena, they prefer, for the time being, to live in a binational state. A new situation for more than 8 million Jews and 6 million Arabs who will have to coexist together on a territory of 28 thousand square kilometers, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
The majority of Israelis refuse to accept forced cohabitation. It would endanger the Zionist state and put the Jewish population in a minority, due to the galloping demography of the Arabs.
Since 1967, all Israeli governments have made certain strategic and tactical mistakes. As for the real intentions of the Palestinians, they were already put to the test with Arafat during the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, during the Second Intifada that broke out in September 2000, and then five years later, during the unilateral withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and the seizure of power by the Hamas Islamists. At the time of Arafat, the leaders thought that the page with the Palestinians had been definitively turned and that the region had finally changed its face. They were deeply mistaken. Since then, we have been paying a heavy price, even these days, with the release of hundreds of bloodthirsty terrorists in exchange for our hostages.
Therefore, after the massacre of October 7, 2023, the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the coming years would be suicide for the Jewish state.
However, let us be optimistic and realistic. The Middle East is populated by 450 million Muslims and more than 8 million Jews living in Israel. 65% of the Arab population is under 25 years old. The majority of young people want to be educated and dream of a new and better world. Fanatic religion and blind terrorism do not attract them. It is time for Arab leaders to offer them new opportunities, and a chance to integrate into the modern world. Let us emphasize that Israel ranks among the ten great powers of the planet….
Alas, the romantic vision of an idyllic new Middle East and a rich and fruitful common market is probably not for tomorrow, but it is not a utopian vision.
We should therefore work towards the success of the Trump plan by adopting, without incurring a security risk, the formula of “open borders and free trade”: offering jobs, creating industrial zones, investing in infrastructure in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The goal is to found with the help of foreign donors two economic confederations: a first with Jordan (Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian) and a second with the Gaza Strip, Egypt, and Israel.
As we await better days, the success of this noble project will benefit Israel, the Palestinians, and all countries in the region.
