Arab nations can make Palestinian state a reality

For 75 years, since Palestinians rejected the United Nations’ two-state partition plan and the creation of the state of Israel led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from land they’d lived in for centuries, regional Arab countries have by and large refused to admit Palestinians as full citizens of their countries.

Instead, they allowed them in as refugees, or in the case of the oil-rich Gulf countries as guest workers, hoping that eventually the Palestinians would return to the land of their forefathers in some kind of negotiated real estate deal.

Since the murderous incursion by Hamas into Israel in October, much talk in the West has returned to the idea of a two-state solution. A Palestinian state remains possible, but only if the regional Arab countries are partners in the process of its creation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise since October has been to annihilate Hamas.

That vow has led to thousands of deaths, further evacuation from Palestinian land, the threat of escalation, unprovoked settler violence in the West Bank, the destruction of countless homes and municipal infrastructure.

Netanyahu has said Israel’s other goals in Gaza are to demilitarize the enclave (with Israeli Defense Force verification, which can honestly only mean occupation) and to deradicalize the populace.

A constant presence in Gaza to verify its demilitarization will not deradicalize the population. What would do that, however, is an Arab presence. What would further help deradicalize Gaza would be an economy not reliant on Israel itself.

Absent from most of the recent discussion is what Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman — in other words, countries with accords or peace deals with Israel or that are rich in resources — can and must do to stop the violence, bring some kind of peace or stability to the region, then get Gaza and the West Bank on their feet and on the road to a two-state solution. (There are other Arab countries in the region obviously, but let’s face it: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen have their own messes to clean up, not all of them of their own creation.)

In both cases — getting guns out of radicals’ hands and putting money on the table — it is up to regional Arab countries to step forward.

The UN should establish a peacekeeping force comprising soldiers from the Arab Gulf countries, Jordan and Egypt (altogether these seven countries have active military personnel numbering two million; they can spare a few thousand) to verify Hamas and the Gazan population in general are incapable of further military violence.

Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, Kuwait City and Muscat can then put their financial and diplomatic resources into rebuilding Gaza — the homes, the hospitals, the schools, the infrastructure, the lives — and providing Gazans with the resources to sustain that new entity on their own.

Is this a naïve idea? Maybe so, but it would be to the benefit of all in the region and beyond for them to do so.