Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
His plan is that after the hostages are all released, Egypt would take control of the Gaza Strip through a UN Security Council resolution, including internal security and civilian management. This control would last for a decade or so, until a reformed Palestinian Authority can take over.
With all due respect for Lapid, anyone who follows the region know that Egypt would never want to control Gaza under any circumstances.
Lapid points to Egyptian control of Gaza from 1948-1967 as if that is something to be emulated today. Yet Egypt's control was not out of a desire to make Gazans' lives better but to keep them out of Egypt.
In 1948, Egypt created the "All Palestine Government" as a puppet government for Gaza, led by the notorious Nazi collaborator Amin Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem. After a mere three months, they relocated this paper organization to Cairo, yet for several years Egypt still pretended that the All Palestine Government was in charge of Gaza. In reality, it was a military occupation where the social services of a normal government were given to UNRWA. Egypt provided only the barest minimum of medical, educational and administrative services to the minority of Gazans who were not considered refugees: people who were born in Gaza were jealous of the refugees who received support from UNRWA.
Those nineteen years prove that Egypt wanted nothing to do with Gaza. It did not take responsibility - it abdicated it as much as it possibly could. It treated Gazans with contempt.
Nothing has changed since then. Egypt's activities during the Gaza war were centered around aid - not because they care about Gazans but because they don't want Gazans to flee to Egypt. Except for the brief time that Egypt was ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt has treated Gaza as a threat, not as a brotherly Arab region.
Lapid pretends that he has a solution: throw money at Egypt. Egypt is suffering from a foreign external debt of $155 billion, and he says the world will step up to pay this off in exchange for Egyptian control of Gaza.
This is again a mixture of wishful thinking and naivete.
Egypt's governance of its own people is rife with corruption and inefficient bureaucracy. It treats minorities like Copts poorly. The absolute best anyone can hope from an Egyptian controlled Gaza is that it would be as good as - Egypt. That is a low bar indeed, and in reality, Egypt would never prioritize Gaza welfare over Egypt's own citizens.
No one - not the Arab states, not the EU - will throw hundreds of billions of dollars to an Egypt that is only controlling Gaza under protest and with no interest in the welfare of its people.
Even less likely is the idea that a UN Security Council resolution would ever pass to give an unwilling Egypt control over Gaza. Does Lapid even know anything about the UN?
Perhaps the most naive part of the Lapid plan is the assumption that the Palestinians can reform and build a peace-loving state. How many times will the world make this same mistake? Every Palestinian leader has been corrupt and supported terror, and every potential leader who is pragmatic has no support from the people. As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour writes, in his argument to dissolve the Palestinian state project, "No meaningful leadership capable of guiding Palestinians toward a humane, tolerant society appears to exist. Indeed, the only consistent leadership visible keeps cycling back to incitement, illusions of conquest, and pride in acts that defy basic human decency."
My own plan to make Gaza an emirate of the UAE is admittedly a longshot, but it has huge advantages over the Lapid plan, not least being that the UAE could reap huge benefits from having a presence on the Mediterranean and potentially access to natural gas in the region. Israel would be a partner in such a scenario, not a looming military threat. Only the UAE could turn Gaza into an economic and tourist powerhouse that would benefit Gazans as well, because only the UAE could look at Gaza as an investment, not a burden. And most Gazans who are not Hamas members would love to become citizens of the UAE and gain immediate benefits of statehood and access to high paying jobs across the Gulf.
The goal is a lasting, permanent peace. Too many people like Lapid assume that this means an independent Palestinian state. They simply cannot accept that a Palestinian state and true peace are utterly incompatible. We need to define the problem before we find a solution. A Palestinian state isn't a solution - it would be a further problem.
Egypt did not want to dignify the Lapid plan with an official response, but it put former general General Samir Farag on state-run TV to reject the plan and say, "Egypt's decisions are independent and cannot be linked to any financial accounts or debts, and the Egyptian state has full sovereignty and places the national interest and the Palestinian people at the top of its priorities."
Indeed, Egypt would look at this plan through the lens of honor/shame. Egyptian rhetoric against accepting Gaza refugees all emphasize the idea of an independent Egypt and how o(somehow) an influx of Palestinians would imperil that. Whether it is true or not, Egypt's pride is tied up in its self-perception of independence. Accepting cash to change its principles is shameful and out of the question.
Is Lapid really this naive an uninformed about the Egyptian mentality? He claims he understands the Egyptians because of his dealings with them, but he does not seem to grasp that how they speak to him is not necessarily how they think. It is entirely possible that he knows that this plan is dead on arrival, but he wants to make himself look like a leader and the appearance of having a plan is a political move, not a realistic desire.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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