A plan to resolve the Palestine conflict permanently, with everyone a winner

President Trump says he wants to move all Palestinians out of Gaza and resettle them permanently in Egypt and Jordan. Motivation? Real estate grab. Justification? Impossibility of rebuilding Gaza while millions are homeless in its 350 square kilometers. Further justification? No one has proposed any better idea for what to do with the Palestinians. The Middle East, as usual, is wringing its hands, unable to come up with a realistic “better idea.”

By itself, Mr. Trump’s Gaza Grab is just that – a grab, a five percent-baked idea. Here’s the 95 percent inspiration lacks to be a humanitarian breakthrough: don’t just move refugees. Move Palestine. We’re not talking about the Mississippi River or the Swiss Alps, after all, but (as far as the Palestinians are concerned) a pile of rubble on flat land with no resources, no rainfall and no plausible hope for the future. “Palestine,” like Hemingway’s Paris, is moveable.

A year ago I guest-wrote an editorial, “The only remaining possible solution to the Palestine problem,” in the leading newspaper in the Philippines, on the face of it an unlikely country for this subject. I went on to produce 80 minutes of YouTube video detailing the plan (Google “YouTube non zero sum solution Palestine”) and even had the videos translated into Arabic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZtBEU0ijbM). I not only offered several fallback options, but also rebutted every reasonable objection. The Arabic videos have accumulated half a million views (but, regrettably, so far not by King Abdullah or any other Arab potentate).

On reconsideration, the Philippines is actually the most likely country to come up with the idea of relocating Palestine. Ancestral Filipinos populated the entire Pacific, and modern Filipinos are now everywhere in every capacity – Middle East oil mechanics, Macau musicians, Michigan MDs. Among all the peoples on earth, Filipinos are the most willing to see the entire world as a malleable neighborhood, to take the pragmatic view that if you can’t live “here,” why not “there?”

MOVE PALESTINE. Almost every statesman on earth has touted the so-called Two-State Solution, meaning a sovereign Palestine in Gaza and possibly adjacent areas. But this “solution” was and is patently ridiculous – unacceptable to Israel and in the long run certain to leave Palestine as an impoverished mendicant state that would breed yet more terrorists, especially after Israel’s punitive war.

With a ceasefire, others are now clucking over how to rebuild Palestine. Wrong question, like asking how to refloat the Titanic while the survivors are still in lifeboats. Though I’m no fan of Mr. Trump, he has a gift for seeing the obvious, when others can’t. It is obvious that you can’t rebuild Gaza while two million are homeless there. That’s Mr. Trump’s five percent. The remaining 95 percent insight is, why force them out in a manner calculated to horrify the world and further destabilize the Middle East?

The everyone-wins solution hiding in plain sight is this: build a sovereign New Palestine in a separate location not adjacent to Israel, where it will be much easier to establish a permanent country with a viable economy, and where the Palestinians can finally enjoy peace. Investors and lenders (even Mr. Trump’s hypothesized resort property developers) are unlikely to support any serious effort to rebuild Gaza/Palestine, a recurrent warzone that could get flattened again at any time.

But give the Palestinians their own sovereign land somewhere removed from Israel, provide startup money and companies and countries will be falling all over each other to invest there. Provided it is “somewhere else.” Where, exactly? There are several possibilities.

A short section of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast; a parcel in Egypt’s southwestern Sinai; a chunk of Jordan’s northeastern protrusion, which it got by accident after World War I and has barely touched since, or land in any of seven Arab-ethnic countries in North Africa. Saudi Arabia might donate land for prestige but the other countries would probably require cash. For 10,000 square kilometers (30 times Gaza), a ballpark land-acquisition price would be $10 billion (average cost of EU farmland). This isn’t a Denmark/Greenland situation. For the right price, one of the countries concerned might be willing to sell some unneeded territory.

We only need one of them to say Yes. Jordan, for example, has $40 billion in foreign debt. For an amount somewhere between $10 and $40 billion, it might deal – but maybe not if you humiliate its king. More money would be needed to actually build a new country. That money could come from oil-wealthy Arab states, multilaterals and individual countries and companies.

It would be money well-spent. For less than the cost to the world of one year of war in Gaza, we could have a New Palestine. Everyone wins. Palestinians get their own country and a chance for dignity. Israel feels more secure.

Many people claiming to speak for the Palestinians will say that they will never leave the REAL Palestine. But I bet these objectors aren’t among those who have been bombed and starving for the past 18 months. Most Gazans would jump at the chance to be somewhere removed from the Israelis.

As for the Arab World, they would fix a longstanding source of instability, and can send previous Palestinian refugees to a new home. The US would have one less hotspot to worry about. Europe would quiet tensions among its Islamic minorities.

If we build New Palestine, they will come. Provided it is – somewhere else. MOVE PALESTINE.

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Email: elcgonzalez@gmail.com