Should the UAE Take Over Gaza?

Talking heads and pundits, and American diplomats, too, keep raising the question of “What Happens After.” That is, who will control Gaza after Hamas is crushed, and 2.2 million people will still need someone to run the area. We know that Israel has no desire to run Gaza; what it wants, however, is to retain responsibility for security in the Strip, so that never again will it be turned into a terrorist outpost threatening the lives of Israelis. As Mark Regev, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, told CNN: There is no point doing this and just going back to square one,” Regev told CNN. “There will have to be an Israeli security presence, but that doesn’t mean Israel is re-occupying Gaza, that doesn’t mean that Israel is there to govern the Gazans,” he continued.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has made clear that Israel has no desire to “occupy” Gaza, and will remain in the Strip after Hamas has been defeated only until others can take over running Gaza. However, Israel will continue to make sure that Gaza remains demilitarized; the IDF will be able to go in and out of the Strip to make sure there is no violation of that essential requirement.

Bur what country has the wherewithal to take on the task? It has to be an Arab country, of course. Egypt has declared that it does not want to take on the burden of running Gaza. It’s an expensive task; Egypt’s economy is floundering and it is in no position to engage in the reconstruction of Gaza. Israel knows that popular opinion in Egypt is ill-disposed to Israel, and might, were Egypt to run Gaza, constrain its own government from collaborating with the Israelis to make sure that no terror group — Hamas or the PIJ or another as yet unnamed — manages to re-establish itself in the Strip.

But there is one Arab country that does fit the bill. That is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which from the sale of oil is fabulously rich, and would also be in a position to convince fellow Gulf states, including Kuwait, Qatar, and above all, Saudi Arabia, to help pay for the reconstruction of a pacified and permanently pacific Gaza. The U.A.E. is the Arab country that has the closest ties with Israel, the Arab country Israel trusts the most. On October 8, the UAE described the attacks carried out by the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas as a “serious and grave escalation.” This was not as strong a condemnation as one would have liked, but it was far better than the responses from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, and Iraq, whose comments placed responsibility on Israel for the Hamas attack. And the U.A.E. also said it was “appalled” by reports Israeli civilians were taken as hostages from their homes. When the IDF began its campaign in Gaza, the UAE condemned it, but in terms not nearly as harsh as other Arab states, and put its emphasis on the need for an “immediate ceasefire.” Unlike Jordan and Turkey, the UAE did not order its diplomats home from Israel. In fact, the UAE has made clear that it wants to continue its diplomatic and economic rapprochement with Israel, despite surging opposition in the Arab and Muslim world to Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The UAE announced, on November 6 that it is setting up a 150-bed field hospital in Gaza, in coordination with Israel. This is something that Israel very much wants to happen, Israel is eager to see several field hospitals set up in the Gaza Strip as possible. It has accused Hamas of using hospitals in Gaza for war-making, putting its command-and-control centers, weapons hideouts, and combatants both in the hospitals and, mostly, in the tunnels underneath, which allow — or allowed, before Israel’s destruction of so many of them — Hamas terrorists to move about undetected. many of them using the tunnel network underneath the hospitals to move undetected throughout the Strip.

Elder of Ziyon has laid out, in greater detail than I have just above, the case for putting the UAE in charge of Gaza. You can find his argument here.

There have been a number of articles about how to fill the vacuum that will be left in Gaza after Israel destroys Hamas. It is a significant question: no one wants another Islamist group to take over.

The US is pushing for the Palestinian Authority to reassert control, but the PA is trying to extort a state out of it, saying it doesn’t want to gain power based on Israeli actions.

But the PA is a corrupt, weak entity. Nobody likes them, least of all its citizens. It lost Gaza once and it would likely lose it again.

Egypt doesn’t want Gaza. Egyptians hate everything about it. After all, it was Egypt that turned it into a virtual prison for Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war.

Israel doesn’t want Gaza back. It doesn’t want to govern two million hostile Arabs, not to mention take over day to day governance. Imagine the suicide bombings at every governmental office. And, of course, it would be “occupation.”

So who should run Gaza the day after Hamas is eradicated?…

The UAE is at peace with Israel. it could pour massive amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza into a paradise. It wouldn’t allow Islamists to gain a toehold.

Gazans would suddenly live in a place that has a future. The UAE and Israel could work on joint business ventures and economic zones to help employment and bring Gaza up to modern standards. One could imagine luxury hotels and high tech skyscrapers being built on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Gazans would become citizens of an Arab country and could still call themselves Palestinians. The emirate itself could be called “the Emirate of Palestine.” Why not? And Gaza citizens of the UAE could move to the other emirates to seek other opportunities if they prefer.

The UAE would never agree to change its name. Nor would it necessarily want to have large numbers of Gazans descending onto its small territory. It should be willing to help the Gazans, as long as they remain in Gaza, to rebuild their territory with Emirati funds.

Why would the UAE be interested? Well, a port on the Mediterranean is a pretty big carrot. Shipping lanes from and to Europe would be a huge economic boost. Working with Israel, the proposed train line from the Gulf to Israel could be extended a bit to Gaza to tie the Gulf countries closer to the sea as well.

Yes, a port on the Mediterranean owned and run by the UAE could be most useful for exports of oil from the Emirates, assuming other Arab states would cooperate on the matter of pipelines) and for the import of goods from Europe and North America.

Also, Palestinians are among the best educated Arabs. There is a competent workforce already there.

I have seen no figures suggesting that Palestinians are better educated than the Arabs of the Gulf, who have the leisure to study, but they may be better educated than the people in Egypt and Jordan. The main thing is their deep desire to better their wretched lot, after having suffered through 20 years of Hamas theft and misrule. They are certainly ready to receive vocational training, if given that chance.

Moreover, Gaza could become a money-making tourism destination. Wealthy Europeans could rub shoulders with wealthy Arabs and make deals.

This strikes me as most unlikely. “Wealthy Europeans” and “wealthy Arabs” have much better places to “rub shoulders” than Gaza, which only has one thing to recommend it — its position on the Mediterranean. Otherwise, it is without charm. It will take years to reconstruct Gaza so that it is again in a tolerable condition, so that a handful of tourists will want to visit. Those “wealthy” Europeans and Arabs already “rub shoulders” in London and Paris, and in luxury venues (hotels and offices) in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Manama. And of course they can also meet in Israel itself, or in Lebanon, both of which already have a developed coastline on the Mediterranean.

Gazans would have huge opportunities to work and thrive. There would be no more “refugees.’…

“Huge” opportunities? The Gazans would at long last have reasonable “opportunities,” to work and thrive, if Hamas is destroyed and the grasping. Palestinian Authority is not imposed to replace it, with leaders only slightly less grasping and despotic than those of Hamas.

People who truly want peace in the region would love to see this idea work. People who only want to get rid of Israel would hate this idea.

Of the various possible caretakers of Gaza after Hamas is crushed, the UAE is the Arab state that is most likely to succeed in transforming the Strip into a place a good deal better than what Gazans have now. There will be no transformation of Gaza into a Middle Eastern “Singapore,” but people in the Strip will be content to live under fellow Arabs who are there not to steal from them — as Hamas leaders consistently did, and as Palestinian Authority leaders would do if given half a chance — but to bring them some measure of prosperity. More Gazans — perhaps as many as 50,000 — could again be working inside Israel, receiving Israeli-level wages that are many times larger than what people earn in Gaza. Others who remain in Gaza will work for both Arab, especially Emirati, companies, as well as Israeli ones. The standard of living should rise to the level of that of Lebanon in 1975, before the Lebanese Civil War and the malign appearance of Hezbollah, sent that country’s economy into a tailspin. That would be a good outcome.