Dear Chaverim,
The U.S. President made a shocking suggestion this week: rebuild Gaza by relocating its inhabitants to various neighbouring Arab nations. The reception to this was all over the map. Some were shocked, some shouted in protest, some cheered, and some called it genius. However, any kind of negotiating or strategizing – from the right or left of the political spectrum – that is based on such grandstanding and position-taking is bound to make things worse. What plagues Gaza today is not rooted in the challenges of urban renewal or infrastructure, it is cultural. It is the legacy of generations of a narrative of existential conflict with Israel.
The Jewish people have experience with what is involved and how long it takes to make successful trips between Egypt and Israel. It is not easy; the last time we did this, it took forty years.
The future of Gaza, and more importantly the future of Israel’s relationship with its neighbors, is dependent on factors that cannot be solved with military force, foreign aid, population movement, or the traditional levers of international pressure. This is particularly the case with today’s Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian leadership. They have not only been at odds with Israel since 1948, they have been at odds with each other over the future of the region. Gradually, through hard-earned experience, Jordan and Egypt have normalized relations with Israel enough to avoid war since 1967.
Peace will not come to the Middle East exclusively through power, violence, or posturing. Any roadmap to a lasting peace in the Middle East will be dependent on a deep understanding of culture as the central feature of change.
This is one of the lessons learned at the sea and in the desert during the culmination of the Exodus. There, the ultimate show of force was Gd splitting the sea. Moses waved his staff. At first, nothing happened. Then, in an act of faith, Nachshon ben Aminadav plunged into the sea until the water came to his nostrils. Then the sea parted. The Song of the Sea – Shirat Hayam – chanted by Moses on the other side of the crossing heralds the might of Gd in vanquishing the mighty Egyptians.
Forty years later Rahav recalled the enormity of this miracle as a factor in her support for Joshua and the spies who were sent to scout out Jericho in preparation for crossing the Jordan River. She gave them shelter and helped them evade the king of Jericho.
The parting of the sea seemed to have a lesser impact on the culture of the Children of Israel in the desert who had actually witnessed the miracle. No sooner had they crossed the sea then they lost faith in Gd and Moshe to provide food and water. Even the production of the Manna, the sweetening of the waters of Meriva, or the first extraction of water from the rock changed the tenuous faith or behavior of the Children of Israel. As they approached the borders of Israel for the first time and sent spies into the land, they descended quickly into panic, as if there was no memory of the divided sea.
The remedy for this problem is presented as follows. “ובניכם יהיו רעים במדבר ארבעים שנה ונשאו את זנותיכם עד תם פגריכם במדבר – Your children will be wandering shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness.” This is a declaration of the need for an incremental cultural change. The cultural narrative of the Children of Israel as needy recipients of divine or Mosaic welfare had to evolve from רעים , shepherds to caretakers. It was not the power and might of Gd, but of this cultural narrative shift that prepared the Children of Israel to enter their land.
Today, the cultural narrative of Hamas, which has overwhelming support among the population of Gaza is articulated in its charter, Article 15 as follows:
The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.
In The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror the late Princeton historian Bernard Lewis identified a thread – a kind of cultural meme – among modern Islamic movements. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Revolution and Wahhabism recall fondly the memory of the pinnacle of Islam under a Caliphate which stretched from Portugal to the Indus Valley of Pakistan. It is not a stretch to say that Hamas, or the Ayatollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood have that kind of geographic concept when they write in their charter, “the day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land.”
In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, one-time MK Einat Wilf identifies that the root of the conflict is the use of an educational system that teaches Palestinians that the elimination of Israel and any Jewish political sovereignty is the starting point for the Palestinian National movement. In Wilf’s analysis nation building is secondary to the elimination of the Zionist Entity.
University of Florida Professor of Strategy and Statecraft Walter Russel Mead recently reacted to the idea of sending Gazans to Jordan and Egypt with the following statement.
If you want a Hamas government in Aman and you want a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, I would suggest you do exactly that, and move the Palestinians into both [Egypt and Jordan]. … Trading a Hamas state in Gaza for a Hamas state in Jordan would not seem to me like necessarily the smartest trade someone could make and ditto obviously in terms of Egypt, even greater.
US administrations have the lifespan of an election cycle. By comparison, the yearning to restore the Caliphate has lasted centuries. Our dream of returning in lasting peace to our homeland has lasted more than two millennia.
This is why, now more than ever, any roadmap to a lasting peace in the Middle East will be dependent on a deep understanding of culture as the central feature of change.
We would be wise to remember that we need to begin to address some of the cultural and educational elements that perpetuate the narrative that Israel is a colonial state that can be uprooted like the French from Algeria or the Italians from Libya.
Political posturing such as the suggestion of resettling Gazans in Egypt and Jordan is not going to help anything. All the fuss about it is an intentional and lethally dangerous distraction from keeping our focus on the culture issue. The Trump Gaza proposal is just his typical bargaining strategy, as described in The Art of the Deal. He takes an extreme, outlandish opening position to get the better of the opposition in a game of shock-moves.
More importantly, President Trump’s brand of bargaining is not unique; nearly all politicians use it. His is only an extreme example of this kind of negotiation. We must stop focusing on the political posturing lest we become distracted like the Israelites who panicked in the desert.
Changing the culture was the lesson of the Jewish people’s 40 years in the desert. We have a leg up on the generation of the Exodus because we have existing infrastructure for Jewish education and Torah study, and a strong, vibrant State of Israel. However, we must not let our guard down. A workable peace in the Middle East will require strong negotiations that focus on the basics of commerce, trade, water, and energy. Those negotiations will also have to address the education of future generations of Palestinians and Israelis. This, most of all, is why any roadmap to a lasting peace in the Middle East will be dependent on a deep understanding of culture as the central feature of change.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rosenblatt and Dr. Terry Neiman
