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Thomas L. Friedman
By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion columnist, reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
It has troubled me from the beginning that Israel announced its invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas without any plan for what would happen to the territory and the rest of its population after a victory. After spending a week in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to take the pulse of this corner of the Arab world, I’m even more worried.
Let me summarize my concerns this way: Because Hamas built a vast tunnel network under Gaza, Israeli forces, in their quest to eliminate that vicious terrorist organization, are having to destroy huge numbers of structures. It’s the only way they can kill a lot of Hamas fighters and demilitarize Gaza without losing a lot of their own soldiers in the short window that Israel feels it has in the face of pressure from the U.S. and other allies to wind down the invasion.
Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for breaking the ceasefire in effect on October 7 and indiscriminately murdering, raping or maiming more than 1,200 people and kidnapping about 240 more in its path that day. Hamas planned and executed a crusade of unspeakable barbarity that seemed designed to drive Israel crazy and wreak havoc without thought the next morning. And that is precisely what Israel did.
But nine weeks later, we can now see the next morning. In pursuing its purpose of dismantling Hamas’s military apparatus and getting rid of its most sensible leaders, Israel has killed and injured thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. Hamas knew this was going to end took place and didn’t care at all. Israel will have to do it. He will inherit responsibility for a gigantic humanitarian disaster that will require years of global coalition to fix and manage. As the Times reported on Tuesday, “satellite imagery shows that the fighting has caused severe damage in almost every corner of Gaza City. “At least 6,000 buildings have been destroyed, about a third of which are in ruins.
A recent essay on this subject in Haaretz by David Rosenberg noted that “even if the fighting ends in a decisive victory over Hamas, Israel will be saddled with a problem that almost defies solution. Most of the public discussion about what happens the day after the war has focused on who will govern Gaza. That alone is a knotty question, but the problem goes much deeper than who will be responsible for law and order and providing basic services: Whoever is in charge will have to rebuild the wreckage that is Gaza and create a functioning economy.”
This will be a multi-million dollar and multi-year project. And I can tell you, based on my conversations here, that no Gulf Arab state (let alone the states of the European Union or the US Congress) will come to Gaza with bags. cash to rebuild it unless. . . And even that isn’t certain. Israel has a valid and effective Palestinian spouse and is committed to negotiating a two-State solution one day. Any Israeli official who claims otherwise is deluded. “We want a plan for a viable two-state solution, a serious roadmap before we communicate about rebuilding Gaza’s infrastructure,” Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a Tuesday interview with the Wall Street Journal.
The most encouraging thing I can take away from Riyadh, and from my conversations with U. S. officials in Washington prior to my arrival, is that when the war in Gaza ends, Saudi Arabia remains committed in principle to resuming ongoing negotiations by October 7. they were discussing a grand bargain in which the U. S. would conclude a security treaty with Saudi Arabia and, at the same time, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, provided Israel committed to taking definitive steps to work with the Palestinian Authority toward a two-state agreement. solution.
But here I had a very strong impression that the Saudis need the Americans to end the war in Gaza as soon as possible, because the death and destruction in Gaza is radicalizing their young population (which, by and large, was not the goal of the war). war in Gaza). Israel-Palestine before), while spooking foreign investors and sometimes status in the way of what Saudi Arabia needs to focus on: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan for the country, from education to infrastructure to women’s empowerment. .
Even if the leaders here are not in the least sympathetic to Hamas and would not regret for a moment the group’s demise, they doubt that Israel can annihilate Hamas and worry that, by attempting to do so, the damage done to Gaza will worsen. aftermath.
Of course, I understand why it would be difficult, even for a moderate Israeli government, to devote itself to reviving this argument between Saudi Arabia, the United States, Israel, and Palestine – not to mention the organization of fanatics who lately rule Israel and are made determined to annex the West Bank and Palestine. Of which the craziest even envious are the incorporation of Gaza. And given what happened on October 7, few Israelis need to even think, let alone accept, ceding territorial control to a Palestinian governmental authority. .
But if Israel does not come up with a long-term political vision to trap the world and fund the reconstruction of Gaza, it will face serious diplomatic and economic difficulties. Gaza could become a giant, chest-sucking wound that would test Israel. militarily, economically, and morally, and drag down its protective superpower, the United States.
Bibi Netanyahu is lately campaigning to get the job done by trying to prove to his far-right base that he is the only leader willing to tell Biden’s management to their faces that his country will never do the minimum demanded by the United States: Israel. It will have to help nurture a reorganized Palestinian Authority and offer a long-term political horizon for a Palestinian state in order to develop a Palestinian alliance that can one day rule a Gaza liberated from Hamas and Israel.
That is why Saudi Arabia’s willingness (if sustained) to continue the debate between the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine when this war ends is so important. But this is not just an act of charity on the part of the Saudis. This generation of leaders in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco (three countries that signed the Abraham Accords with Israel) is not sentimental when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if it’s complicated.
These leaders are fed up with being told they have to postpone their priorities and focus their energy, attention and resources on the Palestinian cause. At the same time, though, they are genuinely horrified at the civilian losses in Gaza. At the same time, they are keenly aware of the corruption and general incompetence of the Palestinian Authority. And at the same time, they detest the Muslim Brotherhood offshoots like Hamas and understand how its sympathizers around the region, with the ever-cynical help of Iran, are trying to use the images of dead babies in Gaza on television and social media to inflame Arab populations.
Western diplomats and Saudi officials have pointed out to me how all those political headwinds are howling today in the ugly inter-Arab battles taking positions on Arab social media over the Palestinian issue. This was especially true after Prince Mohammed, in an interview with Fox News in September, expressed enthusiasm about normalizing relations with Israel if it moved toward a solution with the Palestinians. (I believe this Saudi preference was in fact one of the main reasons Hamas attacked on October 7. )
For example, when Saudi Arabia held its annual sports and entertainment festival known as Riyadh Season on October 28 – featuring widely watched sports matches by top athletes and performances by Arab and foreign singers, dancers and other artists – the networks pro-Palestinian social media A group of media influencers, basically from Kuwait and Egypt, began criticizing the Saudis for laughing while Gaza burned. Posts contrasting cultural representations of Riyadh and the bombed Palestinians in Gaza have begun to proliferate, much to the chagrin of the Saudis, many of whom are as enraged by the deaths of so many Gaza civilians as any other Arab.
The Daily Mail Australia reported that at the Nov. 21 soccer World Cup qualifier match in Kuwait between the Palestinian and Australian teams, Palestinian fans “staged a protest against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.” On the seventh minute of the game, they raised Palestinian flags and waved Palestinian head scarfs, kaffiyehs, “to mark the start of the war on 7 Oct. — the date of the Hamas attack inside Israel.”
The seventh-minute protest was not only a boon to Hamas, it was also perceived as an attack on the Saudis, an official here told me. Portuguese football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo now plays for Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr. Ronaldo wears the number 7 blouse, and seven minutes into the match, Al-Nassr fans cheered him on.
Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia hosted the second opening regatta of the 37th America’s Cup at the Jeddah Yacht Club on the Red Sea coast, as Yemen’s Houthi pirates attacked Israeli ships in the Red Sea and Houthi militiamen fired rockets into Israel. From this he was taking positions on and in the ocean, an American friend of mine at the regatta said that one of his Saudi hosts was berating him about the Americans for the destruction of Gaza. It’s complicated.
And yet: I was walking in the Faisaliah mall Monday when a middle-aged shopkeeper who recognized me walked out of his women’s clothing store to say hello. He talked about all the business opportunities that were opening up in Saudi Arabia. Our conversation, though, quickly turned to Gaza, and he wanted to make sure I understood that many Saudis did not support Hamas, because its mass murder of civilians and abduction of children in war was expressly banned by the Prophet Muhammad and was done at the behest of Iran.
The good news: A few months ago, the Saudi government did a private poll asking Saudis how they felt about normalization with Israel — if it were done in the context of Saudi support for Palestinian statehood. Seventy percent approved, a senior official told me. The bad news: Given the images coming out of Gaza now, he added, the government wouldn’t dare conduct that poll today.
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Thomas L. Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for Opinion. He joined the newspaper in 1981 and won 3 Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook
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