The news emerging from a briefing by an unnamed Israeli official during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s urgent Aug. 18 Ukraine visit had nothing to do with the trip and probably everything to do with the upcoming elections. The official in Netanyahu’s entourage told reporters covering the visit that the National Security Council had been asked to draw up a plan for encouraging residents of the Gaza Strip to leave their homes and move to Arab and other countries. Israel’s security Cabinet has seriously debated the idea, but so far, the authors of the plan have not found a country willing to take in the would-be emigres.
The idea reminded me of “Through Secret Channels” (1995), written by Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian president. Parts of the book focus in great detail on the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and others describe the far more fascinating process the writer underwent leading to his deep engagement in efforts to reach peace with Israel. Abbas writes that at the beginning of the 1970s, he came across an article noting that Jewish migrants from Arab states constituted the majority of Israel’s Jewish population. He was astounded and then felt that he had hit upon a brilliant idea for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The PLO would call on all the Arab states to take back the Jews who had abandoned their homes there!
Abbas reveals that between 1970 and 1977 he read voraciously about Israel, a fact that led to more than one raised eyebrow among his colleagues, who saw his interest as a type of betrayal. He went on to write two books, claiming that part of the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict might lie in the return of the Jews from Arab countries to the lands where they were born and raised. In these books, Abbas specifically urges Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco and Yemen to state their immediate willingness to take in the migrants and guarantee them a warm welcome. While the states did not reject his call, their response was not sufficiently enthusiastic, at which point he realized that the solution was unworkable from their perspective.
Subsequently, Abbas realized that talk of Jews leaving Israel if the first intifada (1987-1993) spread from the occupied territories into Israel was also nonsense. The Jews would not leave the area just as the Palestinians would not.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
