OPINION: Freedom Is What Gaza Needs, Not Economic Prosperity

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan for post-war governance in Gaza is only a recipe for the worst. It’s time for him to think more about his people than just how to save his neck from the political guillotine

Between 1967 and 1988, the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation had minimal chances of improving their economy. They never enjoyed the luxury of growth in various aspects of life simply because living under occupation can never be natural or normal. Nevertheless, I must say that Palestinians living in the areas that Israel conquered in June 1967, i.e., the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, managed to live a good enough life to be able to send their kids to schools and universities, establish businesses, buy luxury cars, frequent fancy restaurants, and even build spectacular houses and buildings. 

Let’s not deny it. Many Palestinian families succeeded in nourishing their businesses. Laborers worked day and night to secure a respectful life standard for their children. Meanwhile, others hardly brought bread to their families as they fought between alternate jobs. All those sectors resemble identical ones in every other society, with only one difference: The Palestinians live under occupation. Others are independent in their countries. 

When Israel’s late Prime Minister Shimon Peres came up with the concept of economic peace in the Middle East, many mistook his message as an alternative to genuine peace between Israel and Middle Eastern countries. I don’t know what Peres had in mind at the time. I wanted to believe he meant what I understood or wanted to understand: that economic progress is only a bridge between countries that jump out of enmity into a pool of zero hostility, waiting for new bonds that can bring them closer to each other.

Previously warring countries needed economic prosperity afterward to boost friendly ties among themselves. However, occupiers cannot use economic prosperity to intrigue those under their control to continue living under occupation forever. On the surface, life looked as normal as possible. But underneath, acts of resistance, popular, armed, and others, have always continued in parallel. No matter how everyday life seemed under Israeli occupation between 1967 and 1987, violent and popular resistance to the occupation was always there. A single car accident in December 1987 changed the dynamics of life under occupation, as it sparked the first significant intifada against Israel. Since then, everything has looked different. 

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel in 1993 and co-signed the Oslo Accords. This five-year interim agreement has since entered its 30th year, though peace is still very far from being attained. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, many things have gone wrong. With every stalemate in the peace-making process, Israeli officials echoed Peres’ dream of economic prosperity, considering it the best way to ignore and later bury the two-state solution and perpetuate Israel’s control over all Mandatory Palestine.

Netanyahu hasn’t differed from his predecessors. More accurately, he has been the most zealot backer of Peres’ theory. This is only because it has provided him with further tools to kill the Oslo Accords peace process, which he has repeatedly bragged about destroying.

Netanyahu has always thought that a separate Gaza from the West Bank would be the ideal tool for eliminating the geopolitical unity of the Palestinian territories designated to host the independent state along the June 4, 1967, lines. He became so obsessed with the idea that he even asked Qatar to fund Hamas’ rule in Gaza and sustain it for years, only to weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ argument in favor of the two-state solution. 

What happened on October 7 directly resulted from this stupid approach, which assumed Palestinian Gazans could live under Israel’s control at the same time they were forced to tolerate Hamas’ ruthless oppression of every Palestinian “who was not one of us,” as Hamas’ men would say. (An extended siege of the Gaza Strip was the worst form of control Israel used to isolate the Strip from the outside world.)

More than half a year has passed since October 7, and the ensuing war continues until today, with no signs of ending any time soon. Throughout this whole period, Netanyahu has refused to address the question of the day after the war ends in Gaza. Even his top brass officers have been left in the dark, unable to strategize their war against Gaza, as they never had a single defined goal for the war. 

Israel’s decision-makers chose their comfort zone of ignoring what’s next, as they were busy with something much more crucial for them and their boss, Netanyahu. He only recently remembered that he owes the Israeli public an answer to the question of what’s next in Gaza. He recently published a plan for post-war governance run by a group of local Palestinians. 

Back to square one. Instead of seeking a political solution with the PLO and ending the conflict through a two-state solution, Netanyahu wants to repeat the same mistake he made with Hamas. This time, however, he wants a different set of proxies that would be more obedient to him than Hamas. Netanyahu’s three-phase plan promises the Gazans a prosperous entity in the region but does not mention anything about ending the Israeli occupation or establishing a Palestinian state. His plan assumes that the Palestinian Gazans, or those who would stay alive after this ugly war, would be happy with such a plan that feeds their mouths and terminates their political and national aspirations. What kind of nonsense is this?

Those Gazans will wake up one day and find out that a decades-long dream of independence hasn’t been accomplished, and they will launch a new intifada against Israel, much worse and more painful than what happened on October 7. With all the pain the Israelis had on that Saturday, they must consider it a warning shot to what may come next if this occupation is to continue, no matter under what disguise. 

Netanyahu’s plan outlines a three-step program for returning Gaza to self-governance and eventually reintegrating it into the regional economy. He also suggests that countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia would pay the bill for his dream to come true. The Emiratis immediately sent him a slap on the face. They said they would not build a single stone in the war-wrecked Gaza Strip without a political vision that ends the Israeli occupation and leads to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The arrogance with which Netanyahu is dealing with the Arab countries, including the UAE, which sponsored the Abraham Accords only to appease him and his old friend, President Trump, has become a self-destructing weapon. He is a leader obsessed with power.

By the way, Netanyahu made the same mistake with the UAE and Saudi Arabia a couple of months ago when he asked both countries to provide the funds needed to rehabilitate and reconstruct the Gaza Strip. In a joint statement they released immediately afterward, the two countries said they wouldn’t pay a penny for Gaza without a clear vision of ending the war and creating an independent Palestinian state.

Israel needs proper leadership that understands the limits of military might and not a set of leaders who are nothing but a bunch of insane, egoistic, self-centered, hot-headed zealots and extreme right-wing ministers led by a prime minister who could care less about his country. In contrast, Netanyahu only cares for his political future and seeks whichever way will save his neck from the political guillotine.