Israel and the Palestinians are at a significant crossroads. The Israel-Hamas War is generating extensive diplomatic activity. The ripple effects of the war may produce a reality that possibly neither Israel nor the Palestinians had intended.
To better control the event and its outcomes, Israel should dig into the heart of the matter and influence the “theory of numbers” in the Palestinians’ worldviews.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a creative step by deploying loudspeakers so that the hostages in the Gaza Strip could hear his UN Assembly address over powerful loudspeakers in the Gaza Strip. On the surface, it’s an interesting, outside-the-box idea so that Hamas members and their supporters would also hear his key messages.
However, Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist organization whose members have committed horrific acts. Is there anyone who believes that the Israeli prime minister’s words will convince them to lay down their arms, even with the simultaneous translation into Arabic that was provided?
Does anyone think that a loathsome Hamas terrorist is going to change course because of those words?
Hamas not heeded
In Gaza City, we’ve been told that only hard core there would refuse evacuating. Reality has proven otherwise: Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians did not heed Hamas’s demand to remain in danger. Even if in principle they support the idea of destroying Israel, they are not willing to die for it.
Against Hamas and its backers, there must be an uncompromising war. They must not again have control of territory, weapons, or any operational capability to harm us. Israel will need, wisely, to erase the Hamas idea and re-educate over the coming quarter-century.
While it is clear to everyone that Hamas is an organization of vile murderers who, whenever able, will seek to kill us and with whom one must not negotiate, there are those who urge placing trust in the Palestinian Authority and its corrupt leaders in Ramallah. But PA head Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts, who sport pins on their lapels in the shape of the keys of Sheikh Munis and Safed, seek to ultimately expel us from Tel Aviv and beyond.
Their lip service is a honey trap.
I do not want to fall into such a trap, resulting in the outcome that they openly declare: They aspire to a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would be Palestinian. Unfortunately, when that is the ideal they are taught to aspire to, there is no one to talk to.
Finding ways to live
Nevertheless, I have repeatedly found Palestinians who, unlike Hamas or the corrupt PA, look with longing at Israeli Arab citizens and wish to be like the Arabs of the Jewish state's Abu Ghosh and Kafr Qasim. They see the rates of matriculation and university graduates, the standard of living and quality of life, and want to be like them.
Those are the people genuinely interested in finding a way to live beside us, and Israel should empower them; Israel should speak with them. I do not know how large this group is, but I believe we can enlarge it further.
For long months, Hamas had tried to convince us that a million Gaza residents would be willing to sacrifice themselves, and yet the numbers show otherwise – although some did not evacuate, fearing the terrorist organization. We have the ability to effect change among Palestinian groups and thereby change and influence the future of our lives here and, of course, political moves.
Middle East dreams
When we know how to encourage the group that truly wants to find a common path, to increase its power in numbers and in influence, and when there is a willingness to listen on the other side, we can begin to believe again in our dreams of a different Middle East.
If we can create such a group and its influence grows, together we can change the sequence of anti-Israel decisions, remove threats of boycotts from the table, and perhaps even silence the demonstrations, because there will be people we can speak to.
It is within Israel’s power to take its political fate into its own hands. We must begin to act now, before a future is imposed upon it that is different from the one for which it dreams.
The writer is CEO of Anu – Museum of the Jewish People.