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Analysis

World Affairs: Rebuilding a Demilitarized Gaza Is the Road to Peace, by Alan Johnson

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Here is an idea whose time has come: the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in return for demilitarization of Hamas.

Britain, France, and Germany have now proposed a plan. Gazans would not just get emergency humanitarian assistance, but long-term and large-scale economic development, as well as much greater freedom to trade and travel. Hamas, on the other hand, would get disarmed. The Israeli government andopposition are in favor of the idea, so too the United States, and the policy would likely attract support from regional Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Crucially, it also offers a framework to re-establish the authority of those Palestinians who oppose terror, recognize Israel, and want to negotiate a two-state solution—the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.

I interviewed six Israeli and American policy experts this week—Matthew LevittMichael HerzogGershon BaskinJonathan SpyerJonathan Rynhold, and Asher Susser—about the viability of “reconstruction for demilitarization.” Could it be a political solution to the Gazan tragedy? As I sat and edited the transcripts, I identified these ten rules for success.

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1. Only this policy paradigm can avoid the next round of violence. “If you want to stabilize Gaza over the long run and prevent the repetition of violent rounds of conflict, you have to support this,” said Michael Herzog, a former adviser to several Israeli defense ministers. The periodic restoration of deterrence over Hamas by airstrikes and ground invasions is simply “not a tenable plan anymore,” Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute told me. Jonathan Rynhold, head of the Argov Center for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University, argued that it is vital to show that “Israel’s war is against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people.” The policy “puts the onus on Hamas to explain why they are unprepared to give up their rockets in exchange for reconstruction.”

Read the article in full at World Affairs.