The Only Way The Conflict Can End

Many people wonder what will happen after the end of the 2023 Gaza War. Will the Palestinian Authority take administrative control of the area with Israel serving a military function, much like Area B in the West Bank? Will Hamas 2.0 rise from the ashes, the way Queen Rania of Jordan (herself of Palestinian descent) predicts, which will be a “new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”

There is a better way. To end Palestinian atrocities and the horrible death on both sides, one needs to speak a plain truth at the core of the conflict to understand how to end it.

The United Nations and Saudi Arabia must state clearly that there is no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs to go to Israel. The Arabs’ future lies in Gaza or parts of the West Bank that will be under the Palestinian Authority, or another country that welcomes them, should they decide to leave the region.

Palestinians have been lied to by the United Nations for 75 years that they will get to return to homes where grandparents once lived. The United Nations continues to call many Palestinians “refugees” and places keys atop UNRWA “refugee” camps to tell them that the UN is much more than a services agency: they are the gateway to returning to Israel.

*Portal to UNRWA Aida “refugee” camp near Bethlehem*

The UN maintains refugee camps inside Gaza and the West Bank to tell Palestinian Arabs that the land they stand on – which was part of Palestine in 1947 – is just a waiting zone. They will get to move to Israel someday.

So the Arabs have grown very frustrated. Rather than make a life in Gaza and the West Bank, they covet the first world country next door that it really belongs to them. Palestinians vote for invasion rather than investment.

Approximately 81.2% of UNRWA wards reside in what was the British Mandate in 1922 or what was annexed by Jordan with Arabs given citizenship. Almost all of them have self-determination, either as citizens of Jordan or under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. There are really only Syrian and Lebanese “refugee” descendants which need to be addressed.

And those in Syria and Lebanon should move to a new Palestinian State.

Before Israel left Gaza in 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush sent Israeli Prime Minister a letter in April 2004 to encourage the Israeli action: “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

The Democratic Party long held the same notion in its platform stating “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The Obama/ Biden Administration had that statement removed in 2012, stoking Palestinian anger/hope which bubbled into 2014, 2021 and 2023 wars from Gaza against Israel, each under either President Obama or President Biden.

The United Nations and Saudi Arabia need to deliver the message ending the ‘right of return’ so that Palestinians know these intifadas to destroy Israel are over. It is time for Palestinian Arabs to focus energies on building institutions, economy and society, and abandon the genocidal efforts to destroy the Jewish State.

UNRWA should announce a wind down of all camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan, and funnel those monies to actual refugees who really need the services, fleeing their homeland to faraway countries where they are strangers not knowing the language, people or land. Saudi Arabia should play a role in rebuilding the Gaza infrastructure together with Israel, and push the Iran-Hamas alliance into the dustbin of infamy.

The future for coexistence relies on terminating the ongoing failed policy promoted by the United Nations for 75 years, and a new Saudi-Israeli alliance might be the pathway to broader peace.