With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, "How do you solve a problem like ... Gaza?"

There actually are no good solutions. So there's more discussion of "Voluntary Emigration." It's not only Ben-Gvir pushing it. Though it is unlikely to happen, the idea is getting traction.

Joe Biden is apparently not happy with whatever plan for Gaza’s future Bibi Netanyahu has shared with him. And understandably so. For while most of us have no idea what the plan calls for, there’s one thing we know about it—it’s either a very bad idea (Israel occupying Gaza long-term), or it’s a plan that cannot work. Period.

Israel has no good options in Gaza, for reasons we’ll lay out below. Which is why certain ideas that are unmentionable in some circles are getting traction in Israel—including the idea of making it possible for Gazans to leave. Below, we we share a bit of what’s happening on that issue in the press and on social media here.

A reminder before we get started, which seems to be necessary more often than I could have expected: we post many things with which we don’t agree. The point of IFTI is not to express our own views, but to afford our readers a glimpse into the mosaic of viewpoints that make up Israeli society, discourse and politics.

First, though, the (tentative)) schedule for this week, and then a brief humorous clip that made its way around Israeli social media. Then the much more serious issue of how to handle Gaza.

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SUNDAY (2/25): That’s today. We’re covering the very not PC but also not so crazy idea that Gazans be given the right to leave Gaza for elswhere in the world. It’s getting traction here, so we give it the attention that an honest glimpse at Israel requires.

MONDAY (2/26):   Over the past few months, we’re shared some extraordinary videos of parents who’ve lost children—at the Nova festival, when their son was killed by IDF soldiers as he was seeking to escape captivity, or killed in battle on October 7, among others. Those videos were of parents who told the soldiers who killed their son that they don’t blame them, that they want to hug them. But there are other parents, too, filled with rage, mostly at the country and the government. They, too, are part of the Israeli story, and we’ll provide one video on that subject;

TUESDAY (2/27):  Gadi Eizenkott, a former IDF Chief of Staff who now sits on the inner war cabinet—and if the one reason that many Israelis have faith in that cabinet—lost his son in this war. Uvdah, an Israeli rough equivalent of 60 Minutes, with Ilana Dayan our parallel to Leslie Stahl (sort of), ran a long segment on him which was fascinating and moving. We’ve taken a few select pieces, added subtitles and will be sharing it.

WEDNESDAY (2/28):   Yair Ettinger, a veteran Israeli report who is now with Kan TV News, has been featured in a number of the clips we’ve shared. Today we focus on his recent book, now translated into English. Entitled Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists, won prizes for its Hebrew version, and the English translation was just named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. We sat to discuss some of the elements of his book and how they play out in the political scene now developing in Israel.

THURSDAY (2/29): Much discussion has been devoted to newfound devotion to Israel that has been unleashed since October 7, and we’ve cover a good bit of that. But there’s another side of the coin—people who have just decided that the war, the stress and the uncertainty are too much for them, and are taking their families to Europe and leaving Israel. It’s a side of Israel we need to know about, and we cover it today.

FRIDAY (2/30):  Finally, we’ll close out the week with some thoughts I shared with visiting groups on whether we’d make aliyah all over again if we’d known what has going to happen, what the challenges and opportunities might be for a renewed relationship between American Jews and Israel, and a glimpse at some of this week’s Israeli press.

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Guy Hochman is a well-known Israeli comedian, particularly popular among the younger crowd. In this clip that went a bit viral, he apparently found himself on an army base (from the looks of it, for an entertainment performance with people milling about afterwards), when he decides to play matchmaker for a soldier named “Gil.”

He calls her over. It’s easy to see that she was not really game, but played along anyway. But the young man Hochman apparently had in mind for her posed an unexpected problem. Hochman’s quick wit in response, the line about “Mohammad Cohen,” made a lot of people here laugh (you can hear the soldiers laughing in the background, too).

People in these parts can use a quick smile here and there.

The above cover appeared on the front of one of the Makor Rishon sections this weekend. It’s a photo of Meir Ben-Shabbat, the former head of the Mal”al, or Israel’s National Security Council.

The entire headline, in quotes, is from him, and it reads:

The push to create a Palestinian state is a serious mistake, even from the perspective of the Americans’ goals.

The American administration, to which Israelis are still grateful but about which they are also increasingly nervous, is warming up to the idea that resolution of this war should put into place a process that would culminate in a Palestinian state. Even most Israelis who generally believe that goal to be the only workable long-term solution, though, think the timing is nuts. To “reward” Hamas and the Palestinians with a state after the worst attack on Jews since the Nazi era seems ludicrous.

But here’s what Israelis increasingly fail to understand. In our minds, today’s date is October 148, 2023. It’s been 141 days since October 7, but in the minds of many Israelis, what has transpired since then has been one long, desperate, depressing day, with soldiers still dying and well over one hundred hostages still being held in hell.

For much of the West, even among those who were at first quite sympathetic to Israel, this war is now “just a war.” More and more, people don’t look at Gaza and say “this is because of October 7.” They say, “this is because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we have to end it.”

Israel and the West are on a collision course. (So, too, I believe, are Israel and many American Jews, but that’s separate topic.) That, Israelis understand. So the question of what to do with Gaza is becoming more pressing. The no good options include:

• A UN international force — like the one that has allowed Hezbollah to accumulate 150,000 rockets, many of them precision weapons and to embed itself near Israel’s border despite UN Resolution 1701. Non-starter.

• The Palestinian Authority, which still has a “pay to slay” policy of financially rewarding the families of terrorists who murder or maim Israelis. Non-starter.

• Some sort of NATO force. How many American, French and German parents want their sons dying because Israelis and Palestinians are at war? This would be no peacekeeping mission. It would mean taking on the remnants of Hamas, which could be appreciable. Likely a non-starter.

• Israel stay in Gaza? That’s likely for the foreseeable future, but for the long run, Israel trying to run the daily lives of 2 million Gazans is a bad idea for many reasons. Even if Gush Katif, the settlements that were destroyed when Israel left Gaza in 2005 were re-established (which some people her advocate), who rules the Palestinians? The Israelis?

There are other possibilities and each of these options is very complex, but the short version of the bottom line is that Israel has no good options.

That has led to many public personalities discussing how we ought to proceed. Last weekend, many Israelis found in their newspaper a glossy, nicely designed booklet printed on thick paper, pictured below.

VOLUNTARY EMIGRATION: An Essential Component of in the Humanitarian Rehabilitation of Unrooted Gazans. A position paper.

By Noga Arbel and Dr. Yoav Sorek.

Both Arbel and Sorek are smart and thoughtful—we discussed Sorek’s book in Israel from the Inside, way back in August 2021. Neither are blowhards or radicals, which is what made the appearance of their (obviously well-funded) position paper so fascinating.

Here’s a translation of their own executive summary:

The war in Gaza, which Hamas imposed on Israel, has created hundreds of thousands of real refugees, who will not be able to return to their homes until the demilitarization and reconstruction of the Strip is complete, a process that will take many years. From a humanitarian point of view, it is better for Israel, Egypt and the countries of the world to allow refugees who wish to emigrate outside the Strip, in order to rebuild their lives.

A significant part of the population of Gaza was interested in immigrating to other countries even before the war, in order to improve their lives. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have left the Strip since Hamas came to power in June 2007, even when such migration was complicated and expensive.

The desire for immigration, which was widespread on the eve of the war, is twice as widespread now, given the destruction and the absence of a peace horizon. There is no place to continue perpetuating the false evacuation of the residents of Gaza, or the international cooperation with the terror regime of Hamas.

Accepting refugees from war zones is an accepted norm in the international system, including the recent systems in Ukraine and Syria. We must not mess with the exclusion of Gaza, and of Israel, from the international rules. The closing of the border by Egypt and the exploitation of the suffering of the Gazans to promote political interests is against the norms, international law and the most basic humanitarian interest, in whose name the laws were written.

As much as there is a real international interest in the reconstruction of the Strip, the discussion about the process and the arrangements "the day after" cannot take place in the reality of an ongoing humanitarian crisis. A humanitarian corridor must therefore be quickly established outside the Gaza Strip for those who wish to leave it, (without crossing through sovereign Israeli territory). The resources allocated by the world for aid within the Strip can be directed to the establishment of temporary residence centers for the residents of Gaza (in places where they do not pose a risk to Israel or its citizens) - where they will also be offered options for permanent immigration, adapted to them, in a selection of destination countries.

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Needless to say, the fancy brochure and its suggestion engendered a great deal of discussion. Some felt that the non-combative tone notwithstanding, Arbel and Sorek were up to something more nefarious than they admitted. Here, for example, is a tweet of another public intellectual, whom we’ve had on our podcast in the past.

… The truth is that there is not much there. They say that immigration should be allowed and that many in Gaza want to emigrate. One hundred percent, I am also in favor of anyone who wants to emigrate.

What they don’t say is how many will actually emigrate? After all, if we are talking about thousands, even hundreds of thousands, what does it matter to Israel? There is no real change in the situation.

What else is not said? Who will take them in? After all, in their opinion, the Gazans are Hamas supporters. Who would want to take in Hamas supporters in their country? Have you thought about that? Probably not.

What else is not said? What would the world say, what would the Emirates and Saudi Arabia say, and of course what will be done with those who remain? Ah, sorry, Sorek was already interviewed about this and said that Gaza should be a “Hebrew city.” Maybe there’s a hint in that.

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That same week, Makor Rishon carried a very long article on this suggestion as well as others, with a few leading thinkers. One of them, the impressive Gita Hazani-Melchior, spoke about the gradual shift in her views. As the article noted:

Hazani-Melchior went through a similar process of perceptual change over a decade ago. “My process of sobering up [DG - “sobering up” is the most common phrase used these days about Israelis who have abandoned their previously more liberal positions] was more gradual,” she says. “It was based on personal and professional experience and continuous inquiry, which led me to what I call an identity ‘U-turn.’” We will return to her story later.

The Makor Rishon article goes on as follows:

A few days after the Hamas attack, Hazani-Melchior also wrote on Facebook that “the Gazan population much not be permitted to live near the south of Israel. This population needs to emigrate to Egypt, and the Americans are the first to understand this.” Later, she updated her world view, and now she believes that it is better not to transfer the refugees from Gaza to Arab countries. “With the prevailing ideologies in Muslim countries, settling Gazan refugees in the Arab world means perpetuating the danger and even intensifying it. Hamas supporters in Arab countries may establish themselves and become stronger again, undermine the regimes in the countries that will receive them, and the danger will temporarily go away to return with greater force. Immigration should be carried out to countries like the United States and Canada, which know how to use a strong hand against murderous ideologies, and not Europe, which fails to stop the spread of radical Islam.”

Later, the article addresses Sorek and his views.

People will argue with you and say that in practice this is a “transfer” of a population, an idea that is perceived in our time as morally unacceptable.

“I purposely do not use the word ‘transfer,’ and not just for semantic reasons but because it really isn't that,” Sorek comments. “This is about the release of Gazans from the prison they helped build with their own hands, and many of them are interested in getting out of it free. Contrary to the threatening term ‘transfer,’ we are talking here about a population that started fighting against us and has already been evacuated from their homes, and not about forced deportation.”

Don't you think that even after October 7, Israeli society will shy away from marches that are identified with a Kahanist ideology?

“Listen, you don't have to go far to Kahana, it’s completely Ben-Gurion. In the War of Liberation, the removal of the Arab population was a stated goal of the operations for the occupation of the Negev. They may have avoided talking about it explicitly, but it was undoubtedly there. We know this because there Protocols of these discussions.”

“This is the moral order,” says Ben-Shemesh [DG - another thinker covered in the artcile]. “That's how it was in ‘48, and that’s how it turns out, even today. We all saw in the videos how the Gazans were completely involved in the massacre and the infiltration of Israel, and we heard the shocking phone call of the terrorist who calls his entire family to boasts about what he’d done. This artificial distinction between ‘uninvolved citizens’ and ‘Hamas’ is a fiction that no one believes anymore. Of course there are non-involved and even opponents, but I think they are precisely the minority.”

Hazani-Malchior: “If we are generous and say that not all Gazans are Hamas supporters, then transferring them to other countries is no less than a humanitarian rescue from a murderous regime. If we are more critical and say that the absolute majority support Hamas, then our moral duty is above all to our children.”

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Some readers will find this shocking. We’ll soon review a well-known conversation that the Israeli press had many, many years ago with one of Israel’s leading historians, Benny Morris, on the question of what was the agenda in 1948, whether “transfer” was the goal and what he thought of that. His responses will likely surprise you.

But we’ll come back to that.

For now, what matters is that observers who care about Israel but may not have access to the Hebrew press should have a sense of the conversations that are brewing. What is likely to unfold here is not going to be easy for many of those who care deeply about the Jewish state.

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Impossible Takes Longer is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and at other booksellers.