Oslo Failed, Part 2: Pinhas Inbari and an economic route to peace and stability

In Part 1 of this series, Dan Diker explained a possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict, the Village Leagues. It is, in some ways, similar to Mordechai Kedar’s Emirates proposal. While 85% of the Arabs in the Palestinian Authority (PA) are “sick and tired of the PA,” would they be amenable to either model for change? After viewing a panel discussion in which senior Arab affairs correspondent Pinhas Inbari discussed the vast differences among the Arabs in both Israel and the PA, I decided to ask him what he thought.

We talked on Zoom last week.

While Inbari expressed appreciation for Kedar, he said that using the Gulf states model is inappropriate for Israel because: 1. the Gulf Arab population is more homogeneous than our neighbours in the PA and their sheikhs are in the consensus; and 2. there is oil and gas in the Gulf, meaning that living in prosperity, they lack for nothing.

I challenged him on this, remarking that it is well known that some Palestinian Arabs from established families, some during their university studies, set out and committed suicide attacks against Israelis.

Inbari went on to talk about Islam in the UAE:

Their model of Islam, contrary to what we thought all these years, is very tolerant and embracing. I visited the Islamic Museum in Sharjah in the UAE. They show how Islam was part of world culture. How it was part of world philosophy, inventions, navigation. That’s why the Abraham Accords were easily and naturally accepted there.

Is this why the UAE model will not be applicable among the “West Bank” Arabs, I asked?

In every city in the West Bank, there are clans that fight each other. And the clans are crime families fighting each other. Who is the biggest family in Ramallah? The Barghouti family. Today they are Hamas. We cannot base a political solution on crime families.

Their fight is not over what kind of state they will establish but what kind of struggle they will wage against Israel.

And what do we in Israel want? We want stability and peace. If we set up an element within the West Bank that will compete with the militias – the PLO, Hamas, the Popular Front, this Front and that Front – we have a chance of achieving that. In other words, we establish a model that completely negates the very idea of the struggle.

We do that by quietly establishing ties to support trade and commerce in the private sector in the West Bank. The private sector wants stability. They don’t want intifadas. They don’t want to see what happened in Gaza happen in the West Bank. They are afraid of that.

Arafat saw the private sector as a threat. He came from Tunis with a mindset of jihad. He knew the merchants didn’t want that. So Arafat fought the private sector and persecuted them and reduced their power. He monopolized the economy in his own hands. And he directed the economy in a way that suited the struggle, the militia, the PLO.

I’ll give you an example. In my naïve time, right after the Oslo Accords, the World Bank made all kinds of moves to encourage the economy and the private sector. There were conferences on the economy and investments. I met with the mayor of Beit Jala, who was a friend of mine at the time. I sat with him in his office and there was an expat from Beit Jala now living in Latin America. He had come to the conference. I remarked how it was great that he could now invest in businesses here and he said, ‘No. I don’t think so.’ And when I asked why, he said that he heard the PA leadership talk and they reminded him about why he shouldn’t invest here. They drove him out. Then I understood that the PA does not want a private sector, doesn’t want investments that they don’t control.

From the start, I have said that we must act in ways that are not related to the PA as they will sabotage everything. We don’t make politics, we work through the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce.

Does that mean setting up industrial zones like the Barkan, where Israelis and Palestinians work side by side, drawing equal salaries and benefits and having equal opportunities to rise in the company hierarchies?

I’m in favour of industrial zones, but they are not relevant to our issue. What is relevant is what happens in Nablus and Hebron and Bethlehem and Jenin. Supporting institutions that will challenge the militias – not with the force of arms because they don’t have weapons, but with the force of consciousness.

I visited a Chamber of Commerce in City A [Inbari told me the name of the city but prefers it not be made public]. All the clans got together to prevent the collapse of the Chamber of Commerce by preventing the PA from getting elected to positions on it. And in the offices, you see the mandatory photo of Abu Mazen and the PA flag, but you see a whole wall of photos of meetings in Amman, in the Gulf. The Chamber of Commerce has more power than the mayor.

There are funds available to provide grants and loans to new business starts. These funds have been frozen for years because of fears that the PA would steal the money and it would go toward terrorist acts. These funds can be re-opened and, together with Israeli intelligence vetting the applicants, the money can go through the Chambers of Commerce that are not controlled by the PA and directly to the business owners. Israel needs to know that the money is really going to be for opening a shop and not an explosives laboratory.

I asked about how to fight the phenomenon of terrorists requesting protection money from shop owners. Inbari responded that it will take time to eliminate that and we have to be patient.

Where will it lead if your ideas are acted upon?

I’ll put it this way: it will not lead to a Palestinian state. There is no Palestinian state because the Palestinians don’t want one.

We gave the Palestinians all the opportunities in the world and they didn’t accept them. Palestinians have told me that, for them, the PA is the occupation. If we would have talked with the locals, we could have figured things out. Arafat did not come to get along with Israel, he came to destroy it.

This was Israel’s biggest mistake – we ruled the West Bank; Judea and Samaria was and is ours and we should have just sat quietly and protected what we had. Instead, we came up with a “solution” and made a Palestinian problem where we didn’t have one. We need to understand our stupidity and move on.

We need quiet. We need everyone to forget about the Palestinian problem, get it off the world agenda. We calm the situation by promoting their economy, quietly, behind the scenes.

So what will the end product look like? Do we extend our sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria? Just over Area C? Will the Arabs be offered Israeli citizenship or resident status? In other words, at the end of the process, however long it will take, what will we see on the ground?

We should not suggest any political solutions because they will be immediately rejected. Extending Israeli sovereignty is one example of a political solution. If we do this, the entire region will rise up against us and cause another problem we do not need.

We must do and not talk. We must help establish a reality in which economic success is preferred over fighting. And if we extend our sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, we will trigger more fighting and help the militias.

And finally – given your knowledge of Palestinian Arab society, can they overcome their deeply rooted antisemitism and the influence of radical Islamic jihadist ideologies that kids are being taught and that have infiltrated their society?

I disagree with the suggestion that Palestinian society is antisemitic. It just is not true. There is an antisemitic education system that influences the younger generation, but we have not reached the level of Nazi Germany. We need to change the existing programme of studies, yes, and that taught in schools in the UAE is an example to emulate.

Pinhas Inbari is currently a researcher with the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

I submit the above interview as part of a kind of ‘panel discussion’ in which a number of interviewees, in turn, weigh in on their views of a single topic: how to achieve peace, stability, and security in Israel given the unresolved issues concerning the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians. The Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was supposed to do that. Many Israelis and most PA residents believe it failed.

Part 3 will present my interview with Mordechai Kedar.