Loading ...Bahbah: Can the Palestinians Outsmart the Israelis?
By: Bishara A. Bahbah/Arab America Featured Columnist
Strategic thinking requires the weaker party to think of ingenious ways to overcome the strengths of their stronger party. Those ways might appear on the surface of it to be simple and logical. Thus, when one is faced with an adversary who is by far more superior in strength in many areas, the weaker party, thinking with a cool head and in a far-sighted manner, should be able to think of ways of beating their adversaries not head on, but rather with those tools over which their enemies can have little to no control over.
Take for example the United States’ development of its stealth F-35 fighter jet which was developed over a decade at a cost of $400 billion. It is considered by most experts as the “mother of all fighter jets.” If Israel is to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and the US is to attack N. Korea’s nuclear sites, it is expected that the F-35 will be the most ideal jet for those attacks. Yet, Russia, smartly and discreetly, developed and successfully tested the S-500 surface-to-air missile (SAM) that has the longest range of any missile of its type, close to 299 miles, and is capable of downing even the mighty stealth F-35. The Russian S-500 missile costs less in development of each missile compared to each U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jet.
So, what can the Palestinians do in the face of the all mighty Israel?
At the outset, I want to be clear. I am not talking here about forgetting about historic or current justice, fairness or rights of the Palestinians. There is power and there are facts on the ground that has to be reckoned with and recognized. And, that is one important factor that we should always be concerned about as realists first and foremost.
Palestinians can fight back, without using any form of violence, and outsmart the Israelis by using their demographic advantage; their love for education; their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit; their perseverance; and their mere existence. And, Palestinians should forge alliances with progressive Israelis and Jews worldwide.
The demographic advantage.
Let us begin with the demographic advantage – the number of Jews and Palestinians living in historic Palestine today. According to the authoritative website www.worldometers.info, as of May 27, 2018, there are approximately 6.59 million Jews vs. 6.88 million Palestinians (1.85 millions of those hold Israeli citizenship) living in historic Palestine today. Yet, Israel has complete military and political control of all of historic Palestine whether it is Israel or the Palestinian occupied territories. Given Israel’s fertility rate of 3.02% vs. the Palestinians’ fertility rate of 4.18%, one would safely assume that the number of Palestinians will only increase with time. How will that bode for future of the Jewish numbers in Israel?
What if the Palestinians initiate a campaign to double their fertility rate, within the coming 5 years, especially in East Jerusalem and inside Israel proper where 21% of the population is Palestinian? What will that do to the Jewish nature of Israel? And, how can Israel continue to claim that Israel is a democracy when a sizeable minority of citizens are disenfranchised? Given that Israel’s Arabs can vote in Israel’s elections, it is only a matter of time before they become a huge voting bloc that can no longer be shunned by future Israeli coalition governments. They can then influence Israeli policies toward Palestinians from within Israel’s political establishment without ever pointing a gun at an Israeli.
The Palestinian people are smart and creative.
Photo credit: AP/Majdi Mohammed
Left to their own ingenuity, the Palestinian people are smart and creative. They are survivors, whether they live in historic Palestine, in exile (the refugees in Arab countries), or in the diaspora. Just take a look at the Palestinians in Chile who have thrived to the point where they control that country’s industry, commerce, and banking. They number close to 400,000 and come mostly from Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala and represent the largest number of Palestinian Christians in the world. They have been compared to the Jews of the United States with their outsized influence in the country that they have adopted.
In the age of the internet, give a Palestinian a computer and a problem to solve and they will solve it. I have seen a young Palestinian woman trotting the United States looking for marketing jobs for a group of her English-speaking telemarketers sitting in Hebron in the West Bank working around the clock answering the phone on behalf of major US corporations at a fraction of the cost of American workers doing the same job.
Israel has emerged over the last two decades as a technological incubator of the first order. Most major companies in the world have invested billions of dollars in Israeli startups. This has enriched the country and created an Israeli Silicon Valley. Why can’t the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and even in the refugee camps of the Arab world do the same?
Already, giant companies such as Microsoft, and Facebook have invested funds in the Palestinian territories to help Palestinians innovate and excel and their work has borne very encouraging results. It is an opportunity that should not be wasted. There are good people all over the world who see the injustice committed against the people of Palestine and want to help. We should accept this help with open arms, work hard, think creatively, and become an incubator and problem solvers for companies worldwide. We should embrace these opportunities to excel and not hide behind excuses.
Palestinians value education like no other nation.
Photo: AFP/Abbas Momani
Why? Because, unless you behead them, their education stays with them no matter where they live. You can never dispossess a living person of their education. Palestinians have one of the highest per capita literacy rate in the world, even among their female population, and they have the highest number on a per capita basis of Ph.D.’s among any other nation in the world. If the Palestinians have a “nuclear weapon,” it is their love for education and for being known as great educators – just ask the people in the Arab Gulf.
No country, whether Israel or ‘Uzrail, can forever control or occupy a people with such yearning for education.
Outsmarting the enemy.
Armed struggle against a mighty army such as Israel’s is futile. It is a sure way of sending young men and women to death. Let these live and reproduce children to inhabit the land and grow more roots in the land of Palestine.
And, we must remember the hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Jews around the world with honor and conscience who refuse to see Israel subjugate another nation and occupy a people in the manner Israel occupies Palestine. These are our friends and we should forge alliances with those honorable people because they will help us get rid of this vicious occupation by speaking out, protesting, voting against right-wing Israeli governments, and raise the consciousness of the world against what Israel’s tyrants are doing because they know occupation is not good for Israel and is not good for the soul of the Jewish people.
Palestinians should exercise patience and persist. The occupier will tire and lose its skill to fight despite the fact that Palestinians have been historically Israel’s ideal guinea pigs for their state of the art weaponry. The Palestinians’ greatest resolve is to survive as time is on their side whether it is measured in years or tens of years.
Prof. Bishara Bahbah was a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Peace Talks on Arms Control and Regional Security. He taught at Harvard and was the associate director of its Kennedy School’s Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America.