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Bruce Brill is a freelance writer on Middle East security issues. A 27 year resident of Israel and a former Middle East Intelligence analyst for NSA, he has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Report, The Washington Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Spectator, Midstream and Jewish American weeklies.
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By Bruce Brill
February 26, 2007
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The December 2006 Final Report of the Baker Iraq Study Group asserts "the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict." Israel-US political analyst Yoram Ettinger notes that Condoleezza Rice, too, with an eye on Iraq, feels "that the Palestinian subject is the heart of everything and causes all the shocks in the Middle East."
After their February 19th meeting, Condoleezza Rice said, "Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and I met here in Jerusalem...All three of us affirmed our commitment to a two-state solution." The two-state solution envisions a Palestinian Arab state within territory controlled by Israel.
Many analysts doubt the claim that a two-state solution could even solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, no less Iraq's problems. In any case, this two-state solution has been snagged for over a decade. Could a THREE-state-solution be more efficacious?
Iraq's protracted war with Iran, interminable campaigns against the separatist Kurds, the two American-led wars against Saddam, and UN-imposed sanctions have decimated Iraq's population. The toll is in millions of lives. Iraq today is suffering from a terrible manpower shortage, especially in agriculture and construction. The unceasing slaughter of some 3000 civilians each month and several times that number wounded is a grave and compelling human tragedy.
In recent years and at an ever-increasing rate, Iraqi refugees have been fleeing the internecine Sunni-Shiite conflict to neighboring countries, or simply relocating to safer havens within Iraq. In USA Today (February 6, 2007), Professor Behzad Yaghmaian says, of the 3.8 million Iraqi refugees, 1.8 million are internally displaced.
The Democrats are calling for American troop withdrawal from Iraq. The White House and the Republicans are looking for a way to withdraw without it appearing a defeat.
Is there a humanitarian solution to alleviate the plight of both Palestinians and Iraqi innocents?
One person in history saved tens of millions of people from starvation and homelessness, the Great Humanitarian, US President Herbert Hoover. He was also known as the Great Engineer and had an engineering plan to relieve the plight of the Palestinian Arabs and also benefit Iraq. Hoover's plan called for an extensive damming and irrigation program for Iraq to create adequate arable land for Palestinian settlement -- for their good, and Iraq's.
His 1945 plan is even more relevant today: Palestinians' current economic and security state is desperate. A November 2004 survey done in cooperation with the reputable Palestine Center for Public Opinion showed that 71% of West Bank Palestinians would emigrate with certain financial inducements and 40 % have considered emigrating permanently even without such inducements. A Birzeit University survey conducted by veteran pollster Nader Said shows that in September 2006, over 50% of young Palestinian men are willing to relocate.
Hoover's plan would guarantee a better life for the Palestinians and also help Iraq, since Palestinians excel in agriculture and construction. It would provide the relocated Palestinians good homes, respectable income, good education for the children, and security.
Pulitzer Prize winning author and political analyst Leslie Gelb and the Council of Foreign Relations maintain that a three-state solution is needed to provide this security. Iraq must first be divided in three: Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite. The necessary population transfers have already begun with the internally displaced Iraqis who left their homes in hostile areas for safer abodes. Once the border lines are drawn on the map, these borders should be made impregnable to insurgent passage, much as the border fence the Saudis are constructing along their own border with Iraq. Presidential hopeful Joseph Biden and other US Congressman agree with CFR's recommendations: divide Iraq and bring our troops home.
The Democrats will be happy seeing their desired withdrawal, likewise the homebound American troops and their families. Since Hoover was the spokesman for Republican Party principles for much of the 20th century, the Republicans should be happy implementing his plan, humanitarian and -- at the same time -- face-saving.
Most importantly, Iraqis and Palestinians will be happy.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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