Former MK says Gaza should be split in two: South for war, north for peace

Slim and elegant with gorgeous gray-blue eyes, Einat Wilf could easily have been a model. Or, with her background as an intelligence officer in the IDF, reaching the rank of lieutenant, she could have chosen an army career. Alternatively, as a graduate of Harvard (BA in fine arts and government), INSEAD in France (MBA), and Cambridge (PhD in political science), she might have dived into academia. On top of that, she may have flown in finance, having served as a strategic consultant for McKinsey and Company in New York, and a general partner with Koor Corporate Venture Capital in Israel. She’s worked as a senior fellow for the Jewish People Policy Institute, published a weekly column in the Israel Hayom Hebrew daily newspaper, and lectured at Sapir College. The impressive résumé goes on and on. 

Wilf ultimately harnessed her ferocious intellect and prodigious energy to tackle the complications of our contentious region. She chose to become a “roving ambassador” for Israel; wrote seven books. including the recent bestseller (with Adi Schwartz) The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace; volunteered with Yossi Beilin; and ran in the primaries of the Labor Party, where she worked with Shimon Peres. In 2009, she was voted into the Knesset, where she served until that government fell in 2013. Having learned from Peres that “it’s not necessary to wait for official nominations to do the job,” she has become a prolific and fresh voice for peace and stability in the region, where her out-of-the-box solutions for intractable problems are steadily gaining traction. 

Wilf’s watershed moment happened in 2000 after PLO chairman Yasser Arafat refused prime minister Ehud Barak’s offer of a Palestinian state – an offer that was met with the violence of an intifada. Why would a Palestinian leader turn down a state, after repeatedly claiming that ending the “occupation” was the apex of his hopes and dreams? “I realized that for us, a two-state solution means one Jewish, and one Arab,” she explains. “But for Arafat and also today, the Palestinians mean one Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza, and the other in Israel, where all Palestinian refugees have the right of return, demographically eventually turning Israel into a Palestinian state, too.”

Yet Wilf believes that there is no alternative to having the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza come under another sovereignty, even Palestinian. For Israel to stay democratic, she insists that it can’t remain in the West Bank. She advocates a Jewish Israel on 80% of the land, with 80% of the population Jewish. She doesn’t focus on future governance of a Palestinian state but is unequivocal on the parameters: Palestinians must give up the right of return; recognize Israel; and declare that after the establishment of their own state, they will have no further demands. 

“I am a proponent of Constructive-Specificity,” she says. “We need to discuss all the issues and reach conclusions.” This is opposed to the Constructive-Ambiguity principle, which aims to build trust by a general fudging of difficult stumbling blocks, with the vague hope that things will work out. “That approach failed,” she declares. “We thought, for example, that the Arabs would bargain the Right of Return away in return for a state, but they gave up the state instead.”

Wilf believes that Israel is problematic for its enemies not because of the occupation or settlements but because of the centrality of the Right of Return. “October 7 was about returning,” she maintains. “It was triumphant and bloody and exhilarating to them.” It is extremely tough to make peace in such an environment, she acknowledges, but there is no alternative. Wilf supports transformation; Arabs are not genetically wired to be terrorists, she declares. The region must be transformed much as America dealt with Japan after World War II; the peace treaty between the countries enabled Japan to flourish. This mechanism must be adopted here, too. 

Splitting Gaza in two, getting rid of Netanyahu's government

Right now, Wilf advocates splitting Gaza in two and offering the inhabitants a choice: live in the south if you prefer chaos and war; move north if you embrace peace and reconciliation. “Today money flows to refugees, but we will flip the equation,” she clarifies. “We’ll pour money into areas where inhabitants reject being eternal refugees, where they agree to be erased from UNRWA’s list. Each person choosing the north will testify on video that they are no longer refugees, possess no ‘right of return’ to the State of Israel, and want to live in peace next to the Jewish state.” 

Trying to remain positive in these challenging times, Wilf has a plan. First, Israel urgently needs to get rid of the present government which, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is “brick by brick dismantling the achievements of the Jewish state, as people who have no idea how to govern are living off interest, with zero understanding of the sacrifices and efforts required to run the country.” She cites prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who knew Israel needed to be strong in a hostile environment and who had a multifaceted understanding of a strength that includes great education, health, military capabilities, and knowledge of foundational Hebrew texts, such as the Bible, for all its citizens. The current government, she argues, is the antithesis of that: Mediocre ministers, or less than mediocre, are failing to do the minimum to serve the country. 

Wilf goes further. In her opinion, Israel’s natural government should be a Mapai-type hawkish centrist coalition with a complete understanding of the ruthlessness of our enemies, while still striving for peace, with a Ben-Gurion type vision of strength. Historically, she claims, Likud behaves like a natural opposition, even when it is in power. For example, it never takes responsibility. Even after the 2021 Lag Ba’omer disaster in Meron, never mind October 7, the members busy themselves with finding fault with everyone else. The only two really right-wing governments in Israel’s history have been Menachem Begin’s in 1981, and this one. Other than that, she says, Likud has had “babysitters” like Ehud Barak, who felt that the party could not govern on its own. Even today, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot are fulfilling that function, as the Likud, according to Wilf, continues to behave as if it bears no responsibility for October 7. 

“We are still paying for the mistakes of the Begin government,” Wilf claims – its rampant inflation; haredi empowerment; the removal of guard rails on the finance and education ministries; the huge increase in settlement building. Pure left-wing governments were also failures, in her opinion; the public was not massively supportive of Yitzhak Rabin or Ehud Barak. Now we have to do better.

“The Jewish people can’t afford anything less than excellence,” Wilf asserts. “We can’t face a gentle decline into third worldism; we will collapse. America will survive being governed for a time by clowns or mediocrities, but we cannot.” Netanyahu, she claims, has gutted the country’s quality of government; his egregious crime is dangerously weakening the State of Israel on multiple levels. 

Wilf, 53, the mother of three teenagers, does not want to believe that there is no future here. “Israeli society has risen wonderfully to the challenge of October 7,” she declares, “and so has the army. The government has totally sunk. It will have to go, and we will have to heal.”

Who knows? Maybe Einat Wilf will help lead Israel out of the mess. ■