The idea of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians has never seemed more futile than in the months since Oct. 7, 2023. But maybe that opens the door to a new way of achieving peace.
“We want cooperation with Israel,” says Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari, also known as Abu Sanad, from his ceremonial tent in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city located south of Jerusalem. “We want coexistence.” The leader of Hebron’s most influential clan has said such things before, as did his father. But this time is different. Sheikh Jaabari and four other leading Hebron sheikhs have signed a letter pledging peace and full recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Their plan is for Hebron to break out of the Palestinian Authority, establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.
The letter is addressed to Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, a former mayor of Jerusalem, who has brought Mr. Jaabari and other sheikhs to his home and met with them more than a dozen times since February. They ask him to present it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and await his reply.
“The Emirate of Hebron shall recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” the sheikhs write, “and the State of Israel shall recognize the Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.” Accepting Israel as a Jewish state goes further than the Palestinian Authority ever has, and sweeps aside decades of rejectionism.
The letter seeks a timetable for negotiations to join the Abraham Accords and “a fair and decent arrangement that would replace the Oslo Accords, which only brought damage, death, economic disaster and destruction.” The Oslo Accords, agreed to by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s, “have brought upon us the corrupt Palestinian Authority, instead of recognizing the traditional, authentic local leadership.” That would be the clans, the great families that still shape Palestinian society.
The sheikhs propose that Israel would admit 1,000 workers from Hebron for a trial period, then 5,000 more. Sheikh Jaabari and another major sheikh say Mr. Barkat has told them this number will grow to 50,000 workers or more from Hebron. Work in Israel is a valuable source of income for Palestinian communities, which have had little development of their own under Palestinian Authority rule, but most permits were suspended after Oct. 7. The sheikhs’ letter pledges “zero tolerance” for terrorism by workers, “in contrast to the current situation in which the Palestinian Authority pays tributes to the terrorists.”
Mr. Barkat says the old peace process failed, so “new thinking is needed.” He has been working with the knowledge of his Israeli government to explore possibilities with the sheikhs. A senior Israeli source says Mr. Netanyahu has been supportive but cautious, waiting to see how the initiative develops. The timing may be out of his hands now that Sheikh Jaabari is extending the olive branch in public.
With their bold move, the sheikhs expect to swing Israeli public opinion to their side. “Nobody in Israel believes in the PA, and you won’t find many Palestinians who do either,” Mr. Barkat says. “Sheikh Jaabari wants peace with Israel and to join the Abraham Accords, with the support of his fellow sheikhs. Who in Israel is going to say no?”
The 48-year-old Sheikh Jaabari often cites his illustrious ancestors, but his actions are guided as much by his view of the future. “There will be no Palestinian state—not even in 1,000 years,” he says. “After Oct. 7, Israel will not give it.” A second major Hebron sheikh, who signed and declares his loyalty to Sheikh Jaabari, agrees: “To think only about making a Palestinian state will bring us all to disaster.” (The other sheikhs spoke anonymously for their safety.)
I watched videos of Sheikh Jaabari and another sheikh signing the letter and reviewed documents elaborating on the plan made with Mr. Barkat, which includes the creation of a joint economic zone on more than 1,000 acres near the security fence between Hebron and Israel. The sheikhs expect it to employ tens of thousands.
A document in Hebrew lists the Hebron-area sheikhs who have joined the emirate initiative. The first circle has eight major sheikhs, who together are believed to lead 204,000 local residents. The second circle lists 13 more sheikhs, who lead another 350,000. That makes a majority of the more than 700,000 people in the area. Both circles have sworn allegiance to Sheikh Jaabari in this matter, an Israeli associate of the sheikh witnessed. Those clan members also include many of the Palestinian Authority’s local foot soldiers. The sheikhs expect them to side with family.
“I plan to cut off the PA,” Sheikh Jaabari says. “It doesn’t represent the Palestinians.” The clans governed their own localities for hundreds of years, he says. Then “the Israeli state decided for us. It brought the PLO and told the Palestinians: Take this.” Yasser Arafat’s PLO had been exiled to Tunisia, after being chased out of Jordan and Lebanon, when the first Oslo Accord in 1993 installed it in the West Bank. This was called the peace process, but the sheikh says he never saw any peace from it.
“There is an Arab proverb,” Sheikh Jaabari says: “Only the village’s calves plow its land. This means that a person who lives for decades outside—what does he know about where the springs of water in Hebron are located? The only thing you”—the PLO—“know about Hebron is collecting taxes.”
Four other Hebron sheikhs, whom I interview separately over Zoom, are even more strident. “The PLO called itself a liberation movement. But once they got control, they act only to steal the money of the people,” one major sheikh says. “They don’t have the right to represent us—not them and not Hamas, only we ourselves.”
“We want the world to hear our pain,” another sheikh chimes in. “The PA steals everything. They even steal our water. We don’t have water to drink.” They make do, they say, only because Mr. Barkat got the mayor of the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba to build a water pipe connecting to central Hebron. The sheikhs say they mostly get along with the settlers and that many Palestinians used to earn good money in the settlements.
The settlers will find much to like in the plan, which breaks from the Oslo Accords’ scheme to divide the land. While the Hebron sheikhs would gain territory, so would the settlers, from the open land in what’s known as Area C. But how much, and where? Could it turn into a land grab?
These are key details that the letter merely says must be negotiated. They contain the potential for explosive disagreement. Then again, the sheikhs’ letter mentions conversations with Yossi Dagan, the settler leader for Samaria. He says he supports and has worked on the plan, and that issues of land can be worked out between people of faith who want peace. Mr. Dagan says he first met Sheikh Jaabari 13 years ago: “His father was a courageous leader who put his people first, and the son is the same.” The sheikhs also met Israel Ganz, who leads the settlement council, and with whom Mr. Barkat has worked on potential maps.
Mr. Barkat says people around the world ask Israel, “You’re against the two-state solution, and you’re against the one-state solution, so what the hell are you for?” The answer he found, about five years ago, was the emirates solution. It’s the brainchild of Mordechai Kedar, a scholar of Arab culture at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. Mr. Kedar brought Sheikh Jaabari to Mr. Barkat and watched the partnership bloom.
“You’ve seen the letter?” Mr. Kedar exclaims. That means it’s really happening. For 20 years, he’s been trying to sell the idea of Palestinian emirates, with the West Bank’s seven culturally distinctive cities run individually by their leading clans. He first met Sheikh Jaabari’s father, Sheikh Abu Khader, 11 years ago. “To gain and earn trust, you have to sit with a man,” Mr. Kedar says. “That means to speak with him in his own mamaloshen”—the Yiddish term for mother tongue—“in Arabic.”
He says failing states in the Arab world—Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Libya—are conglomerates of ethnic, religious and sectarian groups, with modern states imposed flimsily on top. Successes—Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the seven emirates of the U.A.E.—are each controlled by one family. “Al-Sabah owns Kuwait. Al-Thani owns Qatar. Al-Saud owns Saudi Arabia,” he says. “Dubai has very little oil, but it’s run by one family, al-Maktoum,” so it can thrive.
The idea of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority was to supplant traditional clan and religious loyalties with a national Palestinian identity. “It failed,” Mr. Kedar says, “and the proof is Hamas,” which puts radical Islam first. Underneath it all, the clan system survived: “Somebody from Hebron—not only will he not move to another West Bank town because he will be viewed as a foreigner, but even in Hebron he will not move to another neighborhood that belongs to another clan.”
Hebron’s clans are particularly strong. “Hebron is much more traditional, much more conservative, especially compared to Ramallah,” Mr. Kedar says. “Hebron will be the test case for this idea of the emirates.” He, Mr. Barkat and the sheikhs all expect Hebron to lay the groundwork for change in other West Bank cities, perhaps next in Bethlehem, refashioning Israel-Palestinian relations.
“Organizations like the PLO and Hamas try to construct their legitimacy on Jew-hatred and hatred of Israel. But the clans are legitimate by definition,” Mr. Kedar says. “They don’t need an external enemy to frighten everybody to come under the aegis of an illegitimate ruler.”
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority “can’t protect us, it can’t even protect itself,” Sheikh Jaabari says. His fellow sheikhs warn that the PA could allow an Oct. 7-style terrorist attack on Israel, after which they expect the West Bank to look like Gaza, their great fear. But a prominent Hebron sheikh says: “If we will get the blessing of honorable President Trump and the United States for this project, Hebron could be like the Gulf, like Dubai.”
That’s more or less how Mr. Trump laid out the options for the Middle East in his May 13 speech in Saudi Arabia. Do you want to be like Iran or like the Gulf? The sheikhs have made their decision.
But will their plan get off the ground? The first five sheikhs were ready to move at the end of Ramadan, after signing the letter on March 24, Mr. Barkat says. They complain that he asked them to wait for months because Israel was busy, first in Gaza, then in Iran. Mr. Barkat reminds Israeli officials that the sheikhs have put their lives in peril and operate on a timeline of their own. Now, he says, Israel must protect them: “The PA is the problem, and they are the solution.”
Many more sheikhs have joined the initiative since March, and the leaders are confident they have the Palestinian Authority outmanned and outgunned. “The people are with us,” one sheikh says. “Nobody respects the PA, nobody wants them.” The only reason to wait for Israel “is because it protects the PA.”
That’s the problem. If the sheikhs’ illegally armed men take to the street, will the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency stand against them? If so, it would be the triumph of habit over reason, Mr. Barkat says. “Since Oslo, 30 years ago, the Israeli security services have been instructed to work with the PA. It’s all they know.”
The Shin Bet declined to comment. Political and security sources, however, say that the agency views the authority as critical in the fight against West Bank terrorism, and has opposed the sheikhs’ plan internally. Worries abound of potential violence or anarchy in other West Bank cities, where sheikhs aren’t prepared. The IDF also has raised concerns.
Many in Israel’s security establishment believe West Bank clans are too fragmented to govern or to fight terrorism. “How do you deal with dozens of different families, each of them armed, each under its own control?” asks retired Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, who led IDF Central Command from 2007-09. “The IDF would be caught in the crossfire—it would be a mess, a disaster.” Mr. Shamni rejects the idea that “the national aspirations of Palestinians will disappear and you can deal with each tribe separately.” In his view, “there is no way to control the West Bank and manage life there without the central authority.”
Retired Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, disagrees. He says the Palestinian Authority is the central incubator of terrorism, via school indoctrination and pay-to-slay salaries to terrorists. He also suggests the Shin Bet may change its mind when David Zini, the right-wing general nominated by Mr. Netanyahu, soon takes over the agency.
Mr. Avivi has met Sheikh Jaabari several times and judges him serious, especially after rallying so many other sheikhs to his side. He adds, “If Israel’s position is that the PA can’t be allowed to rule in Gaza because they’re terrorists and they’re corrupt, why are they OK to rule in the West Bank?”
The sheikhs say they can remove the PA from Hebron in a week, or a day, depending on how aggressively they move. “Just don’t get involved,” a leading Hebron sheikh advises Israel. “Be out of the picture.” They believe Mr. Trump’s support can clinch it with Mr. Netanyahu.
They also say they’re capable and motivated to fight terrorism. “We know who makes problems and who doesn’t,” one says, “because we live in our land.” Ideology and extremism are threats to the tribal loyalty and economic pragmatism on which the sheikhs’ power depends.
A cynic could say the sheikhs disdain the Palestinian Authority for extracting rents that they would prefer for themselves. But consider the competition. An Israeli associate of the sheikhs shows me a video of the Palestinian Authority governor of Hebron, Khaled Doudin, complaining in a Jan. 4 speech that the sheikhs’ men fire at them but not at Israel.
Palestinian Authority security forces are already unwelcome in the sheikhs’ neighborhoods and would risk their lives if they appeared there without prior Israeli coordination. In 2007, Palestinian police shot and killed a teenage member of the Jaabari clan. The sheikh’s father asked for the shooter to be turned over. When the Palestinian Authority refused, the sheikh’s men took over its police station, burned 14 jeeps and held 34 officers hostage, according to an article in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The clash ended only when President Mahmoud Abbas backed down, declaring the boy a martyr and paying his family lifetime compensation. Ever since, the PA has held less sway in the area.
Asked if he is worried his vision of coexistence with Israel will be called a betrayal of the Palestinian people and their cause, Sheikh Jaabari scoffs. “The betrayal was done in Oslo. You forgot, but I remember—33 years of it,” of false promises, violence, theft and poverty, even as billions of aid dollars poured in from the West. “I believe in my path,” the sheikh says. “There will be obstacles, but if we confront a rock, we will have iron to break it.”
Mr. Kaufman is a Journal editorial-board member. Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed reporting from Hebron.
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