The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 5th detailing a plan headed up by five sheikhs in the Hebron area detailing their desire to break off from the Palestinian Authority and form what they are calling the Emirate of Hebron, which would join the Abraham Accords establishing full peace with Israel.
“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.” Jaabari is the most influential clan in Hebron and has been at the forefront of developing positive relationships with Hebron’s Jewish community for years.
The five sheikhs have signed a letter and sent it to Economy Minister Nir Barkat. “The Emirate of Hebron shall recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” the sheikhs wrote in the letter, “and the State of Israel shall recognize the Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.” According to Jaabari, there are more sheikhs that are interested in signing on bringing the total amount of Arabs under their control to more than 350,000 people.
So will this happen?
As someone who lives in the Hebron area and has even attended meetings with members of the Jaabari clan, I believe there is an opportunity to be hopeful about. The most important part of the Emirate of Hebron is the fact that it shatters the false “palestinian” narrative. There has never been and never will be a unified “palestinian” story. It just doesn’t exist. Skipping over the corrupt Abbas clan situated in Ramallah will not only begin to unravel the myth of “palestinian” statehood but it will blow up the decades old dream of Western European leftists who have funded the “palestinian” delusion as a form of battling Israel whom they see as a “settler colonial” enterprise.
One must keep in mind that any agreement with the future Emirate of Hebron (and any other Arab emirates that emerge in Judea and Samaria) does not mean that Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria will suddenly be best friends - that is not the point of it. The real meaning of all of this is the Arab acceptance of reality and for that to happen, the clans who hold sway are dropping the external narrative created for them, first by the KGB in 1964 and then later adopted by the international left.
Normalization can only happen if it is built on truth. Recognizing that the Jewish people have an eternal and ancestral claim to the Land of Israel is the first step in moving the conflict to a resolution. Will the Emirate of Hebron achieve that? Maybe, but at the very least it will shift the debate aways from rejectionism and replacement and one that is grounded in the reality of history and current geopolitics.