In Praise of Flight is an essay by Henri Laborit, published in 1976. He explains that in every conflict situation, there are always three possible choices: fight, make peace or flee. The first choice is the most dangerous, as fighting can easily turn violent and end in injury or death. Choosing peace means bending to someone else's will, compromising your convictions. In a toxic relationship, it means accepting to be yelled at or hit by your partner in order to benefit from certain advantages of the relationship. In short, it sometimes means doing violence to oneself in order to accept a situation that's heavy and hard to live with.
Having demonstrated the violence inherent in the first two choices, Laborit goes on to praise the third, In Praise of Flight. Escape enables us to put an end to the conflict with the other person, or with ourselves (in the case of a sudden peace). Escape is therefore a peaceful solution to conflict. It's a wise choice, almost a survival instinct, if you find yourself in a fight you have little chance of winning. It's also a good choice if you can't accept the situation as it is.
Let's now look at how In Praise of Flight might apply to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. To whom should this solution apply? The Israelis or the Palestinians? That depends first and foremost on the balance of power. The balance of power tends to be in Israel's favor, unless the terror of rockets and the threat of terrorism make life in Israel unbearable, which could prompt some Israelis to emigrate. But the other problem with Jews fleeing Israel is that there is no other Jewish country in the world. Fleeing makes much more sense for the Palestinians, given that they are suffering so much by their own account, that their economy isn't taking off (except for rockets and microlights), that their military strength is far inferior to Israel's, and that there are more than 50 other Muslim countries in the world.
Note that the Palestinians who have chosen peace are the Israeli Arabs, who represent 18% of Israel's population. Things are going quite well for them. They have more democratic rights than the vast majority of Muslims in the region! So it's not impossible to make peace with Israel. On the other hand, Palestinians in the occupied territories are encouraged by the UN and Arab countries to remain in conflict with Israel in order to maintain their refugee status, which provides them with income from humanitarian aid. For the Gulf states, instability is a means of boosting oil and gas prices, and can therefore be very profitable! But in times of conflict, as we are currently seeing, the Palestinian civilian population is the first to suffer, as Hamas uses them as human shields.
The Palestinians' tragedy stems above all from their refusal to make peace with Israel. But if armed conflict has no way out, and making peace is too contrary to their principles and religion, then the only logical alternative is to flee. Many Palestinians already live outside Gaza and the West Bank. They live in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Europe. And the further away they live, the more they can lead a normal, quiet life.
This emigration is therefore above all an opportunity for the Palestinians. The main reason they want to return to the land of their ancestors is what Israel has done with it: modern cities. So it's not really their land they want, but the fruit of other people's labor. In fact, for Hamas, it's not even the fruit of that labor that interests them. We saw this after 2005 and the evacuation of Gaza. They destroyed the farms left by the Israeli kibbutz!
We need to help Palestinians settle far from Israel, so that they can distance themselves from their own hatred and, for some, desire for extermination. This will enable them to build a new life without the feeling of being imprisoned, cramped in a country without sovereignty. In practice, this means expelling a large part of the Gaza Strip's population to Egypt and other Muslim countries willing (or obliged) to take them in. Only the elderly and those who accept Israel's existence would be allowed to stay. For all the others, permanent removal is the least bad solution to allow peace to spread. Just as Moses fled from Egypt with the Jews to find peace and freedom in Israel, so the Palestinians in permanent war against Israel would do well to flee the hell in which their envy and hatred have trapped them. Better to flee than to be slaughtered to the last man.
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