Israel: When the Drums of War Have Reached a Fever Pitch

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

Isn’t it strange that for most of us, even if we believe religion is total hogwash, we still identify with a “religious” grouping of people?  I understand that to be considered Jewish, you technically have to have a maternal line dating back to some time in the past, so I guess you could distinguish that a bit. 

To be really clear, Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity. Jewish ethnicity can be traced genetically better than almost any other, including a couple of specific markers for specific populations of ethnic jews. And the Nazis didn't care about practicing Jews or not; they cared about bloodline and ethnicity, plain and simple. 

 

[Frey family reunion]

12 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

To be really clear, Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity. Jewish ethnicity can be traced genetically better than almost any other, including a couple of specific markers for specific populations of ethnic jews. And the Nazis didn't care about practicing Jews or not; they cared about bloodline and ethnicity, plain and simple. 

 

I would suggest a third additional element is a cultural identification.  Which I think is probably a stronger source of at least self-identification than either the religion or the ethnicity.  All genetic ethnicity continues to become more intermingled, and less and less people subscribe to the religious beliefs, but I think the cultural identification remains strong.

Which is probably why I kind of consider myself more catholic than any other type of “religious” identification, even though I think the Catholic religious beliefs are more absurd than most.  And ethnically, I’m probably descended from more traditionally Protestant groups than I am from traditionally Catholic groups.  Yet, it’s my relatives from the Catholic side of my family that have stronger cultural, practices (?) traditions (?), I’m not sure of the right word, than my other affiliations.

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I would suggest a third additional element is a cultural identification.  Which I think is probably a stronger source of at least self-identification than either the religion or the ethnicity.  All genetic ethnicity continues to become more intermingled, and less and less people subscribe to the religious beliefs, but I think the cultural identification remains strong.

For Israelis, possibly. For Jews across the world? Not always. I personally don't identify with the culture at all, but when people start shouting "jews will not replace us" I feel significantly more targeted and threatened. 

I think that's different than that cultural identity at all that other minorities that have been persecuted feel - that from a purely existence standpoint some people want you dead. 

This, also, is why I think that Israel will never think or act as if they are at 'peace'. They will always assume that somewhere, somehow, people will hate Jews and be acting accordingly. 

 

[Frey family reunion]

4 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

For Israelis, possibly. For Jews across the world? Not always. I personally don't identify with the culture at all, but when people start shouting "jews will not replace us" I feel significantly more targeted and threatened. 

I think that's different than that cultural identity at all that other minorities that have been persecuted feel - that from a purely existence standpoint some people want you dead. 

This, also, is why I think that Israel will never think or act as if they are at 'peace'. They will always assume that somewhere, somehow, people will hate Jews and be acting accordingly. 

 

Nothing’s absolute.  But I have friends who would probably not pass via a DNA test as being “Jewish” primarily because of their mother’s ancestry.  These same friends are as religious as I am, which is to say not at all.  Yet they very much consider themselves Jewish.  Now even if they don’t currently practice the cultural aspects of the group, they at least grew up with it, which formed their identification.

[Clueless Northman]

23 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

from a purely existence standpoint some people want you dead. 

This, also, is why I think that Israel will never think or act as if they are at 'peace'. They will always assume that somewhere, somehow, people will hate Jews and be acting accordingly. 

Every person should assume there is somewhere some people who want them dead, because it's a fact, no doubt about it. There are people who would want to kill all Blacks, others who would want to kill all Whites, some who'd like to kill all men, some who'd wipe out every woman around, some who'd love to kill every Christian, or every Hindu, or every Muslim, or every Jew. Key elements to take into consideration are: how many of them are there around, do they have the means to begin that massacre, do they have the will to begin it, where are they (close to one's place or not), that kind of things. I'm absolutely sure there are people who would gladly kill me (not because it's personal, but because I belong to one group or another); thankfully, I can mostly assume they cannot reach me - and I'm aware it's a luxury plenty of people and groups don't have.

What I'm getting at is that one shouldn't (and just plain cannot) aim for a world where no one alive wants you dead, because you'll never be sure. You should aim for a world where no one will act on it and go after you, or at the very least a world where no one will actually be able to go far with such a plan.

Obviously, things are worse for Jews than for many other groups. Being careful, suspicious, not relying on anyone else are quite understandable and logical sides of Israeli policies for instance.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, felice said:

I meant everything south of a roughly V-shaped border, not just a corridor across the middle. Yes, that includes Eilat - asking Israel to give up that small town is a much smaller ask than for the Palestinians to give up the entire Gaza strip as you suggest.

There are a number of reasons Israel wouldn't agree to that as Wert laid out, and Negev for the settlements would be a terrible trade. 

3 hours ago, Karlbear said:

I for a second got confused and thought you were talking about book Tywin, which would be super fitting for this specific request

 

You're selling him sort. He'd burn Gaza to the ground with everyone in it then return to the negotiating table, demand expanding Israel into the WB and say take or leave it.

3 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

I think Kalbear and Mormont already answered some of this (particularly with regards to travel between the two entities), but at the end of the day what baffles me about your proposal is that you keep talking about an independent Gaza outside of full peace being achieved (and therefore being a problem for Israel), while on the other hand pushing a very drastic solution (relocating the entire population of Gaza - with their consent) that obviously also could not possibly be achieved outside of a complete peace agreement. 

So basically we are talking about what to do with Gaza once peace has been achieved (since your proposed relocation scheme could never happen otherwise).

You're hanging them out to dry if you have a deal in place without solving the Hamas/Gaza issue.

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Then why not give some of the other options a try at that point? You seem to take the position that relocating about 2 million people (a notable number of which, even if massively bribed with benefits, might very well still be reluctant - or outright refuse - to go along with this) would be the simplest/easiest option compared to the others that would be on the table by that point, instead of being one of the most difficult. 

What it would do is ideally put an end to one of the major problems with regards to peace. I am highly skeptical of the tunnel idea because while the initial cost of building it wouldn't be that bad (though it would be several billion dollars), maintaining and securing it would be a colossal problem. Who pays for that? If it's Israel, they get to govern it and they could shut it down whenever they wanted to. They could also place tolls on it and make the cost so high that it effectively makes it unusable for many. And that's before you consider that it instantly would become a major terrorist target. A 30 mile tunnel is a lot of real-estate to protect and it would need to be protected 24/7 for decades. That alone could compromise any peace plans, and if Israeli military has control of the region, what has changed really? The tunnel plan just exposes so many ways in which a peace agreement could quickly deteriorate. A real peace plan can't be slapping on a Band-Aid on many issues and putting with the hopes it stays on. And that doesn't even begin to factor in when you start building it.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

For Israel having military and civilian access to both the Red Sea and Mediterranean is a key part of their naval military defence strategy, so no, that's not going to fly either.

Why would they need a naval military defence strategy involving the Red Sea if they didn't have a border on the Red Sea? Obviously Israel isn't going to like the idea, but the status quo is unacceptable and they don't like any reasonable solution.

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Just build the tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank, it would be much easier than these odd suggestions about forcing 2 million people out of Gaza - which will never happen - or drawing crazy-straw borders across the south of Israel. Or just reinstate the two old reinforced, dedicated security roads between the two bodies. They were a bit of a nightmare to maintain from a security POV, but at least pre-Hamas in Gaza, they kind of worked.

A security nightmare that "kind of works" is a lousy long term plan, and there's no need for the borders to be crazy-straw. There should be some kind of compromise possible between a straight line from Gaza to the West Bank and a deep V sticking closely to the borders with Egypt and Jordan. I imagine a curve around Beersheba would be essential; beyond that, you'd need expert regional knowledge to plot an optimal border that balances ease of travel between G & WB, minimising the number of people affected, and minimising spaghetti.

[Werthead]

 

13 minutes ago, felice said:

Why would they need a naval military defence strategy involving the Red Sea if they didn't have a border on the Red Sea? Obviously Israel isn't going to like the idea, but the status quo is unacceptable and they don't like any reasonable solution.

Eilat is on the Red Sea. The Gulf of Aqaba is a marginal waterway of the Red Sea and the Israeli border extends down that far (obviously, otherwise Eilat wouldn't exist). The Israelis were pretty pissed off when the Egyptians cut the Gulf of Aqaba off during the Six-Day War and subsequently to the Yom Kippur War, as it made their external trade and defence more problematic, and they would like for that to not happen again.

Aside from giving Israel ports on two different seas, which is crucial for the country's external trade and defence, it also gives Israel the possibility of a major trading port with Saudi Araba (the Saudi border is almost next door, with only 13 miles of Jordan between them). Giving the thawing of Israeli-Saudi relations, that is potentially quite useful for the future.

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

What I'm getting at is that one shouldn't (and just plain cannot) aim for a world where no one alive wants you dead, because you'll never be sure. You should aim for a world where no one will act on it and go after you, or at the very least a world where no one will actually be able to go far with such a plan.

 

 

That was the literal point of Karlbear's post.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's just a restatement of reality.

Right now, the United States can militarily intervene, at will, in almost any country on Earth without significant fear of casualties or serious repercussions. There's maybe a dozen to twenty countries it can't really do that to (most of them nuclear powers in their own right), and there's not much anyone can do about it, even if they want.

Israel is in the same boat in the Middle East. It can intervene or bomb Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq or most other countries in the region and there's very little they could do in response. The only countries that could present anything other than token resistance to an Israeli strike would be Saudi Araba, Turkey and Iran, and even then Israel can simply threaten them with the nukes it very definitely doesn't have.

An independent Palestine would be in exactly the same boat. That's just the reality of the situation. That's why the suggestions that Israel could keep troops inside a "sovereign" Palestine or prevent Palestine from having its own army are quite ludicrous. Israel would be the militarily superior power in any rate, it doesn't need to ask those things. An independent Palestinian state would be very much the inferior power in this situation and I don't think anyone is in any doubt about that.

I think you're missing my point, so let me try to restate.

Either an 'independent' Palestine exists (as I said) under the effective control of Israel and is not truly independent - and yes, I do think in that scenario Israel would go so far as to keep troops inside Palestinian borders if it felt that was necessary, and I absolutely believe Israel would not tolerate 'independent' Palestine having its own armed forces - or it has to have some guarantees of sovereignty backed by an external entity. Israel will almost certainly not accept the latter.

Israel's policy on defence has generally been to squash potential threats before they become actual threats. The last thing they will tolerate is an armed Arab state on the West Bank/Gaza even if it's militarily far inferior to the IDF.

So I'm not talking about Israeli military intervention in 'independent' Palestine being comparable to US interventions abroad or to Israeli interventions in Jordan, even. I'm talking about Israel, in order to maintain its own security, being effectively in military control of the entire border and regularly operating within 'independent' Palestine. I think it's both credible and likely that these are the only conditions under which Israel would be willing to allow such a state to exist.

[Clueless Northman]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Eilat is on the Red Sea. The Gulf of Aqaba is a marginal waterway of the Red Sea and the Israeli border extends down that far (obviously, otherwise Eilat wouldn't exist). The Israelis were pretty pissed off when the Egyptians cut the Gulf of Aqaba off during the Six-Day War and subsequently to the Yom Kippur War, as it made their external trade and defence more problematic, and they would like for that to not happen again.

Aside from giving Israel ports on two different seas, which is crucial for the country's external trade and defence, it also gives Israel the possibility of a major trading port with Saudi Araba (the Saudi border is almost next door, with only 13 miles of Jordan between them). Giving the thawing of Israeli-Saudi relations, that is potentially quite useful for the future.

When Egypt cut off the Gulf, Israel assumed the blockade was a prelude to war and an incoming aggression. At the very least, it was justifiably taken as a hostile act if not an act of war. The 6-days war occurred just after that and it was a major selling point that it was merely a pre-emptive strike against forces that were going to attack in the next weeks.

Of course, with the ludicrous Saudi-led Neom project nearly next door, Israel isn't going to give up Eilat and access to the Red Sea. That said, I don't think it's the part of the country Palestinians want the most to get back, there are other places with far more emotional impact (having full control of Eastern Jerusalem for instance, or even Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, I suppose).

[Toth]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

So I'm not talking about Israeli military intervention in 'independent' Palestine being comparable to US interventions abroad or to Israeli interventions in Jordan, even. I'm talking about Israel, in order to maintain its own security, being effectively in military control of the entire border and regularly operating within 'independent' Palestine. I think it's both credible and likely that these are the only conditions under which Israel would be willing to allow such a state to exist.

Just putting it out there, but on another board where users put their minds together towards brainstorming a possible solution (at least before some users started tearing each other apart about the question whether Israel is right to bomb media bureaus and hospitals) people were making a very compelling argument to apply at least the idea behind the European Union as a union between sovereign nations making them so heavily economically interlinked that a war becomes unfeasible.

Similarly you could argue that it makes sense that at the same time that you found a nation of Palestine you found some kind of Judean Union, interlinking both states in economic, social and political aspects. With that image in mind, I wonder whether turning the IDF into a joint army may be a way this can be sold to both factions. So Israel keeps a military presence in Palestine, but this Union army also recruits Palestinians (though obviously only a small number and heavily vetted).

Of course I'm well aware that is asking quite a lot of trust that simply isn't there at the moment and that there will be unrest during its infancy, but as long as people don't abandon it straight away, it can't be worse than other suggested solutions.

[Ser Reptitious]

13 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You're hanging them out to dry if you have a deal in place without solving the Hamas/Gaza issue.

 

If an agreement on the Hamas/Gaza issue has not been worked out as part of the peace deal, then there is no viable deal in the first place. Full stop.

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What it would do is ideally put an end to one of the major problems with regards to peace. I am highly skeptical of the tunnel idea because while the initial cost of building it wouldn't be that bad (though it would be several billion dollars), maintaining and securing it would be a colossal problem. Who pays for that? If it's Israel, they get to govern it and they could shut it down whenever they wanted to. They could also place tolls on it and make the cost so high that it effectively makes it unusable for many. And that's before you consider that it instantly would become a major terrorist target. A 30 mile tunnel is a lot of real-estate to protect and it would need to be protected 24/7 for decades. That alone could compromise any peace plans, and if Israeli military has control of the region, what has changed really? The tunnel plan just exposes so many ways in which a peace agreement could quickly deteriorate. A real peace plan can't be slapping on a Band-Aid on many issues and putting with the hopes it stays on. And that doesn't even begin to factor in when you start building it.

Israel could simply agree to an easement across its land for a tunnel, but the actual building and maintaining of it would be up to the Palestinians or whoever they pick for that. Certain security and safety measures would have to be established within the peace agreement and Israel would have the ability to verify compliance. The tunnel would exist for the benefit of the Palestinians, after all, so it would make sense that the responsibility lies with them, rather than Israel, for its building and maintenance (although perhaps Israel and/or other countries would help finance construction as part of the peace agreement, but that is getting way too deep into specifics for this hypothetical). 

Either that, or else the major mode of travel between Gaza and the WB could be via air. As far as I know, Gaza does have an airport (although not operational at the moment). 

A third option would also be that Gaza and the West Bank each form separate Palestinian states, completely independent of one another, which removes the need for a land connection. And if a stable peace endures subsequent to the agreement, people could drive from one place to the other through Israel the same way that travelers everywhere else in the world cross international borders between two countries with normal relations.

 

[Toth]

Okay, in a bit of insanity I'm trying to write an idiot-proof summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict up until now because all materials I found are either incomplete or needlessly complicated and my students are barely literate. Wish me luck. XD

[dog-days]

50 minutes ago, Toth said:

Okay, in a bit of insanity I'm trying to write an idiot-proof summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict up until now because all materials I found are either incomplete or needlessly complicated and my students are barely literate. Wish me luck. XD

Good luck, Toth. You're much braver than me!

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Okay, in a bit of insanity I'm trying to write an idiot-proof summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict up until now because all materials I found are either incomplete or needlessly complicated and my students are barely literate. Wish me luck. XD

so, SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO is a good starting point

[Toth]

14 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

so, SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO is a good starting point

That was about my first instinct, actually. XD

[Fez]

9 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

so, SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO is a good starting point

Or, the opposite route...

Once upon a time, there were a people called the Canaanites. They had a pantheon of gods, one of which was named El, who was a storm deity. He eventually became known as El Shaddai, and eventually Yaweh.

And go from there.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

Wish me luck. XD

Blame the French and the UK, and their secret treaties concerning the Middle East and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.   

 

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The Sykes–Picot Agreement (/ˈsaɪks ˈpiːkoʊ, - pɪˈkoʊ, - piːˈkoʊ/)^[1] was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France,^[2] with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.

People forget how much and for how long the French and Turks had close political, military and trade alliance, going back at least to the 16th century.  But even before that, with Francis giving the Turks the port of Toulon.

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The Ottoman wintering in Toulon occurred during the winter of 1543–44, following the Franco-Ottoman Siege of Nice, as part of the combined operations under the Franco-Ottoman alliance.

Imma gonna give you this too, because this material is allowed to be shared by JSTOR:

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The following research available for free via the links below offers valuable insight and historical context on the topic of the Israeli settlements.

Joel Beinin, “Mixing, Separation and Violence in Urban Spaces and The Rural Frontier in Palestine,” The Arab Studies Journal, Spring 2013, Vol. 21, No. 1, TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, pp. 14-47.

Beinin situates the phenomenon of the Israeli settlements in historical context. In the era of Ottoman Palestine and even the British mandate that followed World War I, Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities lived side-by-side in Palestine’s major cities Jerusalem and Jaffa. They socialized together and invested in each other’s business ventures as the Levant entered the industrial world. Although many early Zionist settlers, and the later Labor Zionist movement, idealized rural settlement and agriculture as the principal way of creating a Jewish homeland community, Beinin demonstrates that it was largely cities that Zionist immigrants moved to and sought to transform, both before and after the formation of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 war.

“Despite its preponderantly urban character, the post-1967 settlement project has produced a diametrically opposite model of urban life than the norms of late Ottoman Palestine—in practice and as the settlers’ ideal,” Beinin writes. “Jews exclusively inhabit all settlements—urban, suburban, or rural, ideologically or economically inspired—though Palestinians are often employed in them, even to construct them. All Jews are Israeli citizens with greater rights and subject to different laws and norms than their non-citizen neighbors.”

Janet Abu-Lughod, “Israeli Settlements in Occupied Arab Lands: Conquest to Colony,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 1982, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 16-54.

Written only 15 years after the 1967 war, Abu-Lughod’s research provides valuable insight into Israel’s initial government and settlement strategies of the Palestinian territories. Although some right-wing politicians made immediate demands to annex Gaza and the West Bank, in spite of international law, most Israeli leaders realized that this would raise the question of giving citizenship to Palestinians. They then sought other means of legally expropriating land and diminishing the power of occupied Palestinians.

Indeed, Abu-Lughod argues Israel drew on the experience of urban planning inside Israel between 1948 and 1967 to diminish the concentration of Arab Israeli citizens in certain parts of the country when planning the distribution of occupied territory settlements. The justification for taking possession of this land comes “from the fiction of government succession.” The legal practice of freehold private property developed later in the Muslim world than in Europe, and much of the marginal land in the West Bank remained unregistered or in religious foundations (waqfs), which Israel claimed as state land after 1967. “While the confiscation and reassignment of ‘state land’ to Jewish settlers is inherently no more legitimate than any other form of expropriation, the Israelis have made much of this distinction between public and private ownership in their defensive arguments,” she writes.

Marina Sergides, “Housing in East Jerusalem: Marina Sergides reports on a legal mission to the Occupied Palestine Territory,” Socialist Lawyer, No. 60 (February 2012), pp. 14-17.

This is a deep dive into the social and legal situations of the Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem living on land with disputed ownership. Twenty-eight refugee families with 500 people had been living in homes in they had built on land granted to them by UNRWH after fleeing from other homes inside Israel after its creation in 1948. Since 1967 and the Israeli declared annexation of East Jerusalem, the Nahalat Shimon company has brought Ottoman-era documents claiming some of the land in the neighborhood had been owned by Jewish families in the 19th century. It succeeded in forcing out four of the families in 2009.

Sergides questions of the legal proceedings of applying domestic Israeli law to Palestinians in territory recognized as occupied under international law. “Moreover, the delegation observed that there is an asymmetry in the way the Israeli courts treat the question of pre-1948 property rights,” she writes. “While the courts have been willing to uphold claims by Jewish organisations in relation to property in Sheikh Jarrah allegedly owned by Jewish families before 1948, similar claims by the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah in relation to lands which their families owned in what is now the State of Israel would not be entertained.” She concludes by highlighting the ways Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and restriction on new construction is causing a housing crisis in East Jerusalem.

Raja Shehadeh, “From Jerusalem to the Rest of the West Bank,” Review of Middle East Studies, June 2019, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 6-19.

The most recent installment on this list, Shehadeh reviews the politics of settlement in recent decades in light of the Trump administration’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing it as Israel’s capital on Dec. 6, 2017. In particular, he highlights the failures of the two-state solution to reconcile the existence of settlements within Palestinian territory, an inherent flaw in the 1990s’ Oslo Peace Accords.

The Accords divided land in the West Bank into three areas: A) Palestinian control; Palestinian civil control with Israeli military control and C) Full Israeli control. The resulting map is a Swiss cheese of administrative areas. Combined with Israel’s direct annexation of East Jerusalem, divided Palestinian settlement into a patchwork difficult to govern. Although the PLO made these compromises to win recognition from Israel, the resulting devolution of political power only heightened the distinction between settlers, who enjoy citizenship rights and state services, and the disenfranchisement of Palestinians.

Joyce Dalsheim and Assaf Harel, “Representing Settlers,” Review of Middle East Studies, Winter 2009, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 219-238.

This review essay is a cultural critique of the way Israeli settlers are conceived in the news media and academic works. Works in both fields, Dalshem and Harel write, depict Israeli settlers as religious fundamentalists that are seeking both to create socially alienated communities and to fulfill a religious commitment to reclaim what they see as land promised them in the bible, despite international law. However much this reflects the truth for some communities, they argue it does not reflect the huge diversity of people actually settling in the occupied territories. Moreover, it serves as symbolic legitimization of other brands of Zionism.

“These representations of settlers not only portray religious settlers as categorically different from ‘ordinary’ or ‘mainstream’ Israelis, they also project a sense of moral legitimacy for those writing against the settlers,” Dalsheim and Harel argue. “They reaffirm a moral high ground for Israelis by inscribing a deep division between Israel inside its internationally recognized borders and its settlements in the post-1967 occupied territories.”

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

If an agreement on the Hamas/Gaza issue has not been worked out as part of the peace deal, then there is no viable deal in the first place. Full stop.

And how do you do that in a real, lasting way?

Unrelated to our specific conversation, Hamas is indicating that they think this conflict will end in the next 24 hours, so that's good. 

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Israel could simply agree to an easement across its land for a tunnel, but the actual building and maintaining of it would be up to the Palestinians or whoever they pick for that. Certain security and safety measures would have to be established within the peace agreement and Israel would have the ability to verify compliance. The tunnel would exist for the benefit of the Palestinians, after all, so it would make sense that the responsibility lies with them, rather than Israel, for its building and maintenance (although perhaps Israel and/or other countries would help finance construction as part of the peace agreement, but that is getting way too deep into specifics for this hypothetical). 

Israel probably wouldn't agree to that. They would need complete control over a tunnel that ran through their territory, and even if they didn't demand that I'm not sure Palestine could afford it. They could get funding from third parties at first, but I'm not sure if they could find a sustainable source of funding, and even if they could, said source would pull back if the peace is broken and the tunnel is bombed, which is a scenario that is fairly realistic.

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Either that, or else the major mode of travel between Gaza and the WB could be via air. As far as I know, Gaza does have an airport (although not operational at the moment). 

But again, how would that be paid for? It's a really inefficient way to travel back and forth and many people in Gaza would be unable to pay for it.

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A third option would also be that Gaza and the West Bank each form separate Palestinian states, completely independent of one another, which removes the need for a land connection. And if a stable peace endures subsequent to the agreement, people could drive from one place to the other through Israel the same way that travelers everywhere else in the world cross international borders between two countries with normal relations.

Again, assuming a lasting peace can be achieved (and again the Hamas issue looms large), how is Gaza going to be built up and sustained. Many of the proposals to such concerns assumes everything goes fairly well. Sorry for being a cynical, but I wouldn't bet on that anytime soon.