Naama Adler Bello, a real estate broker and Likud activist from Caesarea, has been pushing over the past few months a political initiative that has been gaining the support of fellow party activists — if not by the official leadership — looking to establish an international fund to facilitate voluntary Arab immigration from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, Ha’aretz reported. Adler Bello is not a fan of the term “transfer,” and prefers a more marketable name: a “Listening and Fulfillment” program. Nevertheless, her approach clearly aims to offer the Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea the means to “escape the harsh ghetto life and try their luck elsewhere in the big world.”
Much like another, similar plan, which has been pushed for at least a year by former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, Adler does not wish to force any Arab to leave if they’d rather stay than collect the reward, but she insists that in order to remain and live as equals they must sign a declaration of allegiance to the State of Israel.
In terms of numbers, the Likud activist expects that “every year about 250,000 youths will be leaving, costing the state coffers about $12.5 billion annually, assuming they’d be moving to South America.” She believes in paying only the younger Arabs the high premiums — we did the math and it comes to $50,000 per person. Older Arabs are less likely to get involved in violence, so there’s no point in paying them as much.
She envisions an all out effort of the Israeli government and its embassies abroad to locate adopting homes and summer camps for the departing youths. And they don’t see a penny while in Israel — the generous donations will be deposited for them at their destinations.
Adler, 54, told Ha’aretz that the 2014 Gaza war was when she finally realized there’s never going to be peace between Jews and Arabs in Israel, because the Arabs only want to kill Jews and have no interest in peaceful coexistence. Her daughter, who is 18, has lost three male friends in that war, then another friend, the soldier Omri Levy, was killed in a terror attack in Be’er Sheva. “I added up a few facts that the State of Israel has been ignoring for 70 years and reached the conclusion that in order to live in peace we’ll have to pay our haters tons of money, in exchange for our children’s blood. I wish to turn the conflict from national and religious to monetary. Let’s debate sums of money. Israel and the Jewish people are sitting on trillions, and I want the money to be paid out with pride, not shame, not through some secret association. My parents received reparations from Germany. Let [the Arabs] take billions and live a great life.”
She cited a poll that reported that as many as 68% of the Arabs would like to leave if they could afford to. She believes they aren’t leaving because they face insurmountable difficulties that should be relatively easily resolved: they don’t have passports and they don’t have money, making them undesirable immigrants in many countries.
“For the cost of one bomb, we could send away four happy people with a future,” she suggested, adding, “When I talk to Arabs about it, their eyes open wide. They ask, Where do we sign up? And they say, give me $5,000 and I’m out of here.”
Likud officials prefer not to comment on Adler’s initiative, possibly fearing the Israeli media who are big supporters of the “Palestinian narrative.” The notion of resolving a “national” problem with money is not something the Israeli left is comfortable with — after all, without the “Palestinian” campaign they might have to go back to dealing with workers’ rights and environmental issues, and it’s not as easy to solicit funding from Europe for those.
Maybe the solution would come via Kickstarter: “Help free an Arab child from his or her hopeless conditions,” possibly followed by “Adopt an Arab child,” once they reach Brazil or Chile.