Peace at last in the Middle East: A Modest Proposal by Bates Masterson and Z.Hajime Sertorius

No one needs Delaware. When planning vacations in the U.S., everyone knows you go to Texas for cowboys, Florida for sunshine, Idaho for potatoes, Nebraska for corn, New England for clam chowder, New York for discourtesy, San Francisco for insufferable smugness and Chicago for street violence and incorrect pizza. Why do you go to Delaware? Exactly. You go to Delaware when you get lost in Maryland.

Why is this important, and what does it have to do with the Middle East? I’m glad you asked, sir or madam (or whatever) (but probably sir or madam, and if that pisses you off, your pronoun should be Francis, because you need to lighten up). The Israel-Palestine conflict is, at its core, a land dispute. There’s a bit more to it, sure - but end the land dispute and the rest falls into place. The current shit show is the way it is due to religious fixations, colonial meddling, proximity to oil, poorly thought out geopolitical maneuvering and ethno-nationalist trauma reactions. A Jewish homeland? Ok, fair enough. Was the location a great plan? It satisfied some religious yearnings, but otherwise hasn’t really gone the best. There were already some people there, for one, and the whole thing was facilitated by European colonial powers who weren’t leading any popularity contests in the region. The critique of some Arab scholars that the European Jews acted like a western civilization, not an asian civilization coming home is worth a look, as are the obviously hostile clauses in the Hamas charter (as is the possibility that Hamas was supported by Israel to undermine the PLO, etc. - lots of not very top shelf bullshit all around). In any case, Israel has painted itself into a corner. If it wants to preserve its Jewish character, it can keep up the not very democratic treatment of Arabs, or it can give up the occupied territories. It doesn’t want to do that, because it’s convinced there are serious security risks if it does. If it goes to a one state solution, the demographic shift brought on by the inclusion of the Palestinians lets it keep the occupied territories and regain a claim to democracy, but it will lose its Jewish character. Quite a predicament, but the whole thing goes away if Israel doesn’t have to be where it is. Other potential sites for a Jewish homeland were considered by the Zionist movement before the creation of the state of Israel. Locations in the Russian far east were debated. At one point there was an offer from the Ottoman Empire. Other roads could have been taken. Perhaps they still can be. I submit that peace in the Middle East can be ours today, and we need only give up the state that no ones needs: Delaware.

I propose we turn Delaware over to the state of Israel. The Israelis will vacate all of their current land, leaving it to the Palestinians. The United States will pay all the inhabitants of Delaware to move or convert to Judaism, learn Hebrew and accept Israeli citizenship. The Israelis will then move into the vacated state of Delaware, which will cease to be part of the United States and become Israel. This will yield many benefits including the following:

1. No security threats for Israel! All of her enemies will have been left behind thousands of miles to the east. Her only neighbor will be her greatest ally, the United States.

2. The Palestinians will now have no worries beyond the already shabby treatment they endure from the Arab states in the region that won’t take them in, despite claiming to care deeply about them. They will walk into fully developed modern cities, ready to go.

3. Instead of having to live in Washington, DC, members of the Israel lobby can live in Israel and commute to work! VERY convenient, and they will no longer have to put up with inferior DC area bagels.

4. American Jews seeking raises from their employers will be able to credibly threaten to move to Israel if they don’t get the requested salary increases.

5. If Delaware is no longer a state, there will no longer be Senators or Representatives from Delaware. This means once Joe Biden is out of office, he can’t go back to being a senator from Delaware. This also prevents Hunter Biden from attempting to represent the now absent state in any future nightmare scenario.

6. Americans who get lost in Maryland will get to visit the Holy Land instead of groaning “oh, great. We’re in Delaware.”

But, you may ask, what about the problems this will cause? Surely, all residents of Delaware won’t be willing to move or accept Israeli citizenship. This might seem like a reasonable concern if you’ve never been to Delaware. I assure you, most will be fine with this choice. For those who aren’t, just tell them anti-semitism is the REAL virus. Then there’s the truly dire concern: are we really going to have to go around removing one star from every American flag? Of course not. That would be insane, and way too much work. There are two ways to fix this problem.

First, we could make Puerto Rico a state. That would keep the number at fifty. If the Puerto Ricans are still on the fence despite basically being the good guys in West Side Story, I have one other suggestion: we don’t HAVE to abolish Delaware. We could move it. There’s still plenty of empty land in the American west. Delaware is a small state. The same number of square miles could easily be set aside for the new Delaware. The state’s exact shape could even be replicated, although I don’t know why you’d bother. I say make it a square. That simplifies the whole process. Wyoming is a sparsely populated state with ample room. See below for a google maps approximation of a Delaware equivalent square mileage in a mostly uninhabited region of Wyoming south of the Wind River Reservation. This proposed Delaware carries additional benefits for Wyoming, Delaware, the United States and the world:

1. Constructing what amounts to a new state on currently empty land is a golden opportunity to create jobs.

2. Whole cities and road networks with mass transit, water and sewer systems and power plants will need to be built. This would be an enormous windfall for Wyoming contractors - work for decades!

3. Big contracts for the trucking industry, as well - all the equipment and building materials will require a lot of hauling.

4. Delaware residents will now live somewhere new and interesting, instead of the current Delaware.

5. Delaware can finally have a tourist trade, itself a giant roadside attraction not unlike the world’s largest ball of twine! (“Can you believe they built that new Delaware? I got to see that!”)

Fig. 1: A possible site for the new Delaware (Delasquare) (courtesy of google maps)

Brilliant proposals always face skepticism at the beginning, and I imagine this modest proposal will be no different. And yet, the facts are clear. Relocating Israel to Delaware resolves the single biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East, while delivering untold benefits to Israelis, Palestinians, Delawareans and Wyomingites, and therefore, the world. We are the only barrier to our success; let us seize this opportunity, lest our descendants uncover this plan decades hence and cry out: Why not?