Your Royal Highness, Dear Mohammed Bin Salman,
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and France co-chaired a high-level international conference from July 28 to 30, 2025, on the « peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the implementation of the two-state solution, » that is, the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, and are taking the initiative to support a resolution to this effect at the United Nations General Assembly this September. Many nations, both Western and Muslim, joined it. Are you certain that such a decision is in accordance with geography and is in keeping with history, and will lead to the just and lasting peace that everyone desires?
A Little Geography
Your Royal Highness, whose country covers more than 2 million km2 and yet suffers from the existence of an enemy state on its southern border, know that the mantra we’ve been hearing for decades, « two peoples living in peace within secure and recognized borders, » cannot apply to a state that occupies only 22,000 km2, one hundredth of your great country, with seven enemies hell-bent on its destruction and a hostile border located a few kilometers from the international airport! It is this indefensible sliver of land, as we saw on October 7, 2023, and we see it still, that many Muslims would like to reclaim by brandishing their slogan « from the river to the sea, » a slogan shared by many people in the Western world, obsessed with what is happening in this small corner of the globe without paying the slightest attention to the misfortunes of the rest of the world, and often driven more by hatred of Jews or by herd mentality, than by any knowledge of the issue.
It is true that Israel, which many Arab countries do not even want to call by its name, preferring that of “Zionist entity”, is stronger on the battlefield than on television talk shows. You know very well that there is more famine in Sudan or Eritrea than in Gaza; just look at the photos of Hamas members or even children brandishing pots and pans on command. The only real victims of the famine are the Israeli hostages, many of whom are dead today. You know that if there really were a famine, Egypt would be obliged to take them in. You know that these sickly children shown to sympathetic viewers are often victims of congenital diseases, not malnutrition.
Accusatory Reversal
You are familiar with the principle of accusatory inversion, which consists of accusing Israel of all the evils for which it is responsible: apartheid, colonization, ethnic cleansing, genocide, racism, and so on. You know very well that these accusations are false and might instead apply to certain accusing countries. You know very well that there are virtually no Jews left in most so-called Arab countries, and that there are many Arabs in Israel, and that they enjoy the same civil rights as their Jewish compatriots. Some even sit on the Supreme Court, and while they are free to leave, most don’t want to at all.
For decades, we’ve been bombarded with the idea that the so-called « two-state solution » is the one and only way to resolve this age-old dispute, which dates back to before the creation of the State of Israel.
You know that the Jewish people have occupied this strip of land for millennia. There are traces of them everywhere, not only in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Acre, but also in Gaza, as well as in Hebron and Jericho, located in the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria. You know that Israel was created after the Second World War and welcomed 400,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but it’s often overlooked that Israel welcomed a large part of the Jewish communities that once lived in most Arab countries. They were established there long before the arrival of Islam and were forced to leave, mainly after the creation of the State of Israel, often in tragic circumstances, leaving everything behind. You know that there were also Jewish tribes in your country, but that’s another story; that was in the time of the Prophet!
Jews exiled from Arab countries
There were nearly a million of them, including 140,000 in Algeria, 75,000 in Egypt, 100,000 in Iran, 135,000 in Iraq, 24,000 in Lebanon, 38,000 in Libya, 265,000 in Morocco, 105,000 in Tunisia, and 55,000 in Yemen. There are practically no more of them anywhere, except in Iran and Morocco, where there are only a few thousand. You know that Germany made amends after the Holocaust and made agreements with Israel to try to redeem itself, at least financially, but no Muslim country has ever compensated its Jews for the loss of their land and property. Their value was estimated by experts at USD 263 billion. But Jewish refugees are not asking for an illusory right of return. They are simply asking for their status to be recognized and for their countries of origin to ensure that they are given a place in the Middle East where they have resettled, by applying the UN-recognized principle, known as the Madrid Mandate, of the exchange of land for peace.
You know that all Jews from Arab countries and Iran found refuge in the middle of the last century in Europe, the Americas, and especially Israel. They were initially herded into refugee camps, but they quickly put down roots and integrated. If you ever visit Israel, you will be hard pressed to find a single refugee camp there! At the same time, you know that nearly 600,000 Palestinian Arabs left their towns and villages hoping to return after Israel’s War of Independence. Outside of Jordan, they were herded into refugee camps. But unlike the Jewish camps, which have long since disappeared, these camps still exist today and have grown, with several million people now living there, given their population growth, in the desperate hope of returning to the land of their ancestors.
Refugees from Father to Son
You know that the United Nations, which once approved the creation of the State of Israel, whose existence was repeatedly rejected, with weapons in hand, by its Arab neighbors, created at that time a one-of-a kind organization, UNRWA, tasked with caring for Palestinian refugees by granting them the unparalleled status of refugee from father to son. The host countries ensured that they did not integrate, while the Jewish refugees were cared for by their brethren but not by the UN. You know that the existence of this status is, in itself, an obstacle to ending this age-old conflict. You know that children in UNRWA schools learn from a very young age that their ancestors were driven from their country and that they must hope to return one day to Jaffa or Haifa. Do you think that France or Poland could have quickly made a real peace with Germany after 1945 if the young Germans whose parents were driven from the East had received such indoctrination at school? But today, after the tragedy of October 7, 2023, which showed the entire world that Gaza, free for nearly 20 years and stuffed with subsidies from Arab countries, Europe, and the United Nations, had not exactly become the Singapore of the Eastern Mediterranean, the party of peace has virtually disappeared in Israel. The inhabitants of the ravaged kibbutzim were part of it. We must now think outside the box, cut, like Alexander the Great, the Gordian knot, and note that the « green line » can, less than ever, constitute a secure and recognized border. You know that most of the Arab or Western countries that support you in your project have borders inherited from history, often resulting from bloody wars, and have succeeded, sometimes by displacing entire populations, in their unity and viability. You know the history of European countries, of Brazil, Canada, and Australia. And you want to prevent Israel from having secure borders, because this state was created too late and the times are no longer right? And create a tiny hostile state alongside Israel, composed of two distinct parts, one 5,860 km2 and the other 365 km2, led by two factions that agree on nothing except their desire to see Israel disappear?
A little history
You know that Ottoman Palestine extended, before the 1914-18 war, on both sides of the Jordan River. The Franco-British Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), which organised the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, entrusted Palestine to the British Empire, which, as early as 1917, under the pen of Lord Balfour, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was quick to promise Lord Rothschild, leader of the British Jewish community, the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.
You know that as early as 1919, Emir Faisal Ibn Hussein signed an agreement with Haim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, on the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. Without going through a tedious list of missed opportunities since then, I will simply remind you that the negotiations relating to the partition of the Ottoman Empire (Treaty of Sèvres and San Remo Conference in 1920, Treaty of Lausanne in 1923) resulted in the part located to the East of the Jordan, covering 89,000 km2, or 76% of Mandatory Palestine, being finally allocated to a new Arab State, Transjordan, now Jordan, entrusted to Emir Abdullah, Faisal’s brother, to console him for not having your great country.
The western part (28,000 km2) was intended to house the Jewish state, but after the Second World War, the United Nations, having forgotten this first partition, decided on a second one, which Ben-Gurion had to accept, for lack of anything better, but which the Arab countries rejected several times. This is recent history, everyone knows it, and I don’t need to elaborate on it, but it is clear that what is called a two-state solution is not a sustainable solution. In this « solution, » Israel retains its 2 million Arab citizens, but Palestine gets rid of its 500,000 Jewish « settlers, » to become what we call « judenrein. » This « solution » should also be called a four-state solution, counting separately Gaza, which will quickly secede from the West Bank, and, of course, Jordan, whose 60% population is Palestinian, including Queen Rania and Crown Prince Hussein!
You know that several wars of the last century ended with large-scale population exchanges. You know that this was the case for the Indian subcontinent and for the Germans of Eastern Europe, millions of whom were forced to flee to the West in 1945. If you go to Germany, you will be hard pressed to find refugee camps or even political parties representing their descendants. So, why not settle the 77-year conflict between Israel and all the Arab countries and Iran with an exchange of territory for peace, in accordance with the Madrid Principle?
A lasting solution
Your Royal Highness, if I address you, it is because you are the only one capable of proposing and having approved by a majority of states at the United Nations General Assembly in September a lasting solution to this conflict, giving the Jewish people a real future on this land, without fear of having to wage new wars from time to time against hostile and vengeful neighbors. You are the only one capable of explaining to the Arab heads of state who listen to you and who appreciate you, that the great expatriation of Jews from Arab countries, never compensated, can and must be compensated by a peaceful and organized transfer of the populations of Gaza and the West Bank to Jordan, which is the true Arab Palestine, or to the Arab countries from which the Jews left, logically in proportion to the size of the Jewish populations concerned.
Most of these countries are not very keen on welcoming their brothers, to put it mildly, seeing the example of Lebanon or Jordan where we know they have created unrest on several occasions, starting with Egypt which, in violation of international law, blocks its border with Gaza with a hermetic blockade, thus preventing the poor Gazans, many of whom would like to leave, from seeking their fortune elsewhere, as do many Afghans, Eritreans, or Syrians. But Egypt, which the media are careful not to criticize, for some unknown reason, will follow your example and welcome its share of Palestinian refugees, without Donald Trump even having to repeat his threat to cut off their supplies! This will undoubtedly create a great deal of suffering for the Palestinians, who are not all responsible for the situation nor complicit in Hamas’s misdeeds, but less suffering than if we were to wait any longer. There is no doubt that this population exchange would have been easier in 1950 when Gaza had a population of 60,000, but it will be easier in 2025 than in 2100 when its population might have increased tenfold!
Your call to give the State of Israel real, secure, and recognized borders will naturally be followed by all Arab and Muslim countries, including Shiite countries that will not want to go it alone. It will also be followed by the other countries that have decided to follow suit, howling with the wolves, often for fear of riots in the suburbs, what we modestly call the importation of the conflict.
By ending a 77-year war and, I hope, soon joining the Abraham Accords, you will have well deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Donald Trump, who ended a 12-day war and who, whatever his flaws, is one of the few Western heads of state to have understood Einstein’s aphorism on madness: doing the same experiment several times in the hope that it will finally produce the desired result.
Hubert Lévy-Lambert, former founding president of the Friends of the Museum of the Sephardic World (AMUSSEF) and honorary president of the European Institute of the Sephardic World (INSSEF), co-founder of the Observatory of Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries (OJRPA), French section of JJAC (Justice for Jews of Arab Countries)