Question: What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
Answer: A good start.

Old lawyer joke

Generally speaking, the people of Gaza are barbarians. That’s not true to a person, but it’s true as a people.

Their education level is extremely low, even in comparison to the education levels in Democrat-controlled big cities in America.

They live in abject poverty. Their economy is primitive and much of it is barter-based. Their currency, to the extent they use one, is the Israeli shekel but U.S. dollars and Jordanian dinars are in regular circulation as well.

Their unemployment rate is thought to be around 80%, though figures are hard to come by. There’s scarcely any industry. There are few stores, and their shelves are empty.

Most of this squalor is endemic. The Israeli occupation — which the Gazans brought on themselves — has worsened things, but things were already very bad.

About 98% of Gazans are of a religion that, according to many adherents, advocates the violent conversion or death of “infidels,” which are defined as anyone who does not believe in that religion, or who believes in it but interprets it in a manner deemed apostatic by the powers du jour.

The most hated infidels are the Jews of neighboring Israel. The Gazans are indoctrinated informally by friends, family and culture, and formally by the few schools in operation there, to hate the Jews, to kill them, and to destroy the nation of Israel. No hatred in the modern world equals the hate that Gazans feel for the Jews.

It’s likely that Nazi Germany hated the Jews less than the Gazans do.

Gaza is a cesspool of humanity, and the world would be better off without the Gazans. That sounds moralistic, and it is.

But not entirely. Ancient barbarians and, to some extent, even modern ones are the product of their culture. If I were born and raised in Gaza, to Gazan parents and surrounded by Gazan friends, family and propaganda, would I be any less barbaric than the Gazans? I like to think the answer is yes, but I doubt it. Civilization is not in our genes, but in our culture. Bad cultures produce bad people, and the Gazan culture is bad.

In any event, we have Gaza, and we have Gazans. Over two million of them. Their reproductive rate is among the highest in the world – they nearly double their population every generation. At this rate, the population of Gaza will exceed the population of the United States in 150 years. (Ah, the miracle of compounding!)

On this sad two-year anniversary of their barbaric incursion into Israel to slaughter, rape, torture and take hostage innocent men, women and children, it’s worth asking, what now?

What is the long-term solution to this? (I won’t ask, “What is the final solution?”)

The short-term solution is fairly obvious. Hamas will release the few still-alive and many dead hostages it has taken. There will be a disarming, of sorts, of the terrorists and potential terrorists (which means essentially all males over the age of 10). Promises will be made and broken. Peace will come, a little, and go, a lot. The Arab nations will have some say and little responsibility.

But what about the long term?

Readers know that I’ve always been a strong supporter of Israel, particularly since the horror of two years ago. Israel must do what’s necessary to survive. They have, and I’m very glad of that.

That said, the long term will include a new Middle East nation of “Palestine.” (I use scare quotes here because “Palestine” is a misleading word, but, alas, that will be the name of the new nation.) Two million people, going on four million, cannot be under Israel’s guardianship forever. It’s not fair to Israel to impose the burden of guardianship on them, nor is it fair to unborn Palestinians to be guarded.

Their state will not be the West Bank, north of which is the Sea of Galilee, west of which is the Israeli coast, and south of which is Jerusalem, the ancient and modern capital of Israel.

When you separate people who are engaged in age-old lethal warfare, you can’t put them within a stone’s throw of one another. Over the long term, the West Bank will be part of Israel, formally.

Will the new state instead be the 4-mile-wide strip that is Gaza? Same problem.

Will a new nation be carved out of the relatively abundant Arab lands in the Middle East? Good luck getting the Arabs to agree to that.

The problem seems insolvable.

Until a permanent solution evolves, the Trump proposal that has been endorsed by the Arabs and almost the entire rest of the world (with the predictable exception of outlaw states like Russia) is the best we can hope for. With that in place, humanitarian aid can flow freely (assuming the terrorists can be prevented from intercepting it).

Trump probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Imagine the creative and tireless behind-the-scenes negotiating and jawboning and strong-arming that he and his administration have put forth to get the world’s buy-in for his peace proposal. It turns out that to “give peace a chance,” you have to work at it, not just chant it.

Trump and his team put in the hard work. It’s hard work that his predecessors never had the energy or will or organizational skills or raw boldness to undertake.

By the way, those aid packages to the Gazans should include birth control pills.