A doctor's job is to properly diagnoses the problem, be honest about it, and then apply the proper treatment.  This is true of medicine, of engineering, etc.  Yet honesty has fled the debate concerning the Mideast.

The problem in the Mideast is that two peoples make an exclusive religious and national claim on the same piece of property.  Both are determined to fight for it, and the more determined of each group refuse to recognize the right of the other to exist.  Indeed, both deny the other's present existence: many Israelis say there is no such thing as Palestinians, and Palestinians claim that the Jews are actually Indo-European Khazars, not Semites.

It should be obvious that one of the peoples has to be removed.  Yet conservatives never state the obvious.  Why?

No other solution will work.  Any other plan will be a failure.

So why is every other possible solution entertained but the obvious? 

The Palestinians demand full independence, and Israel will not grant independence to such lunatics, so why is the "two-state solution" still being pedaled?  The Arabs want to destroy all of Israel, and Israel will offer the Arabs nothing but limited autonomous reservations.  Why do we enable the "two-state solution" lie by repeating it?  Neither side wants a two-state solution.  Their spokesmen, and our State Department, should be dressed down for fraud.

This is not rocket science, but our best and brightest ignore the obvious solutions.

Israel has only five possible – not ideal – solutions

A -  Continue the present policy, where roughly 4 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza are under some degree of Israeli military rule – whether fully or by sea blockade, birth registry, or at the border crossings – without any say in the Israeli government that rules over them...while hoping against all historical experience that these violently irascible Arabs learn to gracefully accept such a diminished status vis-à-vis Israelis who actually have citizenship.

B - Enfranchise the Arabs.

C - Intermarriage.

D - Pay the Arabs to leave.

E – Ethnically cleanse the Arabs.

Option A has not worked in 47 years.  People do not like to be ruled by those they perceive as foreigners.  Yes, the Arabs are nuts, but even so, the situation cannot go on.

Option B: Given that most of the Arabs are Muslims, now in the full blossom of an Islamic revival taking them back to the seventh century, enfranchisement is out of the question.  Besides, Jews, given their history, would never consent to be anything less than a clear majority in Israel.  We can rule out enfranchisement of Judean, Samarian, and Gazan Arabs, even though conservative Israelis, such as Caroline Glick, have considered the option feasible for Judean and Samarian Arabs.  Most Jews will not allow it.

Option C: We might criticize the tendency of both groups to resist intermarriage, and assimilation into a greater whole – à la the Western Hemisphere – but "politics is the art of the possible," said Bismarck, and the Western practice of encouraging intermarriage as a means to peace is not possible in the Mideast, even if it worked in the USA and much of Western Europe.  Hostile ethnic groups intermarried in the USA.  Frenchmen intermarried Germans in Frederick the Great's Berlin.  Celt and Saxon married near the River Clyde.  English and French intermarried in Montreal.

But Jew will not intermarry Muslim, nor vice-versa.  Indeed, recently in Israel, anti-assimilation groups, such as Lehava, have gotten violent, as the recent arson of a mixed school in Jerusalem shows.

Arabs are even worse, where death is usually the end of those who dare mix outside prescribed limits.  So intermarriage is not the solution.  No country in the Mideast allows it.

This leaves only paying the Arabs to leave or ethnic cleansing.  That's it!  Payment or expulsion.

Any honest observer has to come to these two choices.  Anything else is dishonest and a waste of time.  Discussions by talking heads that do not come down to these options are conversations of either the deluded or liars.

If payment is to work, it must be substantial enough to convince most Arabs to leave, and convince third-party governments to take them in.  Lowballing will not work.

Arutz Sheva:

[MK] Feiglin said that Israel should offer each Palestinian Authority Arab $500,000 to leave Israel.  "The country pays 10% of its gross national product every year to maintain the 'two-state solution' and the Oslo Accords," Feiglin said, including money for security fences and checkpoints, Iron Dome missile defense systems and guards whom he said are posted "at every café." Feiglin said the same money could be used to pay every PA Arab half a million dollars to leave Israel.

Whenever I have suggested paying the Arabs to leave, I have gotten mercilessly criticized for being Arabophilic, but the fact is that many right-wing Israelis have come to the same conclusion, and ended up with roughly the same numbers as my own independent estimate of $200 billion overall.

For those who cannot stand the thought of paying the Arabs to leave, and prefer forcibly "returning" the Arabs to Jordan, one should know that many of these Arabs have long historical roots in Jaffa, Caesarea, Haifa, with no historical connection to Jordan.  Nor will Jordan accept them anymore.  "Let them return to Jordan" is a wonderfully nice slogan but often historically inaccurate.  However much one might want to free Israel of the Palestinian scourge, historic fictions will not help.  Most of these Palestinians did not come from Jordan.  Jordan temporarily granted some of them citizenship from 1948-1988, but that was withdrawn.

Human Rights Watch:

In Jordan, not all passports grant the same privileges. Following the 1988 judicial and administrative disengagement from the occupied territories, new regulations were enacted that rendered the passports of Palestinians living in the West Bank temporary [4]. In practical terms, this designation meant that the new temporary passports were now only valid as a travel document–it no longer conferred citizenship and it no longer had a national number.

If payment is out of the question, then be honest, and recommend that what is preferred is ethnic cleansing.  Do not fudge and call it a population transfer – which is, after all, just ethnic cleansing by both sides.  Be honest!  You want them out, and you do not want to pay for it.

Yes, Jews were expelled in the late '40s and '50s from Arab countries – most, not all, after the flight/expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Israel.  That expulsion of Jews from Araby was also ethnic cleansing and quite despicable.  If payback is what you want, be honest!  Admit you want ethnic cleansing or "counter-ethnic-cleansing" of the Arabs now.  Just know that the Arabs you want to expel now from Judea and Samaria were not responsible for the expulsion of those Jews.  Judean and Samaria Arabs had no control over Morocco, Libya, etc.

I am not saying ethnic cleansing of the Arabs is indefensible.  It may come down to that.  I just ask that if this is your preferred option, be honest about your designs and reasons – and spare us the antiseptic terminologies like "transfer" or "voluntary flight."  When Joshua and the tribes of Israel entered the Promised Land, the Canaanites did not leave voluntarily.  Joshua drove them out.  If this is your preferred solution, be as honest as the Bible was.

Ethnic cleansing will require a war.  The problem is that Egypt and Jordan are at peace with Israel.  Presently, Sisi's Egypt is a better ally of Israel than Obama's America.  So a war will not be easily forthcoming.  While the solution of forced removal – let's be honest, and call it what it is: ethnic cleansing – may appeal to many, it will be hard to engineer.

A new year is coming.  Lies will not solve the Mideast issue.  Keeping people under military rule, however necessary, will only breed more violence.  Enfranchisement is not an option.  The Jews of Israel will not concede to it.  Intermarriage over time is not an option.  The mullahs and the rabbis will not agree to it.

So if you are honest, only paying Palestinians to leave and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians are the real options.

Make a resolution this year to be honest, at least about the Mideast.  Choose which option you prefer, call it by its right name, admit it, and stick to it.

Mike Konrad is an American who writes on various topics.