In the past few years, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has come under serious criticism due to its recommendations surrounding the COVID pandemic and its support—contrary to scientific evidence—for the castration and mutilation of children. Christine Rosen points to another area where it both exceeded its natural realm of authority and came to repugnant conclusions:

Since the 2000s, the AAP has repeatedly made significant mistakes in its health recommendations while also becoming more politicized and left-leaning in its approach to social issues. . . . At the same time, the organization began uncritically embracing political positions popular on the left.

In early January 2025, the current president of the AAP, Dr. Susan Kressly, sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding to know “the whereabouts and wellbeing of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya,” a Gaza pediatrician who had been taken into custody by the Israeli army. Kressley noted that the AAP was joining other groups in calling for the “immediate release” of Safiya.

Kressley did not ask Blinken about the Israeli children still being held hostage by Hamas, such as Ariel and Kfir Bibas, or demand the release of the remaining hostages. And the Anti-Defamation League noted, “According to Israeli authorities and other sources, Abu Safiya is a member of Hamas, the terrorist group behind the October 7th massacre and who is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, reportedly holding the rank of colonel. The AAP’s failure to acknowledge this vital detail is a serious omission, and does a disservice to AAP’s mission and values, fundamentally compromising the integrity of the Academy.”

Over the weekend, Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal reported about a formal letter, signed by five prominent sheikhs from the Judean city of Hebron and addressed to the Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat. The letter proposed that Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest municipalities, “break out of the Palestinian Authority (PA), establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.” Kaufman spoke with some of the sheikhs, who emphasized their resentment at the PA’s corruption and fecklessness, and their desire for peace.

Responding to these unusual events, Seth Mandel looks back to what he describes as his favorite “‘what if’ moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” involving

a plan for the West Bank drawn up in the late 1980s by the former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens. The point of the plan was to prioritize local Arab Palestinian leadership instead of facilitating the PLO’s top-down governing approach, which was corrupt and authoritarian from the start.

Mandel, however, is somewhat skeptical about whether such a plan can work in 2025:

Yet, . . . while it is almost surely a better idea than anything the PA has or will come up with, the primary obstacle is not the quality of the plan but its feasibility under current conditions. The Arens plan was a “what if” moment because there was no clear-cut governing structure in the West Bank and the PLO, then led by Yasir Arafat, was trying to direct the Palestinian side of the peace process from abroad (Lebanon, then Tunisia). In fact, Arens’s idea was to hold local elections among the Palestinians in order to build a certain amount of democratic legitimacy into the foundation of the Arab side of the conflict.

Whatever becomes of the Hebron proposal, there is an important lesson for Gaza from the ignored Arens plan: it was a mistake, as one sheikh told Kaufman, to bring in Palestinian leaders who had spent decades in Tunisia and Lebanon to rule the West Bank after Oslo. Likewise, Gaza will do best if led by the people there on the ground, not new leaders imported from the West Bank, Qatar, or anywhere else.