Hamas and the Gaza Strip

The radicalization of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip is not a new phenomenon, but the process has accelerated and deepened dramatically since Hamas’ takeover of the territory in 2007. Under its rule, an extremist religious-nationalist ideology has been systematically embedded across all spheres of Gaza life—from education and religious institutions to welfare and the media—producing a profound “Hamasification” of public consciousness. The war that erupted on October 7 brought unprecedented ruin to the Gaza Strip, both physically and institutionally, posing a monumental reconstruction challenge, but also a rare historic opportunity. This memorandum argues that military disarmament and physical rehabilitation alone will not ensure long-term security and stability, and that a far deeper process of “de-Hamasifcation” is required: dismantling Hamas’ ideological and institutional hegemony and replacing it with a more moderate civic and normative infrastructure. The study presents a comparative analysis of Western and Arab deradicalization models and finds that Western approaches—such as those implemented in Germany and Japan—struggle to provide an adequate response to Gaza’s cultural and political context. Instead, we propose adopting operational principles drawn from contemporary Arab models, particularly the “civic-transformative” model applied in the Gulf states, which combines a firm crackdown on extremist actors with re-education toward religious tolerance and broad-based economic rehabilitation. The paper outlines an integrative strategy encompassing sustained security demilitarization, the mobilization of an Arab coalition to provide religious and political legitimacy, and the establishment of a credible political horizon as a counterweight to the ethos of “resistance.” Only the combination of these elements can generate a viable governing and ideological alternative to Hamas and lead to a more stable long-term security environment for the State of Israel.

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After each round of violent clashes between Israel and Hamas, the issue of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip and improving its economic situation is raised once again. The accepted working assumption is that given suitable political conditions, and in the framework of a political process based on an attempt to promote the realization of the two-state paradigm, in which the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are considered one political and territorial unit under the control of the Palestinian Authority, it will be possible to rehabilitate the Strip. But it appears that nobody has ever asked if the Gaza Strip can indeed be rehabilitated. In this paper I will try to clarify the meaning of “rehabilitation” in the context of the Gaza Strip, and with the aid of a matrix of variables, those that facilitate rehabilitation and those that disrupt it, examine a number of basic questions dealing with the actual feasibility of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip under existing conditions. Following that, with reference to my conclusion regarding the absence of sufficient conditions for a successful rehabilitation process, I will describe the characteristics of this state of affairs and its ramifications, and propose a number of possible options for dealing with the emerging situation in the absence of rehabilitation, with an emphasis on the importance of adopting logical guidelines which do not currently exist but which are here deemed to be essential for the success of such a process. The conclusion of this paper is that leaving Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a ruling entity and with their commitment to the preservation of the idea of armed resistance, are both strongly disruptive variables, and both are endogenous to the Palestinian system. Therefore, without neutralizing these two variables, or at least weakening them very considerably, it is hard to imagine that the rehabilitation process will succeed.