As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said, once Hamas has been eliminated in the Gaza Strip, the territory and its residents will need to be deradicalized. But deradicalized how? The short answer is that Gaza will need to be deradicalized the same way Germany was de-Nazified after World War II.
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Gazan society will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. For starters, all symbols of the territory's previous rulers must be banned, just as Nazi symbols like the swastika were banned in post-WWII Germany. The territory's media and education system will need to be purged of antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism. Instead of being taught to hate and kill Jews, the Gazans must receive a constant flow of messaging promoting peace and coexistence with the Jewish people and Israel. They must be taught that their future ultimately depends on living side-by-side with their Jewish neighbors.
Thus, an entirely new educational curriculum will need to be created. Children in Gaza must learn that the ideals promoted by Hamas, Fatah, and the other Palestinian factions are wrong. They must be taught to choose life instead of death, tolerance instead of hate, and peace instead of war. Gone will be the hateful messages telling Gazan children that the greatest thing they can aspire to is martyrdom in the service of killing Jews. Instead, Gazan children must be encouraged to pursue fruitful, productive lives. They must also be taught that their future and the future of Gaza depend on working with the Jewish people and Israel to build a better Middle East.
Gazans, young and old, must unlearn the ridiculously false Palestinian narrative. No more lies about how Jews stole the land of "Palestine". No more lies about the Palestinians being the descendants of the ancient Canaanites. And no more lies about the Jews having no claim whatsoever to "Palestine".
Instead, Gazans must learn the truth about their origins – that "Palestinians" are mostly descendants of Muslim Arab conquerors who invaded the Land of Israel in the seventh century and economic migrants who came to the country during the British Mandate period. One of the first things Gazans should learn during the post-Hamas period of deradicalization is that the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinian" are foreign words with no Semitic origin that have always been used to disassociate the Jewish people from their indigenous homeland – the Land of Israel.
The Gazans must be made to accept the fact that the Jewish people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Holy Land. They must also learn that inasmuch as the land belongs to the Jewish people, the Jews, and Israel have always sought peace and coexistence with their Arab residents. Above all, the Gazans must accept the presence of the Jewish state of Israel and the principle that their future and their prosperity depend on coexisting and cooperating with the Jewish state.
Deradicalizing Gaza will ultimately mean controlling the flow of information in the territory. Thus, the media will have to be tightly controlled in a way that Gazans are only exposed to information that promotes the values of peace, tolerance, and coexistence. Although controlling the flow of information does contradict the principles of freedom and democracy – not to mention the fact that in this day and age, controlling the flow of information is extremely difficult – it will only be temporary – just until the Gazans have completely rejected the genocidal death culture promoted by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and other Palestinian factions.
Deradicalizing Gaza will also involve cultivating a new Gazan leadership. To start with, all current Palestinian factions – Hamas, Fatah, etc. – will have to be banned, because inasmuch as these factions bitterly oppose each other, they all preach the same ideology of hate, death, and genocide that has kept Palestinians stateless and impoverished for decades. Instead, Gazans must be encouraged to establish new political parties and associations that will inevitably differ from one another on questions of policy, but will all embrace the new culture of tolerance and coexistence that will replace Gaza's current death culture.
There is no telling how long the deradicalization of Gaza will take. After the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allied military occupation lasted ten years, and at least some troops from the victorious Allied Powers stayed in the country for decades to come. In fact, Germany only formally regained full sovereignty in 1991, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the country's reunification.
Thus, if Gaza's path towards deradicalization – and perhaps sovereignty – resembles that of post-WWII Germany, it could be years before a new civilian administration takes hold in the territory, and perhaps decades before the territory is given complete free will to govern itself. The good news is that if deradicalization in Gaza succeeds, it could serve as a model for deradicalizing the rest of Palestinian society.
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