Israel aims to "deradicalise" Gaza but it should deradicalise itself

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on December 25, nearly three months into the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined what he would like to see in post-war Gaza. “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised and Palestinian society must be deradicalised,” he wrote.

It is unclear whether any of these objectives can be achieved, and the first two appear to be at odds with the third, since Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas up to this point have gone so far towards destroying Gaza itself, making much of the densely populated area uninhabitable for its 2.2 million residents.

Military experts have warned that the devastation in Gaza and the grievance it causes will create new Hamas recruits, or something even more radical. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, whose government is squarely aligned with Israel’s war efforts, said it clearly: “You see, in this kind of a fight, the centre of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

The full article can be read in The National News.