As questions about how to govern post-war Gaza mount, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for deradicalization of its inhabitants.
It isn’t necessary and won’t work for a simple reason: Most Palestinians are not radicals. Gazans don’t need rehabilitation; they need an economic opportunity and a state of their own.
Deradicalization emerged as a counterterrorism strategy in the 1990s and gained traction in the U.S. after 9/11. As the Global War on Terror dragged on, the U.S. discovered that killing extremists would not end terrorism if the ideology that motivated them persisted. The prospect of hundreds of ISIS fighters returning to Europe after the fall of Raqqa in 2017 renewed interest in the deradicalization.
Deradicalization refers to techniques applied to reverse the process of radicalization, in other words, persuading extremists to reject their ideology.
Saudi Arabia did pioneer work with al Qaeda and ISIS detainees. Its program focused on religious education to persuade detainees that radical Islam was a perversion of the true religion. To that end, Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah, a judge at the High Court of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, published “This is not a Path to Paradise: A Response to ISIS” in 2014. The book offered a theological refutation of Jihadist ideology.
While only a small number of Americans joined al-Qaeda or ISIS, the U.S. also tried deradicalization.
When 10 young Somali Americans were arrested in 2016, a federal court in Minnesota created a program to rehabilitate them. District Judge Michael Davis invited Daniel Koehler, head of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies to assist him in assessing the suitability of each defendant for the program and then training Americans to implement it.
While many governments and organizations focus on the Islamist threat, some seek to counter the threat posed by far-right extremists. In 2011, former white supremacists based in the U.S. founded Life After Hate, a group “dedicated to helping individuals disengage from violent far-right hate groups and hateful online spaces.”
European governments and the European Union have also created deradicalization programs. The United Kingdom’s Prevent Program seeks to identify and intervene with young people early in the radicalization process to stop them from becoming terrorists. The EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network “connects frontline practitioners from across Europe . . . to exchange knowledge, first-hand experience and approaches to preventing and countering violent extremism.”
The effectiveness of deradicalization has been the subject of considerable debate.
Programs like Life After Hate function like Alcoholics Anonymous: They require participants to admit they have a problem and seek help dealing with it. Also, a Department of Homeland Security report on deradicalization concluded that a lack of reliable data and controlled studies severely hampers assessment of the effectiveness of deradicalization programs.
However, evidence suggests programs work best for those who have not committed serious crimes and are already considering leaving the extremist movement. The Somali American youths from Minnesota were arrested for trying to join ISIS. They had not yet harmed anyone. Judge Davis later clarified that the program he created for them promoted disengagement, not deradicalization. He sought to change their behavior, not their beliefs.
Deradicalization programs are also labor-intensive and expensive. Even if you could persuade someone that they are following a misguided theology, you can’t convince them that they really aren’t poor and marginalized.
The idea that 2.2 million residents of Gaza can undergo deradicalized is patently absurd, but that is not the point.
They don’t need it.
Hamas has embraced a violent extremist ideology, but most Palestinians have not.
The Hamas charter declares “Israel exists and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it.” It also explicitly connects Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood, the same group that spawned al Qaeda. Hamas not only wants to destroy Israel but to replace it with an ultraconservative Islamic state.
What do Palestinians want?
Contrary to the accusations of the Netanyahu government, most Palestinians neither support Hamas nor embrace its ideology.
A survey conducted just prior to the current conflict revealed that 44 percent of Gazans had “no trust at all” in Hamas and another 23 percent said they had “not a lot of trust in Hamas.” Seventy-two percent said there was a “large” or “medium” amount of corruption in the Hamas government.
Only 20 percent of Gazans favor a “military solution that could result in the destruction of the state of Israel,” and 54 percent favor the two-state solution outlined in the Oslo Accords.
More than anything, the inhabitants of Gaza want relief from the dire living conditions imposed on them by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has lasted more than 15 years. Even before the Israeli invasion, two-thirds of Gazans lived in poverty, and 80 percent of Gazans depended on international aid. Gaza had a 45 percent employment rate, among the highest in the world.
Since the war began, conditions in Gaza have gone from dire to desperate. According to the United Nations Agency for Humanitarian Affairs, 45 percent of the housing stock has been destroyed or severely damaged. Approximately 1.5 million people have been internally displaced. Eighteen hospitals have had to shut down, and five others can provide only very limited services.
Despite compelling evidence that the Qassam Brigade (Hamas’ armed wing) did not notify its political leadership of its plans, some Israeli politicians speak as if all Palestinians are to blame for the attack.
Human rights activists worry that inflammatory rhetoric, such as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statement, “We are fighting human animals” dehumanizes Palestinians and encourages violence against them.
This rhetoric reveals that Israel has its own problem with radicalization. A coalition of far-right religious Zionists won 14 seats in the last Knesset election. That may seem like a small number, but with Israel’s fractured politics, it enabled Netanyahu to form a government by incorporating ultranationalists in his coalition.
The specter of hard-right youths marching through the Old City of Jerusalem in May chanting, “Death to Arabs” should serve as a warning that Hamas is not the only extremist threat Israel faces.
Every community has extremists and only moderates within the same community can counter them.
Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”