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Source: https://jcfa.org/gaza-after-the-war-hamas-society-and-the-problem-of-what-comes-next/
Deradicalizing Gaza Is Measured in Decades, Not Months
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Noor Dahri - Hamas in Gaza was not merely a militant faction but a ruling system embedded in society. For nearly two decades, Hamas shaped culture, education, and everyday life. Hamas's ideological appeal remains durable because hostility toward Israel in Gaza is not dependent on Hamas alone; rather, Hamas has cultivated a social base that can keep it alive even without formal rule. Hamas may be too weakened to govern Gaza effectively in the short run, but still strong enough - through ideology, loyalty networks, and residual armed capability - to prevent stable alternatives from taking root. The organization's disarmament is framed internally as betrayal of a divine cause. Voluntary demobilization is close to impossible. Hamas has every incentive to reorganize under another name or structure rather than dissolve. Moreover, Gaza's wider armed ecosystem still remains, with dozens of jihadist factions and clan-based militias, many of which are hostile to Israel and in some cases more extreme than Hamas. Hamas is sustained by a public it helped shape. Over decades, Hamas embedded religious and political indoctrination into schools, mosques, charities, youth institutions, and cultural life, producing a population in which jihadist framing became routine and institutionalized. For roughly 1.4 million Palestinians across Gaza and Judea and Samaria, born and raised under Hamas's ideological influence, Hamas is part of the worldview they inherited. Accordingly, deradicalizing Gaza is measured in decades, not months. Hamas is embedded in a radicalized society. Deradicalization without social transformation is impossible. Gaza's future turns on whether a non-Hamas authority can emerge that is strong enough to govern, legitimate enough to win public compliance, and capable enough to dismantle the wider militia culture that Hamas helped entrench. The writer is executive director at Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism (ITCT), a UK-based think tank focusing on countering extremist Islamist ideology.