"I don't think Hamas will volunteer to put aside its weapons; without weapons, there is no Hamas," MK Avi Dichter said on Wednesday at a Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) conference on the future of Israel and Gaza.
Dichter, who previously served as the head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and agriculture and raw food security minister, spoke extensively about the disarmament of Hamas.
Within the framework of President Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan, Hamas is expected to give up its arms, either voluntarily (in which case, fighters may be granted amnesty) or by force.
Dichter, however, said that weapons are the “raison d’être of Hamas,” adding that he “can’t see them disarming of their own accord.”
Therefore, it is more likely that Israel will be forced to disarm the group through military means. “In this region, what doesn’t work with force works with extra force,” he added.
Nevertheless, Dichter predicted that Gaza is not going to be a threat to the State of Israel for decades. “The Gaza Strip will not be dominated by the Palestinian Authority [or] by Hamas," he assured.
According to Dichter, Gazans will not see the inside of the State of Israel for “two generations at least... only in photos.”
The first and most important thing to be sorted is the return of the remaining bodies of the hostages still in Gaza, said Dichter. After this, efforts can be turned to other matters, such as diplomatic relations with surrounding countries and Gaza’s reconstruction.
The rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, however, depends on the rehabilitation of the people of Gaza, he said. Dichter recalled how, on October 7, 2023, the third wave of individuals to enter southern Israel (after Hamas terrorists and looters) were “so-called uninvolved Gazan civilians, something which in normal culture we can’t even imagine.”
“They applauded when the Israeli hostages were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip,” Dichter said, saying that the radical ideology and desire for jihad in Gaza remain strong.
The focus for rehabilitation must be on Gazans who continue to live in refugee camps (and have done so for 77 years). These Palestinians have been kept in a cycle of disempowerment and displacement thanks to UNRWA, Dichter said. “If rehabilitation succeeds, Gaza will look different.”
That said, Dichter dismissed popular claims that a rehabilitated Gaza could be the “Singapore of the Middle East.”
“I don’t know about Singapore, but poor it’s going to be,” he said.
He then emphasized what he called Israel’s need to learn the lessons not only from October 7, but also from the rest of the country’s history since its establishment in 1948. “In the Middle East, you have to learn lessons very fast and translate them into action.”
“The main message of our region is that if you are weak, you will disappear. And if you are small and weak, you will disappear much faster. We are small, but we don’t want to be weak,” the former Shin Bet director said.
“We don’t have the option of losing.”
Former Mossad head: voluntary Hamas disarmament unlikely
Oded Ailam, the former director of the Mossad’s Counterterrorism Division and a current JCFA researcher, also addressed two key issues: Hamas disarmament and Gaza rehabilitation.
“People say that to change Gaza you must change beliefs,” he said, adding that such statements are “useless.”
“Beliefs are like tattoos. You cannot erase them with speeches. You have to change the incentive environment that sustains those beliefs,” Ailam said.
“And if we have learned some lessons from the real world, they are that ideas don’t kill, but capacity does, which means the first and the only thing that we have to do is to somehow dismantle the capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza to kill,” he continued.
The first step, as previously stated by others, would be getting rid of the armament that Hamas possesses.
However, Ailam pointed out, there have only been two incidents in the modern era of Islamic terrorist groups in which they were willing to submit their weapons.
One was in the Philippines, where the Moro Islamic Liberation Front reached an agreement with the government to submit weapons and to dissolve. The other pertained to the Free Aceh Movement in Indonesia in 2005.
“Those are the only two examples of Islamist terrorist groups willing to dismantle,” Ailam said.
More common, he continued, is the situation seen with the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where agreements are reached but the terror groups keep their weapons.
However, such partial disarmament cannot be allowed to happen in Gaza, he stressed, adding that otherwise, there will be no chance for any entity in Gaza to replace Hamas.
Ailam questioned who would be in charge of disarming the terrorist organization: “I don’t see any way that external forces from America, Egypt, or the Emirates will do it. I don’t see any ‘Ahmed from the Emirates’ running down the streets of Shejaia trying to dismantle Hamas.”
“So, I’m pretty much skeptical of the next phase of the Trump agreement. It’s not an agreement, it’s a letter of intent.”
Another significant barrier to any sort of disarmament is Turkey and Qatar, he added.
“If Israel and the United States allow Turkey and Qatar to have a significant force within Gaza, you can be sure that Hamas would not be dismantled. We have a major problem right now because this American administration wants [Turkey and Qatar in Gaza] because of their important part in achieving the deal. But the payment will be paid by Israel.”
Despite the noteworthy support Israel is currently receiving from the Trump administration, Ailam said Israel is “working on thin ice because this thing is not going to last, we saw what happened yesterday in New York,” alluding to the voting in of far Left, anti-Israel mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
“So we have a few weeks right now, which are essential and crucial, in order to try to create a new architecture in Gaza and in the Middle East,” he continued.
Muslim Brotherhood
Ailam also spoke about the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the enclave, given that Hamas is one of its armed factions.
“Gaza is the only place on earth where the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to take governance of a real state,” he said. “However, Gaza is not its goal; it is not its aspiration. It wants to be everywhere – in Madrid, Dearborn, Paris...”
According to Ailam, “Gaza is just its start-up.”
He said Western society must realize that the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to the whole world. “And one thing for sure regarding the Muslim Brotherhood – it says what it thinks and it writes what it says. There’s no double-talk.”
He was asked if, given the hostility of the Gazan population toward Israel, it was possible to have a non-Muslim Brotherhood-type government in Gaza? Ailam answered: “I would say that first of all, it’s a matter of education.”
“Reeducate the Gaza people. Take into consideration that 65% of them are under 18, which means all of them were born under the Hamas regime. All of them went to UNRWA schools,” he continued.
“I don’t think that they will immediately become secular. This is a fantasy. But we need to concentrate on new education, the same that the Emirates had applied very successfully.”
For this, UNRWA must be “completely out of the picture,” and Hamas must not be allowed to interfere in any way, he added.
“Hamas is trying to adopt the Lebanese style, the Hezbollah style. And the key to success, and I’m not very optimistic, by the way, is not allowing that to happen,” he said.