As Israel continues its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, policymakers in Jerusalem often use the term “deradicalization” when discussing Gaza’s future, mentioning it as a condition for the end of hostilities and calm. Yet Israeli politicians have not proposed concrete plans for its implementation,though everyone agrees Hamas’s murderous ideology (and the organization itself) must be eradicated.
Other Middle Eastern countries have extensive experience with deradicalization, with varying degrees of success. In Iraq, for example, the process of de-Baathification was rapid and the remnants of the regime were quickly removed from power, but soon, one kind of extremism was replaced by another one. Could these regional experiences offer meaningful lessons for Gaza’s eventual reconstruction and social healing?
Regional Approaches to Countering Extremism
Three countries – Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan – have distinctive long-term deradicalization strategies that combine security measures with religious, educational, and socioeconomic initiatives.
Following the 2003 Casablanca bombings, Morocco implemented a counterterrorism strategy combining aggressive security operations with socioeconomic development and religious education oversight. Beyond active security measures, Morocco established the Mohammed VI Institute for Training Imams in 2015 to promote moderate interpretations of Islam based on the Maliki school of jurisprudence, reformed religious education curricula, and created the Mosalaha (Reconciliation) program for rehabilitating extremist prisoners.
In Saudi Arabia, the Mohammed bin Naif Counseling and Care Center claims an 80 percent success rate in rehabilitating extremists. The Saudi approach separates extremist and non-extremist prisoners, provides extensive post-release incentives including marriage support and employment assistance, and emphasizes family involvement in the rehabilitation process.
Aziz Algashian, Saudi researcher and policy fellow at Israel’s Mitvim Institute for Regional Foreign Policy, recalls the role of extremist rhetoric in his own education: “I remember in my childhood there were independent preachers who used to go to our schools, they would express all the anger about US and Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq, and I even remember people saying that it was a way to recruit the people.”
He explains that this situation prompted Saudi authorities to implement comprehensive oversight of educational institutions, as part of Ministry of Interior deradicalization programs that combine religious re-education by moderate scholars, psychological counseling, family involvement, and extensive post-release support.
Jordan’s strategy centers on religious legitimacy. The 2004 Amman Letter brought together 180 Muslim scholars to build consensus against extremist interpretations of Islam. In 2006, the government introduced laws that regulate who can issue religious rulings or fatawa. However, Jordan’s prison-based programs have faced challenges, with many inmates rejecting dialogue with government-appointed religious scholars. Despite these difficulties, Jordan has pioneered online counter-radicalization through its Sakina program and claims a relatively low recidivism rate for rehabilitated extremists.
Israel has yet to adopt a deradicalization strategy for Palestinian terrorists. Alon Eviatar, a former advisor to the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, notes that Israel never attempted such efforts. Israel has tried to work with the Palestinian Authority to change Palestinian textbooks and to halt the incitement in Palestinian media, but these efforts were not successful, per Eviatar. Palestinians in Gaza are not under Israeli sovereignty, and Israel has neither the legal authority nor the institutional capacity to implement deradicalization programs.
Challenges for Gaza
What will it take to deradicalize young people who celebrated the October 7, 2023 attack and kidnapping of Israelis and who may have even joined the attackers when the border between Gaza and Israel was opened on that day?
The regional experiences show that it is possible to build schools for imams and preachers, introduce counselling programs for families, change the school curricula and decrease the level of radicalization in society. But the specific challenges of deradicalization in Gaza are more grave, owing to the ongoing conflict with Israel and the strong influence of Hamas.
How was Gaza radicalized in the first place? One can start with a local branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood raising its head there during the 1970s, later morphing from charitable associations led by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin into Hamas, an armed terrorist organization with both political and charitable arms. Or, one can go back to 1948 when tiny Gaza was overwhelmed with Palestinian refugees from nearby Jaffa, Majdal (now Ashkelon), Asdud (now Ashdod) and other towns and villages now in Israel. Gaza’s population swelled rapidly while poverty spread. The refugees were crammed in the camps, they lacked land or possessions, and their desperation and rage were soon exploited by those who propagated violence.
Islamist movements have been influential in the Strip for decades, but for the last 18 years Gaza was directly run by Hamas. A whole generation studied its curricula at schools, listened to Hamas-appointed imams in mosques, and joined Hamas ranks for lack of other options. Hamas military leaders, such as Muhammad Deif or Yahya Sinwar, were admired.
Young Palestinians in Gaza today have had no direct contact with Israelis – unlike their fathers and uncles who had worked in Israel – and their lives played out in streets dominated by Hamas imagery and messaging. This generation was both heavily radicalized and traumatized before and during the current war, losing homes, relatives, and friends. They stopped attending school nearly two years ago. It’s unclear when they will go back.
Two interconnected factors appear to drive radicalization in Gaza: Hamas’s indoctrination that glorified the terror, and the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any effective deradicalization strategy would need to address both aspects simultaneously. Hamas has systematically embedded radical ideology throughout Gaza’s educational system, religious institutions, media outlets, and social services, creating a comprehensive ecosystem that normalizes extremist viewpoints from early childhood and recruits Palestinian youth to its ranks.
This ideological framework is constantly reinforced by the ongoing conflict, which provides tangible grievances that extremist narratives can exploit. The combination of personal hardships, collective trauma, restricted opportunities, and political frustration creates fertile ground for radicalization, especially among young Palestinians who have known nothing but the Hamas narrative and intermittent warfare.
A Path Forward
After the war, physical reconstruction must be accompanied by social rehabilitation, including reformed educational institutions, religious discourse, and economic opportunities. In addition, a plan that offers Palestinians a long-term political solution would be essential to undermine extremist narratives. One cannot happen without the other. But who should lead and supervise this effort? The answer is clear: the drive for that should come from within and it must be supported and guided by regional powers with records in combatting radicalization.
Arab countries with deradicalization experience, including Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, could play roles in such efforts. They could share best practices with Gaza’s future governors and work with Israel, the Palestinians, and international partners to advance political solutions.
Obstacles remain. Palestinian society would need to openly reject violent extremism and its proponents who led Gaza into the abyss (the protestors who demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza today are saying that out loud). Israel has yet to adopt or articulate a coherent postwar Gaza plan, including paths toward economic reconstruction and non-Hamas governance tied to deradicalization.
And regional powers would need to engage more constructively in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, and work together with Palestinian future government on deradicalization and society building —something they have been reluctant to do in recent decades.
Without addressing these fundamental challenges, deradicalization or more precisely de-Hamasification efforts in Gaza will likely offer limited results. The path to a deradicalized Gaza remains difficult but not impossible—provided all stakeholders are willing to learn from both successes and failures of previous efforts across the Middle East.
