Oct. 7 was a consequence of ignoring a core prerequisite: Palestinian deradicalization - analysis

However, the plan’s first principle – “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone” – reveals the central contradiction that has haunted every peace initiative since Oslo. Before addressing hostage returns or security arrangements, the plan begins with deradicalization.

This chronological ordering makes little sense unless we understand what three decades of failed peacemaking should have taught us: Ideology precedes everything else in the Middle East.

Herein lie many unanswered questions and critical details yet to be filled in. While the plan answered most of Israel’s immediate security requirements, it contradicted an ironclad lesson learned at catastrophic cost: Israel cannot repeat the fatal mistake it made in Gaza in 2005.

Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza – uprooting 8,000 Jewish residents and ceding full control to the Palestinian Authority – was heralded as a test case for Palestinian self-governance and territorial compromise.

Instead, by 2007 Hamas violently seized control, transforming Gaza into what would become a forward base for Iranian regime terror operations. The October 7 massacre, which came perilously close to constituting an existential attack on Israel through the coordinated Hezbollah-Hamas assault plan, claimed more than 1000 lives.

October 7 did not occur due to the absence of a Palestinian state: It occurred precisely because there was a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza – one that weaponized sovereignty to build a 500-kilometer underground tunnel network, amass tens of thousands of rockets, and plan an invasion that Israeli intelligence, among the world’s most sophisticated, failed to detect.

That is the red-light warning that Israel, as a collective – government and public alike – will not ignore when considering the West Bank, where any prospective Palestinian state, sitting on the Judean-Samarian hill ridge that dominates most of Israel’s territory, particularly its western coastal cities, would threaten 70% of Israel’s population and 80% of its industrial capacity.

The ideological structure underlying any Palestinian entity remains fundamentally based on jihad and the cancellation of Israel. This is why deradicalization appears as the Trump plan’s first point, though the chronological placement seems almost surreal.

One of the principal lessons that should have been learned before Oslo in 1993 is that cancerous indoctrination is inherent in the Palestinian collective mindset and institutional framework. Deradicalization of an entire society was never established as a prerequisite for Palestinian statehood – and that failure directly resulted in the October 7 atrocities.

This same failure threatens to repeat itself in the hills above Ben-Gurion Airport.

Creating a Palestinian state now will inflame radicalization, not diminish it. Hamas had an 18-year period to radicalize an entire generation in Gaza through educational curricula that erased Israel from maps, glorified martyrdom, and denied Jewish historical ties to the land.

The Palestinian Authority’s “pay to slay” program – disbursing more than $300 million annually to terrorists and their families – continues to this day. Article 15 of the PLO Charter explicitly calls for preparing younger generations ideologically and practically for armed struggle. PA textbooks examined by external monitors confirm their role in institutionalizing violence across generations.

There are alternatives grounded in the region’s organic social structures. The Hebron model of local governance, based on notable families, clans, and tribes in each major town, represents a localized framework that works throughout the Middle East – in the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, among the region’s most stable countries.

These organic structures predate and supersede the artificial state boundaries created by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which imagined the Middle East in Western minds.

The Western powers’ Sykes-Picot vision imposed a Westphalian state system – highly centralized European-model states – onto societies organized around tribal, clan, and village loyalties.

This European model in the Middle East was heavily influenced by Nazi and Soviet ideologies and indoctrination methods, which proved disastrous for the region. Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq stand as monuments to this failure.

Alternative models can embrace individual rights, judicial reform, and economic modernization while respecting traditional power structures to achieve security and stability.

The Gulf states have taken the lead in recent years. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has insisted on comprehensive reform as the pathway forward. This is the model for any future governance structure in the Palestinian territories.

The UN’s recent recognition of Palestinian statehood and Tony Blair’s initiative are reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s well-intentioned but ultimately unrealistic approach. Both emerge from a Western mentality that fails to translate into the organic power structures of the Middle East. They project liberal democratic assumptions onto societies where tribe, clan, and village determine loyalty and governance.

The Muslim Brotherhood, born in Egypt near Gaza in the 1940s and maintaining a presence there ever since, has profoundly shaped Palestinian politics. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, and Qatar is at its head – the very state that is mediating peace talks while funding Hamas operations.

This ideological ecosystem, which permeates the region from Gaza to Doha to Cairo, views concessions not as steps toward peace but as tactical retreats before the next phase of conflict.

The long-term reputational damage inflicted through perception warfare by Hamas, Iran, and Qatar continues to metastasize. The BDS movement advances through Western institutions. Both the progressive Left and the populist Right in America and throughout the West have embraced anti-Israel narratives, creating an unprecedented convergence of hostility.

This lawfare at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, propaganda through social media, and diplomatic isolation campaigns inflict damage that military victories cannot reverse.

Western acceptance of Palestinian statehood – while neither Palestinians nor Israelis accept this solution in its current form – represents a peculiar neo-colonialism: imposing political arrangements that serve Western diplomatic convenience rather than regional realities.

Before any discussion of Palestinian statehood can proceed with integrity, fundamental prerequisites must be met: condemnation of October 7; elimination of “pay to slay” programs; recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state; cessation of terror incitement; ending anti-Israel international campaigns; active counter-terrorism cooperation; and an across-the-board deradicalization program, as mentioned in the first point of the Trump program.

These reforms, absent since Oslo’s inception, remain essential to dismantling the terror ecosystem that produced October 7.

The post-October 7 reality demands that we finally wake up to what three decades should have taught us: Changing ideology takes generations, not diplomatic ceremonies. Until Western policymakers understand this elemental truth about the Middle East, we will continue cycling through failed initiatives, each leaving Israel more isolated and Palestinians more radicalized – and no closer to the peace both peoples deserve.■