President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have presented Hamas with a clear choice: disarm the “easy way” – voluntarily – or the “hard way” – by force. History has shown us that voluntary disarmament, like that of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), takes years of painstaking negotiation, while forced disarmament, as with Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), can be immediate. The question is not whether Hamas will be disarmed, but how long the international community is willing to wait.
When discussing the disarmament of terrorist groups, pundits frequently invoke the IRA as a model for success. This narrative obscures a crucial truth: voluntary disarmament is a painfully slow process, often taking years or even decades, whereas military defeat yields immediate results.
The numbers tell a stark story. The Provisional IRA announced a ceasefire in July 1997, yet didn’t complete disarmament until September 2005 – eight years later. Spain’s ETA took six years from its 2011 permanent ceasefire to hand over weapons in 2017. Even Colombia’s FARC required a full year from signing its 2016 peace accord to complete disarmament in 2017.
The contrast between these protracted timelines and cases of outright military defeat is telling. When Sri Lankan forces crushed the LTTE in 2009, disarmament was effectively immediate. There was no negotiation, no phased handover, no verification committees. Peru’s Shining Path met a similar fate in the 1990s when government forces captured its leader, triggering the rapid collapse of the insurgency. Angola’s UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) disintegrated in 2002 following military pressure, with combatants quickly laying down arms.
Why does voluntary disarmament take so long? The reasons are structural. Negotiated settlements require armed groups to surrender their primary source of leverage. Verification mechanisms must be established. Political constituencies on both sides must be convinced. Hardliners resist, fearing betrayal or irrelevance. Each weapon handed over becomes a point of contention.
Military defeat leaves no room for negotiation
Military defeat eliminates these complications altogether. There are no bargaining chips when your arsenal has been captured, no trust-building required when your command structure has been destroyed, no verification needed when your fighters are dead or imprisoned.
It is also crucial to recognize that, unlike the IRA, Hamas is a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization and therefore should not be negotiated with or legitimized. The LTTE is a better parallel because, although not Islamic, they were very radical and pioneered the use of suicide vests and female suicide bombers. The IRA operated within a framework where political accommodation was ultimately possible.
Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews worldwide – a genocidal ideology that places it in a fundamentally different category. The LTTE’s fanaticism and refusal to compromise until total military defeat make it a far more instructive parallel for understanding the challenge Hamas presents.
If voluntary disarmament is pursued, the international community must prepare for a process measured in years during which Hamas retains operational capacity, continues to radicalize new recruits, and maintains its grip on Gaza’s civilian population.
Each day of delay allows Hamas to rebuild terror tunnels, renew its arsenals, and strengthen its political legitimacy. This is not merely a security concern; it is an existential threat to any prospect of lasting peace.
When pointing to the IRA as a model, we should acknowledge that it took eight years and required extraordinary political will. When circumstances are less ideal – when terrorist groups are more radical and time is of the essence – the historical record shows that military defeat produces results measured in weeks, not years.
For Hamas, the lesson is straightforward: the easy way means years of negotiation with uncertain outcomes, while the hard way means immediate and irreversible disarmament.
The lesson for policymakers is also clear: if immediate disarmament is the objective and the threat cannot be tolerated for years while trust is gradually built, then history suggests only one reliable path. Those who advocate for negotiated settlements should do so with clear eyes about the patience required – and the significant risk that the process may fail entirely.
The uncomfortable truth is that terrorism ends most swiftly not through conversion but through defeat. And while the moral clarity of voluntary disarmament is appealing, the historical record demands we understand its limitations.
Every day we wait for Hamas to choose the easy way is another day it uses to consolidate power and plan future attacks. History has shown us that the hard way is often better and faster than the easy way.
The writer is a senior analyst at Acumen Risk.