In 1945, who could have imagined that Germany and Japan would, only a few decades later, become two of the United States’ closest allies?

German cities lay in ruins. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had suffered atomic attacks. Germany and Japan had experienced defeat, occupation, and the collapse of the political systems that had led them to war.

Everything seemed in place to fuel an inexpiable hatred of the American victor for generations to come.

Yet something else happened.

After disarming their former enemies, the United States and its allies did not content themselves with controlling their territories. They gradually rebuilt their societies, institutions, and economies. They dismantled the structures of Nazism and Japanese militarism, while also creating the conditions that allowed a new generation to see the future as preferable to a return to the past.

Military victory had destroyed the capacity to wage war. Reconstruction had to make war itself lose its appeal.

This may be the most important lesson of 1945 for Gaza.

The comparison obviously has its limits. Gaza is neither Germany nor Japan in 1945. Hamas is not a state, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its own national, territorial, and religious history.

But one principle remains: Israel’s security will only be lasting when Hamas has lost not only its weapons, but also its ability to pass its ideology on to the next generation.

This is where the postwar period begins.

Disarming Hamas Is Not Enough

The Board of Peace’s program for Gaza provides an architecture that moves in this direction: dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure, verified disarmament, the principle of one authority and one weapon, an international stabilization force, a vetted Palestinian police force, and economic reconstruction.

This architecture addresses a first question: How can Hamas be prevented from doing it again?

But it leaves a more difficult question unanswered: How can we ensure that a new generation no longer wants to do it again?

Hamas is not merely a military organization. It is part of the broader Islamist political........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)