Moumen Al-Natour: In Gaza, demilitarization and deradicalization must go hand-in-hand

Palestinian students attend an UNRWA-run primary school in Gaza City in 2008. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

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U.S. special envoy Jared Kushner recently said that Gaza will not be rebuilt until it’s demilitarized. His reasoning was straightforward: no one wants to pour billions of dollars into reconstruction only to see the territory taken over by terrorists or destroyed again. He is right about the problem. But demilitarization alone will not solve it.

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Taking away the terrorist’s weapons is necessary. But so is asking what made generations of young people willing to carry them in the first place.

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If Gaza is to have a different future, reconstruction and rehabilitation must happen together. One to rebuild the physical environment, and the other to rebuild the institutions and ideas that shape future generations. I know this because I grew up in Gaza.

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In fourth grade, my Islamic education teacher called me to the front of the classroom. He ran toward me, performed a military-style roll, then stood with his hands positioned around an imaginary rifle.

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“You need to learn these movements,” he told us. We needed to become soldiers, he said. The war against the Jews would continue until the end of time, and killing Jews, according to my teacher, was an act of worship.

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I was around nine years old at the time. The same teacher condemned the Oslo Accords and called the Palestinian Authority traitors. I did not know what the Oslo Accords were. I did not even know where Oslo was. I knew who I was supposed to hate before I even understood the conflict.

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By secondary school, the imaginary rifle became a real Kalashnikov. We had a class in which we learned to disassemble and reassemble weapons. The instructor belonged to Hamas’s security apparatus. Once, his rifle accidentally discharged and a bullet tore through a classroom wall.

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My father was furious when he learned that I was being trained with weapons. He went to the school and objected. Two days later, the principal humiliated me during morning assembly, calling me weak because I had brought my father instead of behaving like the “men” who fight to liberate Palestine.

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My father understood something my school did not: patriotism did not require turning his son into a soldier. This is why the debate over Gaza’s reconstruction cannot be limited to buildings.

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A school is not rehabilitated because someone replaces its windows, pours new concrete and installs new desks. What matters is what happens after children sit at those desks.

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The United States and its partners therefore need to think about Gaza’s reconstruction in two inseparable tracks: demilitarization and deradicalization, physical reconstruction and civic rehabilitation.

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That does not mean erasing Palestinian identity or political aspirations. Palestinians should be free to advocate for statehood, challenge Israeli policies and tell their own history. Deradicalization cannot become a euphemism for political submission.