Ceasefires don’t end wars. Disarmament does.

Lasting peace will never come from pauses in violence, but from the courage to eliminate those who perpetuate it.

Gazan children train in weapons-use at a Hamas “summer camp” in 2021. It’s not for hunting animals. It’s for hunting Jews. (photo: Hamas)

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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It is time to stop prevaricating and to disarm Hamas fully, decisively, and without apology.

A terrorist organization that slaughters civilians, glorifies massacre, and rules by fear cannot be allowed to retain an arsenal, and certainly not to rearm, regroup, or reassert itself.

The current international discourse about disarming Hamas and removing it from power without there being any plan or action is pathetic. The idea that Hamas can be “managed” or “contained” is a fantasy that has failed for decades.

Here is what must happen.

Israel must recalibrate its military strategy and abandon its self-defeating model of short-term operations punctuated by indefinite truces, which is what this ceasefire looks set to become. Every day there is a ceasefire without disarmament is a day that Hamas grows stronger.

Israel should not be the one to break the ceasefire, but the next time Hamas violates it — an event as certain as death and taxes — Israel must use it as a casus belli for a sustained and escalating military campaign.

An endless ceasefire without Hamas disarming is unacceptable. Israel must maintain operational freedom within the Gaza Strip until Hamas lays down its arms or is destroyed. Military operations should be aimed at Hamas leaders and infrastructure. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened Hamas with renewed military action several times. Words without meaning or actions are wearying.

Those nations that care about peace must step up. A global intelligence taskforce comprising Mossad, the CIA, MI6, and regional partners such as Egypt and Jordan must be established to map Hamas’ financial networks, military logistics, and political alliances abroad.

This must include monitoring cryptocurrency transactions, intercepting shipments, tracing Iranian supply routes, and identifying front organizations operating in the West. Do not say it too loudly, but the degree of Saudi Arabian intelligence cooperation with Israel throughout the war in Gaza has been extraordinary. This shows that such cooperation is not only possible, but already a reality.

This intelligence must be used to asphyxiate Hamas. International banks, NGOs, and charities suspected of acting as conduits for terror financing must face immediate and severe consequences: audits, asset freezes, closures and prosecutions. Cryptocurrency exchanges that provide Hamas with a shadowy financial lifeline must be penalized out of existence. States that permit Hamas to raise funds within their borders — whether in mosques, cultural centers, or foundations — must be named, shamed, and closed.

Trump has done an outstanding job in the Middle East so far, but he needs to cease his fawning deference to Qatar. It is demeaning to see a global superpower let a tiny slave-owning petrostate run rings around it. Qatar is getting away with playing a double game in which it hosts a major U.S. Air Force base, while bankrolling terror and providing a comfortable sanctuary for Hamas’ political leadership. There will be no durable peace in the Middle East until Qatar’s duplicitous role as a patron of Islamist extremism via the Muslim Brotherhood is addressed directly and without equivocation.

Similarly, other governments that host Hamas operatives, such as Turkey, must be pressed through every available diplomatic and economic lever to close offices, freeze assets, and expel Hamas members. Diplomatic delegations should be withdrawn from any forum that grants legitimacy to Hamas. Travel bans, asset seizures, and sanctions must be extended to all senior Hamas officials and their foreign enablers, treating them with the same seriousness as any other transnational criminal cartel or rogue state.

The international community must, in deed and not just word, treat Hamas as a pariah. With the hostages returned, no serious moral actor has any reason to engage with Hamas except to deliver an ultimatum: disarm or face destruction. This ultimatum must be unified, public, and backed by a firm deadline. There can be no negotiation during this period. Personally, I would give them about 15 minutes.

Disarming Hamas is necessary, but it alone cannot bring peace. The subsequent phase is where past efforts have consistently foundered, so a radical departure from failed models is required.

An international stabilization force, comprising credible Arab armies and nations with serious military capabilities, must be deployed to Gaza. Critically, this force cannot operate under the auspices of the feckless and compromised United Nations. The UN has proven itself a corrupt, institutionally antisemitic body, whose peacekeeping forces, such as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), are more akin to dishcloths than deterrents. UNIFIL was too busy scrolling through social media to prevent Hezbollah from amassing 150,000 rockets under their noses.

UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian agency, must be entirely excluded from Gaza, since it has functioned for years as a de facto branch of Hamas, its textbooks and facilities indoctrinating generations in Jew-hatred.

Peacekeepers in Gaza must be mandated not merely to keep the peace, but to enforce demilitarization aggressively. Its tasks must include seizing remaining arms, patrolling borders to prevent rearmament, supporting newly vetted Palestinian security forces. They must also be able to call on Israeli support when required.

All reconstruction must be contingent on disarmament. Not a single dollar of the estimated $70 billion in reconstruction funds, for which Arab petrostates will likely pay, should be disbursed, nor a single slab of debris cleared, until verifiable disarmament is complete.

This is the ultimate leverage to ensure that the Arab world’s financial power is aligned with its professed desire for a stable region. Reconstruction projects must be subject to third-party inspection to prevent dual-use diversion of materials. Never again should aid money flow to Palestinian terror.

Other Arab states, have a role, too. Egypt must shut down the smuggling tunnels from the Sinai into Gaza, border surveillance must be enhanced to show real commitment to border security. Jordan, on the other side of Israel, must deepen its cooperation with Israel to monitor their porous border, preventing the influx of weapons and militants into Israel. Hamas operates in more territories than just Gaza.

Any comprehensive strategy must also confront Hamas’ highly effective propaganda campaign, which has gotten much of the credulous international media eating out of its blood-soaked hands.

Just as a multinational transitional authority is needed on the ground, so too is a dedicated, multinational information body. This entity’s mission would not be to disseminate propaganda, but to counter Hamas lies systematically with verifiable facts, operating in Arabic, English, and other key languages. This would help quell the lies that fuels the conflict. It would also deter shameless and recreant Western politicians because them repeating of Hamas lies would be exposed credibly and immediately.

This an enormous and daunting undertaking, which is why anything less than a coordinated, full-throttle effort is doomed. Yet, the reasons for pursuing it are grounded in sound practical, moral, and security logic.

Morally, it is obscene that Hamas continues to exist as a significant force. The October 7th pogrom, in which some 1,200 people were murdered and 251 abducted, revealed Hamas’ true nature as a crazed, sadistic, and genocidal entity. It uses its own civilians as human shields, hijacks humanitarian aid, and weaponizes despair to maintain power. It is an Iran- and Qatar-funded jihadist death cult.

Hamas’ efforts to regain control of Gaza since the ceasefire have included the summary execution of opponents, sadistic beatings, using hospitals to interrogate “dissenters,” and other atrocities too depraved to document here. The moral case for freeing Palestinians in Gaza from Hamas rule is overwhelming, and anyone who opposes this is as morally broken as a digital clock, not right even twice a day.

Even if reconstruction of the Strip were to proceed, it would be a hollow victory if the next generation of Palestinians remains captive to an education system of jihadist hate. Addressing this systemic child abuse is paramount; to ignore it is to license future barbarism.

The argument is equally clear from a security perspective. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about land, but about Israel’s fundamental right to exist in security. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan show that when states and groups stop attacking Israel, peace follows. This is simple stuff.

Disarming a group as well-financed and armed as Hamas is a herculean task, but it is not without precedent. The well-armed militias of the Irish Republican Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain were eventually compelled to lay down their arms through sustained military, legal, and political pressure. Hamas must be given the same stark choice.

International law, which Hamas flouts with impunity and to which Israel often foolishly adheres at its own peril, supports this course of action. UN Security Council Resolution 1373 obliges all states to deny arms and funds to terrorists. The Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit the targeting of civilians. Hamas violates these foundational principles daily. The legal case for its disarmament is as clear as the moral and strategic ones.

We stand at a pivotal moment in the Middle East, where an eternal truth remains: There are few paths to success and an infinite number of ways to fail. Disarming Hamas is not a panacea, but it is the minimal prerequisite for any other progress to be possible. Without it, the next October 7th is not a risk, but an inevitability.

For there to be any hope of a secure Israel, a rebuilt Gaza, and a decent future for the region’s people, Hamas must be disarmed. This mission is not anti-Palestinian; it is the ultimate pro-Palestinian act, freeing them from Hamas’ brutal theocracy. It is, in the most profound sense, a defense of civilization itself against the forces of barbarism.

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