Why Gaza's Destruction Needed to Happen

The destruction in Gaza is an important reminder for Palestinians to think twice about the kind of future they want for themselves and for their future generations.

photo: Mohammed Ibrahim/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.

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

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There is a prevailing narrative, repeated across headlines, protests, social media feeds, and in conversations, about “what Israel has done to Gaza” — harmed it, punished it, destroyed it. The phrase “what Israel has done to Gaza” is almost always delivered as an indictment, as if Gaza was a little oasis nestled on the eastern Mediterranean shores before October 7, 2023.

If we are to ask honestly what Israel has done to Gaza, we must be willing to look beyond social media clips and 30-second news segments to examine the deeper reality of what this war was actually about — and what its outcome may ultimately mean for Gaza’s future.

Long before October 2023, Gaza was already locked into a political and economic paralysis. For nearly two decades it has been governed by Hamas, a terrorist organization whose legitimacy rests not on building a functioning society, but on sustaining Islamism.

Over the years, Hamas constructed a vast militant infrastructure embedded within civilian areas, diverted resources toward weapons and tunnels rather than long-term civic development, suppressed internal dissent, and avoided elections that might challenge its rule. Billions in international aid flowed into Gaza, yet little of it translated into durable socioeconomic growth or stable institutions. The territory remained economically fragile and politically closed, its governing authority defining success not by improving daily life but by maintaining resistance. Gaza became less a developing society than a permanent frontline.

One of the more striking ironies of Gaza’s reality, before and after October 7th, is that many Hamas leaders do not live there themselves. Senior Hamas leaders have often operated from abroad — in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, and elsewhere — raising funds, directing strategy, and issuing declarations while residing far from the daily conditions faced by ordinary Gazans.

This distance has allowed decision-makers to pursue confrontation without personally bearing the consequences of infrastructure collapse, economic stagnation, or the recurring cycles of war that define life inside the territory. The result is a governing model in which those who call for perpetual resistance are frequently insulated from its costs, while the population they claim to represent lives within the constraints and hardships that such a strategy inevitably produces.

Hence, the events that triggered the current war did not occur in a vacuum, as the stupendous United Nations secretary-general reminded us just a few short weeks thereafter. Imagine if on October 8, 2023 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to condemn Hamas for war crimes, demanded the immediate return of all hostages, and ordered Qatar to extradite Hamas leadership to The International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they could have been tried for War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide.

Had that occurred, think of how many people in Gaza would be alive today. Then ask yourself why that didn’t happen.

In reality, the October 7th massacre, with its mass killing and kidnapping of civilians, represented not merely another round of escalation, but a direct assault on Israel’s basic security and sovereignty. Hostages remain held for nearly two years, their captivity a reminder that this conflict is not an abstract geopolitical dispute but a confrontation with an armed governing authority that openly declares its intention to repeat such actions when possible. Any state confronted with such an attack would act to prevent its recurrence. The question facing Israel was not whether to respond, but whether leaving Hamas intact would guarantee future wars rather than prevent them.

Israel’s military campaign is widely portrayed solely as an exercise in force. Yet its stated objective was the dismantling of a governing and military structure built around perpetual war. As long as Hamas retains both its armed capacity and political control, Gaza remains locked in a destructive equilibrium: periodic conflict, reconstruction, rearmament, and renewed conflict.

This cycle has not produced a viable economy, stable governance, or meaningful opportunity for the strip. It has produced dependency, fragility, and the certainty of future escalation. In this context, the attempt to remove Hamas’ military and governing capacity is not only about Israel’s security, but about altering the structural conditions that have kept Gaza suspended in crisis.

The counterfactual is rarely addressed. If Israel were to halt its campaign while Hamas remained intact and in power, the likely outcome would not be stability, but reinforcement of the existing cycle. Hamas would claim survival as victory, rebuild its capabilities, and prepare for future confrontation. Reconstruction funds would again flow into a system oriented toward rearmament rather than transformation. Gaza would remain militarized, economically isolated, and politically constrained, its population once more caught between militant governance and recurring war.

By contrast, the removal of Hamas does not guarantee a better future, but without such a change the possibility of one scarcely exists.

This reality extends beyond Gaza itself. Hamas functions not only as a local governing authority but as part of a broader regional network of militant actors aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Qatar and invested in sustained instability. A Gaza governed by an armed movement committed to permanent conflict complicates regional normalization, deters long-term investment, and perpetuates a security environment in which reconstruction is continually undone by renewed violence.

The future of Gaza is therefore intertwined with the wider strategic landscape of the Middle East, where the question is not only whether fighting will end, but whether a different political and economic horizon can emerge.

History offers uncomfortable but instructive precedents. Societies rarely transition from militant or ideologically rigid rule to stability without rupture. Germany and Japan emerged from the Second World War physically devastated and morally shattered, their cities in ruins and civilian populations exhausted by years of total war.

Yet the dismantling of regimes organized around expansionist violence created the conditions for reconstruction, institutional reform, and eventual prosperity. Their postwar recoveries did not occur simply because war ended, but because the governing systems that had defined national life around permanent conflict were removed and replaced with structures oriented toward stability and economic growth.

More recent history presents similar patterns. When ISIS entrenched itself in Mosul and Raqqa, embedding its fighters within dense urban environments and governing through coercion and ideological absolutism, international coalitions ultimately chose to dismantle its rule despite the immense cost of urban warfare. The destruction that followed was severe, and civilian suffering profound, yet few argued that leaving ISIS in power would have produced a better long-term outcome for the populations living under its control.

Reconstruction, however slow and imperfect, became possible only once the governing authority organized around permanent war was no longer in command. In the Balkans during the 1990s, sustained military intervention was likewise deemed necessary to end cycles of violence and ethnic cleansing. Stability and reconstruction began to take root only after the armed actors driving the conflict were removed from power and new political arrangements were imposed.

These precedents do not suggest that destruction is desirable, nor that military force alone can build functioning societies. They do, however, illustrate a recurring reality: Reconstruction efforts succeed only when the political and security conditions allow them to produce something other than the next round of conflict. Postwar initiatives such as the Marshall Plan worked not simply because money flowed into devastated regions, but because the governing environments in which that money was invested were no longer organized around rearmament and permanent confrontation.

Investment, institution-building, and economic normalization require a foundation of stability that militant governance rarely provides. Without a fundamental change in the structures that perpetuate conflict, reconstruction risks becoming merely an interlude between wars rather than the beginning of a different future.

Israel cannot build Gaza’s future, nor can any external military create a functioning society for another people. The dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military structure, if achieved, will leave a vacuum that must be filled by new administrative arrangements, sustained investment, and local leadership willing to prioritize stability and civic life over permanent confrontation.

Any credible future for Gaza will require governance oriented toward economic development, institutional integrity, and the gradual normalization of daily life. Destruction alone cannot produce such a future; but leaving intact the structures that have repeatedly prevented it ensures that it will never arrive.

The paradox of the present moment is therefore unavoidable. The actions most often cited as evidence of Israel’s destructiveness are also those intended to alter Gaza’s long-term trajectory. War is always devastating in the short term. It disrupts economies, damages infrastructure, and inflicts profound human cost. Yet history shows that entrenched militant or authoritarian systems rarely dissolve on their own. When they persist, they tend to perpetuate the very conditions that sustain conflict and hardship. Breaking that cycle is neither simple nor guaranteed to succeed, but without such a rupture the cycle itself remains permanent.

So what has Israel done to Gaza? In the immediate sense, it has waged a defensive war in response to October 7th. Widespread destruction is a result of widespread terror tunnels, weapons, and military infrastructure embedded throughout civilian areas, turning much of the territory into a battlefield long before the first Israeli soldier entered it.

In the longer view, Israel is attempting to dismantle a governing reality that has kept Gaza locked in a state of permanent crisis. If that reality is ultimately replaced by one oriented toward reconstruction, opportunity, and stability, then this period may be remembered for the possibility it opened.

But for Gaza to chart a different future, it will not come only from diplomacy or reconstruction funds, but from the internal reckoning that follows war. Entire generations will now grow up walking past buildings reduced to concrete shells, neighborhoods scarred by repeated rounds of bombing, and infrastructure that must be rebuilt yet again. Those daily reminders inevitably force harder questions about the choices that produced them. A society cannot continuously absorb the costs of permanent conflict without eventually confronting the ideas and institutions that sustained it.

At some point, many Gazans will have to decide whether they want their children educated for endless martyrdom or for economic and civic life, whether schools exist to prepare students for opportunity or for sacrifice, and whether hospitals serve purely civilian purposes or function as dual-purpose command centers. Such questions are uncomfortable and politically charged, but they sit at the center of any genuine transformation. A different future for Gaza will require not only reconstruction of buildings, but a reconsideration of the structures and priorities that have defined life there for decades.

Gaza cannot return to what it was; the model that governed it produced neither peace nor prosperity. The real question is whether Gaza can become something it has never yet been: a place governed for life rather than for war. If such a transformation is ever to occur, the era of militant rule must end. That is not only Israel’s interest. It is Gaza’s only realistic path to a different future.

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