Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2025. © Richard Kemp

As the IDF intensify their campaign in Gaza while 59 hostages remain in Hamas captivity it is time for some fresh thinking. Eight thousand Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should be committed into deradicalisation programmes outside the country. Their families can go with them. In return – release all the hostages. On its face that might sound crazy, but such programmes have worked elsewhere and, if successful, large-scale deradicalisation of prisoners could also pave the way for wider stability, beyond the failed Western ‘solutions’ which have been no such thing.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not a war over land, sovereignty or civil rights. That would be a lot simpler to deal with. Throughout history, societies and nations at war have adapted and reconciled, learning to live in peace with neighbours with whom they have fought vicious, long term conflicts. The root of today’s problem in the Middle East is a radicalised Palestinian population that for decades has been indoctrinated to hate Jews and taught that they have a religious duty to exterminate them and destroy their state.

This has come from within Palestinian society and across the Middle East, often wittingly or unwittingly encouraged by the Western world. In truth the Palestinian Arabs have been used and abused as a weapon against the Jewish state and that remains the case today. Consequently, the Palestinians are now one of the most radicalised societies on earth.

How often have we heard the lazy aphorism that you can’t defeat an ideology? Tell that to the Nazi Party and Imperial Japan. As they were, Hamas and its fellow jihadists in Gaza are in the process of being militarily defeated, and when that is complete their ideology will no longer have the direct capability to inflict harm on their enemies. But the ideology itself will remain and what is left of its leadership will do their utmost to rearm and rebuild what they have lost. The same is true in the West Bank.

So rather than wringing our hands and repeating decades-old and demonstrably unachievable peace formulas, the civilised world should now unite in a concerted effort to deradicalise the Palestinians. Arab states have a particular interest in doing so, as the festering hatred is destabilising in their own countries. Yes, of course it would be a monumental undertaking: significantly more challenging than the successful denazification of Germany, given the deep religious motivations, the much longer term indoctrination and a Middle Eastern culture resistant to authority and order. But what is the alternative? Even more decades of pointless peace processing with its innate appeasement of radical thinking, leading only to ever more violence and death.

What better place to start than with the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails? Over the years Israel has released thousands of terrorists early in exchange for Israeli hostages or at the end of their criminal sentences. Many have returned to terror, often forming the backbone of jihadist groups. Perhaps most notably, Hamas leader (more…)