There’s a phrase that keeps doing the rounds on international panels, op-eds, and the Twitter feeds of armchair diplomats—’Hamas must fall for Palestine to rise’. It’s the kind of line that sounds profound if you don’t think too hard. A neat little slogan designed to fit comfortably within a UN resolution or an Ivy League lecture hall. But here’s the problem: it’s wrong. Not just wrong—it’s dangerous in how it misdiagnoses the very foundation of the conflict. Because Hamas is not some cancerous growth on the body of Palestinian society. Hamas is Palestinian society—indoctrinated, radicalized, and weaponized.
Let’s rewind to 1987, when Hamas was founded during the First Intifada. This was not a movement for peaceful resistance or state-building. It was, from the beginning, a jihadist outfit rooted in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter is not some vague political document open to interpretation. It’s crystal clear: Israel has no right to exist, Jews are the enemy of Islam, and jihad is the only solution to the “Palestinian problem.” It even quotes a hadith that promises a coming war in which Muslims will slaughter Jews hiding behind stones and trees. This isn’t political rhetoric. This is theological warfare, dressed up as resistance.
And yet—here’s the most important part—Palestinians chose it. In 2006, in the only relatively free and fair elections held in the Palestinian territories, Hamas didn’t seize power. It was elected with a majority. 74 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. This wasn’t some rogue militia imposing its will on an unwilling population. This was a conscious, democratic decision by the Palestinian people to empower a group whose founding documents call for the destruction of the Jewish state. And support for Hamas hasn’t faded. After the October 7, 2023 massacre—where Hamas operatives butchered, raped, and kidnapped Israeli civilians in one of the most brutal attacks since the Holocaust—surveys conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that support for Hamas in Gaza rose to 68%. In the West Bank, 72% of Palestinians backed the attack. That wasn’t fringe support. That was a societal endorsement of savagery.
So let’s be honest: Hamas isn’t the problem. Hamas is the manifestation of the problem. And the problem is an entire ecosystem built on hate.
In schools run by UNRWA, children are taught from textbooks that erase Israel from maps, glorify suicide bombers as heroes, and describe Jews in dehumanizing terms. There are cartoons on Palestinian TV where puppets call Jews “monkeys and pigs.” Summer camps in Gaza train children not in math and science, but in how to hold an AK-47 and chant slogans calling for Jewish extermination. A 12-year-old in Gaza isn’t dreaming of becoming a doctor or engineer. He’s dreaming of dying as a “martyr.” Because that’s what society tells him is noble. That’s what his textbooks, his teachers, his clerics, and his government tell him is divine.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, often praised as the “moderate” alternative to Hamas, is no different. It spends hundreds of millions annually on its “Martyrs Fund”—monthly salaries for families of terrorists who’ve killed Israelis. The more Jews you kill, the more money your family gets. The PA also names streets and schools after mass murderers. Is that moderation? Or just a polished version of the same ideology?
And yet, global leaders continue to delude themselves. They talk about a “two-state solution” as if that second state will be a peaceful democracy. They say, “Hamas must fall,” as if Hamas is an external parasite that can be surgically removed while leaving the host untouched. But what they fail to understand is this: you can’t remove Hamas without dismantling the very worldview that birthed it. Because Hamas is not a militia—it’s an identity. It’s the result of generations of conditioning that glorifies victimhood and justifies violence.
The October 7 massacre wasn’t just about military tactics. It was about psychology. It was a message to the world: this is what we are capable of, and this is what we are celebrated for. The images that followed—Palestinians dancing in the streets, handing out sweets, firing guns in celebration—were not staged. They were spontaneous. Genuine. Revealing. They told us everything we need to know about what this society venerates. And it’s not peace. It’s power through pain.
So when Western leaders say, “We support the Palestinian people but not Hamas,” they’re not just being naive—they’re lying to themselves. Because today, you can’t separate the two. There is no Palestinian Gandhi waiting in the wings. There is no secret civil society plotting peaceful coexistence. What exists is a culture where hate is policy and martyrdom is aspiration. A culture where a child’s first words might be “Allahu Akbar” and his last could be shouted from behind a suicide vest.
This isn’t Islamophobia. This isn’t anti-Palestinian bigotry. This is facing facts. You cannot build a peaceful Palestine on a foundation of rage, revenge, and radicalism. You cannot hope for statehood from a society that celebrates the murder of babies. And you certainly cannot expect democracy from a people who chose jihadists at the ballot box and cheer their atrocities in the street.
Even if Israel were to eliminate every single Hamas commander, the ideology would remain—alive in the hearts of millions who’ve been taught to see Jews as subhuman and Israel as a virus to be eradicated. The international community wants to see reconstruction in Gaza. But how do you rebuild minds? Who’s going to rewrite the textbooks? Who will challenge the clerics spewing venom in Friday sermons? Who will re-educate the parents who teach their toddlers that dying in a bombing is better than living under a Jewish flag?
That’s the real task. And until that task is addressed, Hamas—or something worse—will rise again. Maybe under a different name. Maybe with slicker PR. But it will rise. Because the root is untouched.
The West made this mistake in Afghanistan when it thought removing the Taliban was enough. It made the same mistake in Iraq with Saddam. It believed that the enemy was an individual, not an idea. And that mistake cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Are we prepared to make the same mistake in Gaza?
So let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop packaging radicalism in the language of victimhood. Hamas does not need to fall for Palestine to rise. Palestine must change for Hamas to fall. It must renounce not just violence, but the worldview that sanctifies it. It must choose life over death, coexistence over conquest, truth over propaganda.
And until that day comes, Palestine will not rise. Because it is not being held down by Israel, or the West, or geopolitics. It is being held down by itself—by the very ideology it calls freedom.
