President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have made clear that they wish America to aid in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and the amelioration of its overall material situation, while making sure that these funds don’t go to Hamas. But it is not at all clear how this can be done, given the terrorist group’s tight control over the territory and the willingness of such institutions as UNRWA—the UN organization that provides aid to Palestinians—to cooperate with it. Israel, for its part, has long allowed Qatar to support Hamas with large cash payments. But Nitsana Darshan-Leitner suggests an alternative:

The truth is simple: money transferred to the Gaza Strip cannot be monitored. Not by international organizations whose functionaries answer to Hamas, not by charities—as their infrastructure is an integral part of Hamas and the public sympathy for it—and certainly not by the Palestinian Authority, which has no power over the Strip whatsoever. . . . [A]ny cash that goes into Gaza finds its way to Hamas’s military goals.

Israel must now inform Qatar and European countries that if they want to support the impoverished Palestinians in Gaza, they are more than welcome to send as many containers of food, medicine, clothing, toys, textbooks, furniture, etc. as they want. Want to pay for fuel and electricity? Excellent. But keep the cash. Dollars only buy ammunition and Israel will no longer allow it into Gaza.

A terrorist group cannot pay operatives without banks, communicate without technological means, or operate in general without lawyers and accountants. . . . The thousands of rockets [Hamas] has developed, the missiles it purchased, the underground city it dug [for conducting military operations], the stipends paid to terrorists and their families—all cost more than a billion dollars.

To this end, Darshan-Leitner concludes, Israel must follow up its military offensive against the terrorist group with a financial one—otherwise it is merely allowing Hamas to build back what the IDF just destroyed.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.