Targeting weapons will not disarm Hamas or end the cycle of violence

OPINION:

Efforts to disarm Hamas rest on a fundamental misunderstanding: that the problem is the weapons themselves.

Yet, it’s not. The problem is the system that requires those weapons.

Disarmament is typically framed as a technical matter — of enforcement, verification and control — on the assumption that violence is external to the actor and can simply be removed. In fact, the issue lies elsewhere.

In organizations such as Hamas, weapons are not incidental. They are necessary.

Weapons are visible. They can be counted, targeted, negotiated over. They create the impression that the problem is tangible and manageable, but they are not the starting point. They are the expression of an underlying structure.

That structure is not organized around deterrence in the conventional sense. It is organized around identity, shame and continuity. Violence is not merely instrumental; it is also meaningful within the system that sustains it.

To treat disarmament as the removal of weapons is, therefore, to misidentify the problem.

One can dismantle arsenals and still leave intact the structure that produces them. The weapon itself can be replaced — almost as if one were swapping out Lego blocks — with another object that serves the same function. The form changes; the underlying system does not.

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This helps explain why disarmament repeatedly fails. It’s not simply because it is poorly implemented, but because it addresses the wrong level of the problem.

In such a system, the weapon is not external to the actor. It is integrated into identity. Its removal is not experienced as compliance, but rather as exposure. Weapons function as a form of psychological covering; their loss may be experienced as vulnerability. The attachment to the weapon thus takes on the quality of a bond.

We are confronting not simply an armed organization but also a structure in which violence functions as a condition of survival.

This structure extends beyond Hamas. It is embedded within a broader regional system shaped by Hezbollah and Iran, where armed struggle reinforces communal identity and continuity.

Across this system, violence is not an accessory to ideology. It is the mechanism through which ideology is maintained.

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This has direct policy implications. Appeals to rational calculation or material incentive are unlikely to produce lasting change; they do not engage the level at which the system is organized.

Because the system is sustained through the ongoing enactment of violence, it cannot be neutralized solely through agreements or incentives. Where violence functions as a condition of continuity, it cannot simply be negotiated away.

This is why capabilities such as missiles and drones matter. They are not merely tactical assets. They are integral to the system’s ability to reproduce itself. Degrading those capabilities is therefore not only a matter of security but also of disrupting the mechanisms that sustain the system.

What would it mean to address the problem at its actual level?

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First, policy must shift from a primary focus on negotiated disarmament to the sustained disruption of the system’s capacity to reproduce violence. This requires not targeting weapons stockpiles and persistently degrading the infrastructure that enables their regeneration: production networks, supply chains and technological capabilities.

The aim is not a one-time removal but rather continuous interference.

Second, external sponsorship must be treated as structurally integral. Iran is not simply a supporter but a central node in this system. Financial flows, training pipelines and ideological transmission channels must be systematically constrained. Without this, disarmament remains reversible.

Third, policymakers must recognize the limits of frameworks that assume convergence toward stability. Where violence is embedded in identity and continuity, incentives that do not alter the underlying structure will have a limited and temporary effect.

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None of these measures offers a simple solution. Elements of them are already being pursued: capabilities targeted, supply lines disrupted, external sponsorship confronted. Yet these efforts are typically framed as tactical necessities rather than as interventions directed at the system itself.

Without that recognition, they remain episodic and incomplete.

Action that does not reach the level at which violence is generated and sustained as part of identity and continuity will produce movement but not change. Until that shift occurs, the cycle will persist: weapons removed, weapons rebuilt; agreements reached, agreements broken; the appearance of progress followed by its unraveling.

• Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D., is a former military contractor and a psychoanalyst/counterterrorism expert based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Her latest book is “A Soldier’s Guide to Hamas’s Genocidal Psychosis: Beyond Ideology, Before Words,” Atzmaut Press, 2025. https://nancykobrin.org.

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