Convinced that the ceasefire is not the end of the military conflict between Hamas and Israel, former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy declares in an exclusive interview with Parapolitika, warning that the disarmament and deradicalization of the organization is the only path to peace in the Middle East. The role of Hamas sponsor states is of utmost importance in the “day after” in Gaza, as only they can exert pressure sufficient to render the organization inactive, Levy emphasizes, highlighting the threat posed by Turkey as a guarantor country in the agreement against Israel.
What is your initial assessment of the peace agreement that has been signed?
Israelis are thrilled to have their hostages back. It’s a great relief to put an end to the shelters, where we rushed every night for two years, while each morning we learned of another soldier’s death. A very dark chapter has ended, but there are no illusions in Israel about how difficult the next stage will be. President Trump presented an ambitious 20-point peace plan and Israel agreed to each one of them. Hamas did not, only agreeing to release the hostages in exchange for ending the war, under tremendous pressure from its sponsor states. It has not agreed to its disarmament, demilitarization, or deradicalization. Quite the opposite. It destroys Gaza, remains attached to its weapons, and publicly rejects the rest of Trump’s plan. If Hamas maintains its tunnels and remaining missiles and begins rebuilding its war machine, the next war is a matter of time, because Hamas is a jihadist, terrorist regime that has sworn to destroy Israel. Hamas must return to their families all the bodies of the hostages it murdered.
Do you rule out the possibility that some bodies may have been buried under the rubble due to bombings?
Israelis fear that Hamas continues to hold some of these bodies as a negotiating card, while claiming it doesn’t know where they are. However, it’s not possible that it can only locate four out of 28. Israel’s people cannot skip the demilitarization process and proceed directly to Gaza’s reconstruction, because that would mean rebuilding Hamas, with all the concrete arriving there ending up in its tunnels, and then we would find ourselves exactly where we were on the eve of the October 7 massacre.
How do you envision the day after the Summit?
If Israel doesn’t dismantle Hamas, no one else is going to do it. We face an enemy whose sole purpose of existence is to continue waging jihad (holy war) until Israel is destroyed.
How do you plan to ensure Hamas’s demilitarization and that it will ultimately accept the terms?
After the October 7 massacre, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey did not condemn the event. On the contrary, they did so with a two-year delay. Today reconstruction is the main lever of pressure they have. Hamas wants to govern Gaza, but Gaza is a pile of rubble. President Trump’s plan calls for an international stabilization force, which has not yet been formed. Israelis have no confidence in international peacekeeping forces. Look what happened with UNIFIL in Lebanon, tasked with overseeing the disarmament of Hamas and Hezbollah after the Second Lebanon War, resulting in Hezbollah creating a massive terrorist army with 150,000 rockets right under its nose.
Are you optimistic that an international peacekeeping force will do this?
No, I don’t think any country will provide volunteer soldiers and put them at risk to protect Israeli communities. That’s why, if diplomacy fails, we might see a relapse into military pressure. Deradicalization is often overlooked, but it’s important. It was the number one point of Trump’s peace plan. When the October 7 massacre happened, people in Gaza took to the streets to celebrate the capture of hostages. According to Palestinian polls, it took over a year for the majority of the government to express the view that perhaps the October 7 massacre was wrong. Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank tripled after October 7.
Do you believe deradicalization can be achieved and that these people can forget what happened?
The issue is to make them understand that the reason for their suffering is the Hamas regime, which launched a futile war to try to destroy Israel, committing atrocities. Gaza must be deradicalized, like Germany after World War II. The educational system that produced the monsters who committed October 7 was a UN educational system through UNRWA. It’s a corrupt educational system that teaches Palestinians that Israel has no right to exist.
In the likely scenario that Hamas doesn’t honor the agreement, do you believe the Israeli public will be ready to continue the war?
Throughout this war I never stopped arguing in international media that this war must end with Hamas’s end. Israelis wanted this war to end because they never wanted it to start. There are children my age who have served 600 days in the army, left behind wives and children, studies, work, families and careers to fight. They deserve to rebuild their lives and we don’t want to return to war. But we cannot return to the world of October 6, to a jihadist regime that has sworn to destroy Israel, located within breathing distance of people’s homes in Israel, threatening to take more hostages and kill again. Israelis now hope this is the beginning of the end, that international pressure on Hamas, led by the United States, will force it to demilitarize. However, there is fear that if this fails, then perhaps Israel will have no choice but to finish the job against Hamas, if it continues to rebuild its war machine and continues to threaten us with more massacres like October 7.
In case of a new war, are you concerned about the already manifested antisemitic sentiments worldwide?
The October 7 war is not a war on seven fronts, but on eight. The eighth front is the attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world, in the West. Remember the horrific attack in Manchester at a synagogue, which was a classic Hamas copycat attack. Remember the two Jews who were shot at the Capitol Museum in Washington and the elderly lady who was attacked with Molotov cocktails at a hostage rally in Colorado. We saw a shocking rise in antisemitism from people inspired by the October 7 massacre. This is a challenge, not so much for Israel, as for Western countries. When people demonstrate with slogans in London, New York, in your country, calling for intifada, they are calling for suicide bombings, terrorism, targeted political violence against Jews and Israelis. This is not just a war against Israel, but also against other Western democratic countries. The masks have fallen. We saw the pro-Palestinian movement demonstrating now, after the ceasefire announcement, calling “from the river to the sea,” which is a call for Israel’s destruction. The pro-Palestinian movement is the first anti-war movement in history that celebrated when a war started and mourned when it stopped and immediately demanded another one.
There is absolute certainty in Tel Aviv that in the future Turkey will become more hostile toward it, as it leads the radical Sunni bloc
Among the sponsor states, Turkey and Qatar are reportedly included. Turkey has already shown its intentions against Israel and now becomes one of the guarantors of the agreement, ready to deploy troops on the ground, very close to Israeli borders. How do you plan to deal with this?
Turkey was one of Hamas’s most important sponsor states. It never condemned October 7, hosted Hamas leaders on its territory, provided medical care to its fighters, actively promoted its propaganda, and unleashed hatred against Israel, even comparing Israelis to Nazis. Israelis fear that Erdogan has neo-imperialist dreams of reviving Turkey’s power in the Eastern Mediterranean and sees himself as the new sultan. We already observe a power struggle in Syria, where Israel bombed several Assad regime military bases that Turkey wanted to capture to gain a foothold in Syria. There is absolute certainty in Israel that in the future Turkey will become more hostile toward it, as it leads the radical Sunni bloc. Turkey’s involvement in the ceasefire is, on one hand, one of the things that made it possible, because it was one of the patrons that told Hamas: “Your time is up.” On the other hand, it sounds alarm bells in Israel that its intentions may not be peaceful.
Among the leaders invited to the Summit was the Greek Prime Minister, as Greece and Israel share common values and maintain a strategic partnership. What lies ahead?
Unfortunately, Greece has made headlines in Israel due to a series of attacks against Israeli tourists and cruise ships. However, Israel sees Greece and Cyprus as pillars of stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. It doesn’t know what role Greece might want to play in the new era, but it’s certainly one of the region’s countries with which Israel looks forward to building the strongest possible bilateral relations, as well as genuine friendship.
Published in Parapolitika
