Palestinian-American analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib argues in a New York Times guest essay that Hamas must be fully expelled from Gaza for the territory to recover and rebuild after years of war and destruction.

Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, is a Gaza native who left the Strip as a teenager and later received asylum in the United States amid Hamas’s rise. In the Sept. 4, 2026, piece titled “For Gaza to Recover, Hamas Must Be Expelled,” he draws on personal memories and the group’s record to contend that its rule has held roughly two million Palestinians hostage to a “nihilistic agenda.”

A childhood encounter with Sheikh Yassin

He opens with a childhood recollection from 2001: at age 11 in Gaza City, he encountered Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at a local mosque that the group had turned into a base for proselytizing. Yassin’s guards displayed weapons and framed membership as an elite “resistance” club requiring piety, obedience, and talent—aimed ultimately at Israel’s destruction and a single state “from the river to the sea.”

Alkhatib contrasts this with the brief period of hope under the Oslo process, when Gaza saw a new airport, Palestinian Airlines, passports, telecoms, an industrial zone, and other signs of emerging statehood.

The end of Oslo-era promise

That promise ended, he writes, after Israel’s 2005 disengagement and Hamas’s 2007 seizure of power following the 2006 elections. From its inception, he portrays Hamas as behaving “like a mob of gangsters,” brutalizing women over morality codes, torturing and killing suspected opponents, and carrying out suicide attacks on Israeli civilians.

Its two decades in control, he argues, squandered development opportunities (including offers involving an airport and seaport) and prioritized tunnels, weapons, and ideology over governance or civilian welfare.

October 7 and the “coda”

The Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing war—which Alkhatib notes killed tens of thousands of Gazans, including many of his own family members—marked the “coda” of this rule. Hamas’s later agreement in principle to a disarmament plan under the Board of Peace framework, he says, effectively concedes what Palestinian leadership recognized decades earlier: armed struggle was a disastrous strategy and only peace can lead to freedom.

He describes this as a “humiliating defeat” for Hamas, one that invalidates the “rotten resistance narrative” embraced by parts of the pro-Palestinian community and Western left.

“Gaza has no future as long as Hamas holds two million Palestinians hostage to its nihilistic agenda.”Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, The New York Times, Sept. 4, 2026

What recovery requires

Recovery requires the group to implement the accepted disarmament plan without waiting for Israeli concessions, relinquish control, and allow dismantling of its terror infrastructure. Gaza’s current system—an unsustainable mix of U.N. agencies, NGOs, a merchant private sector, and residual Hamas networks—cannot deliver lasting stability.

He calls for training a new Gaza police force paired with an international security mission, deep deradicalization in schools, mosques, media, and public discourse, and a transition to effective Palestinian self-governance that makes the territory “the pride and joy of the Palestinian people.”

A message to Western supporters

Alkhatib criticizes Western supporters who continue to view Hamas as “honorable resistance fighters,” arguing their stance or silence perpetuates Gaza’s degradation. He insists this war must be Gaza’s last and that true allies of Palestinians must reject the group entirely rather than romanticize it.

The essay reflects Alkhatib’s broader advocacy through Realign for Palestine, which emphasizes pragmatic nation-building, rejection of maximalist armed resistance, and criticism of both Hamas’s tyranny and certain Israeli policies. It arrives amid ongoing debates over postwar governance, the Board of Peace process, and stalled reconstruction efforts in a still-divided and heavily damaged Gaza.

This article summarizes an opinion essay. The views described are those of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib as expressed in The New York Times; readers are encouraged to read the original piece. More reporting and analysis at Faith & Freedom News.