Israel, “this is how Hamas will be defeated.” The recipe of the former head of the secret service for Gaza –

Ami Ayalon has a solution to end the conflict in the Middle East. The former chief of staff of the Navy and then director of the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal secret service, has long been committed to the solution of the Two States, Israel and Palestine. And he reiterates it in an interview with Repubblica: “I am convinced that opportunities can arise from the horror of 7 October. On October 7, Hamas knew well that there would be a reaction from Israel and that it would be violent. They pushed us into a trap, taking us into Gaza and hiding among the people, so that we would cause as many civilian victims as possible, to tell the world that this is Israel. The only way to get out of the trap is to create one for them. What is their nightmare? The Two-State solution, because it would make them politically irrelevant. Therefore, to defeat Hamas we must create a horizon for the two states. And to do this we must understand that not all Palestinians are Hamas.”

“Today – explains Ayalon – 70-80% of Palestinians support Hamas, but not because they share its extremist ideology, but because in their eyes they are the only ones fighting for a Palestinian state. This is demonstrated by the fact that the same 80% of Palestinians reject the sharia that Hamas would like to introduce instead. At first the intervention in Gaza was a legitimate response to an attack, Israel had the right to defend itself. The problem now is, what do we want to achieve? Our objective should be a political reality that is more favorable to us in Gaza, but instead we always make the same mistake, we aim for the military defeat of Hamas and believe we have won in this way. But Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it is an ideology.”

The latest proposal of the former Jewish spy chief, in the conversation with the Roman newspaper, is to free the Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti: “In the polls Barghouti is the only one who always beats Hamas. I think he deserves a chance. He believes in the Two States and is a leader recognized for his militancy. Only a person with this profile will be able to make difficult choices for his people.”