More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the month since Hamas’ terrorist attacks inside southern Israel, the group’s health ministry in Gaza says.
But Hamas officials say the mounting death toll, believed to include thousands of children, has not caused the group to regret its actions in southern Israel, which Israeli officials said killed 1,400 people.
In fact, Hamas leaders say that their goal was to trigger this very response and that they’re still hoping for a bigger war. It’s all part of a strategy, they say, to derail talks over Israel normalizing relations with regional powers — namely, Saudi Arabia — and draw the world’s attention to the Palestinian cause.
Hamas, these officials say, is more interested in the destruction of Israel than what it sees as the temporary hardships faced by Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
“What could change the equation was a great act, and without a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the group’s governing politburo, told The New York Times in an interview.
Try and remember where things were prior to the attack. There was a legitimate movement happening where people were starting to recognize the apartheid state that Israel had set up. The conversation was materially shifting to focus on the abuses of the Israeli government. Things were happening that seemed like the whole thing could come to resolution without Hamas being involved. The terrorist attack was as much about maintaining the status quo of conflict as anything else. Hamas and Netanyahu both had their power waning as a function of the failed strategies both have been employing for decades. The attack reset the clock for both of them. It justifies Israels decades of shitty policies that have objectively compounded the situation and made it much worse, along with justifying Hamas position about this being a war for survival. Both hawk factions benefit from this, no people benefit from this.
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I never thought about it like this. I never realized that this was Hamas’ motivation. But yeah, it makes perfect sense when you look at it from this point of view.
I guess I thought that Hamas…cared(?)…more about the Palestinians, so when people would say that this is the reaction they wanted from Israel, I was confused. But yeah, okay. Thanks for that.
If it’s not a democracy, the leaders don’t have to care about what the normal people think. They will never have to risk getting voted out. All that matters is power and terror. Keeping people scared. Using violence to keep people’s heads down. Execute your enemies and allies perceived as weak. Imprison them if killing them would make them a martyr, such as Navalny.
China uses a much more refined version of this to keep people in legitimate concentration camps with forced sterilization. But they have such a grip on who gets in/out, and control so much trade, that even for people who do know of the Uyghurs can’t do anything aside from toothless statements about them. But most people don’t know. Or simply don’t care what happens in an authoritarian country half a world away.
Ideology is one hell of a drug.
They care more about the idea of destroying the state of Israel than about the liberation Palestinian people. Hamas was born out burning anger and vengeance, not a desire to rebuild. That would the PLO or PFLP.
The fact is a one state of Israel-Palestine with equal rights for all, reparations and right-of-return to displaced Palestinians, is the only real solution to end this cycle of violence once and for all.
But Hamas doesn’t want that. Neither does Bibi or the Israeli majority. Each are so filled with hatred, one side from revenge, the other from supremacy, that they can’t see a future where they live in peace with each other.
The best people who really want peace can do is support the PLO and the PFLP, imo. If they get strong enough to overtake Hamas in Gaza, that would be a very big step towards actual solutions. At least from the Palestinian side. And Israel wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on, “self-defence” wise.
This is an excellent overview. Thank you.
When someone gives you knowledge— Listen. Thank You.
This is utter fantasy. There was/is a growing movement on the left in the west recognizing the abuses of the Israeli regime but that movement was very marginal and would probably remain so in the near future. The governments and ruling elites in the west still overwhelmingly supported Israel and were willing to turn a blind eye to the abuses, even as they have increased under the new far right government that came to power recently. Even the Arab countries that previously championed the Palestinian cause were defecting.
The trajectory of this conflict before Oct 7th was a slow legalistic ethnic cleansing in the west bank backed unquestioningly by the United States. A few more leftists might protest it in the U.S. but they are fundamentally impotent against the inertia of the current system as a majority of the people don’t know or care about Palestine. Doesn’t matter if a tweet calling Israel an apartheid state gets millions of likes if the U.S. Congress still votes 430 to 5 for aid to Israel every time it comes up.
The Palestinian cause needed something to keep it relevant and shake up the status quo that was slowly killing it. Oct 7th was probably one of the worst ways to do it, but at least more people know about how horrible the system is.