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.