Ask yourself, what does israel gain from all of this? it costs hundreds of millions a year, it kills our tourism industry, it kills our entire southern agriculture industry, it frustrate our regular soldiers and alienate our reserves, this last operation was a political suicide for our prime minister. really, show me the motive. show me the why.
I agree with this completely. I'm not there, but with my limited knowledge I think Israel does it because of extremists in their government (and population to some extent, but less so) who believe that the land belongs to Israel, and don't care what happens to the people living there, and so push the countries into war and agression to try and cause it. I agree that it isn't good for most regular Israelis, and know that it isn't for the Palestinians, which is why I'm trying to convince you that instead of containing the Palestinian population in a smaller and smaller space and punishing them for when they fight back, the Israeli government should allow them to trade and live normally.
That would also take the support away from Hamas, because as you say, Hamas is not a good group to have in charge. They're supported because the Gazan people are desperate, and wouldn't really be representative of most of the Palestinians except that Israeli actions force them all to have a common enemy. When the Palestinian people realised they had a choice, didn't
need to die in order to protect their homes, Hamas would be forced to either become a more moderate (if still strongly Islamic) government, or be pushed out by one. There would still be a lot of the residual hate on both sides, and Gaza will likely never be prosperous, but that would hopefully go down in time once the violence and desperation was stopped.
What was making me angry earlier was that you were saying that Hamas doing bad stuff is a good reason for the treatment of Gaza, when it's the treatment of Gaza is what makes them more than a small element, and backing it up with a bunch of bad claims instead of their real problems. I'm sorry if I didn't say that well. My point is that instead of just allowing the people who support for idealogical reasons to continue, and to just whip everybody else into anger over circular logic, the Israeli (and Egyptian, and Palestinian once trust is established, and American...) people need to show their governments that they know this hurts everyone, and make them at least
try to fix it instead of keeping on with what isn't working for anybody but some extremists on both sides now.
I would like to be able to condemn Hamas for their actions as well, but with the huge imbalance of power towards Israel, the Israelis will just have to take a hit to their pride and step back before Hamas will see any alternative to what they are doing now.