[skrebbel]

Sure, but you didn't answer the question. Even if Hamas and even Gaza are totally Israel's fault, the fact that Hamas wants to destroy Israel makes some of Israel's actions pretty damn rational. What else can they do? "Shit, we pushed these Palestinians way too hard for way too long. Fair enough, they can bomb the shit out of our country now".

All that said, I'm not invested in the matter, and I'm a geopolitics noob, but I wonder what would happen if Israel would, unprovoked and unilaterally, drop all restrictions, recognize Palestina as a country and supply as much financial aid as is needed to rebuild the place. Just overnight. Wouldn't Hamas's support crumble instantly? Wouldn't the atmosphere be exactly like when they took down the Berlin wall?

I mean, would Palestinian combatants truly use the newly opened borders to immediately drive into Tel Aviv and shoot everybody? Tbh I don't see it.

[lucideer]

Exactly. For all of Hamas' talk, it's not only reactive, it also results in a disproportionately small level of anti-Israel violence in practice due mostly to lack of resources (comparatively).

If Israel withdrew all restrictions unilaterally, would there be offensive actions by Hamas: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than Israel's actions to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained.

[amitport]

Seriously? So following your logic the US should just let al qaeda access to weapons and let them vent off in NY.

"would there be offensive actions by [al qaeda]: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than [US's actions in Afghanistan] to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained"

I hope I'll never live in a country that will allow their citizens to die in order to appease some murderous religious group.