[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.