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Strategically speaking, Gazans want the Israeli blockade of Gaza lifted, and Palestinians in general want statehood, an end to the occupation & an end to Israeli military & settler violence. Hard to see how today’s attacks advance these causes beyond revenge.
The Israeli military response is going to be heavy, and will disproportionately affect civilians as any military action in densely populated urban centres always does. Furthermore it will be supported by a unified population & sympathetic international community.
It’s hard to come to any other conclusion that this new and bloody chapter in the Israel-Palestine conflict will achieve anything other than a disastrous loss of life, and further entrenching the conflict for future generations.
Palestinians are desperate, not just in Gaza where things have been at breaking point for over a decade, but also in the West Bank where the situation has been deteriorating for some time, particularly with regular Israeli operations in Jenin.
Palestinians are routinely being killed as a result of the occupation, with no resolution in sight, and with an international community that has long since lost interest in trying to bring the conflict and occupation to an end. A sustained violent response was almost inevitable.
So trying to judge this escalation by its objectives seems futile, hard to imagine a world in which Hamas don’t fully understand how weak their hand is, and how badly Gaza will suffer as a consequence, yet they took the decision to do this regardless.
The calculation from Hamas seems to be that inflicting a price on Israel and against the Israeli population is worth whatever consequences are to come, and given that there is currently no hope for the peace process, that there is no benefit for them in maintaining the status quo
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