Reply #20: My understanding is...

[Recursion]

Do they really think that firing rockets into Israel is going to stop their people from getting bombed worse?

The basic idea as I understand it is that unless there are attacks on Israel proper, the Israeli (and world, for that matter) public would prefer to just ignore the existence of the Gaza strip and its 1.5 million inhabitants. The only way of breaking the status quo (which is unacceptable to the people trapped in Gaza) is to try to make the status quo unacceptable to the Israelis, and they seem to think violence is the only way to do that (I have no idea if they are right about that).

Basically Hamas's goals are analogous to Israel's in this war: to make the current situation unacceptable to the other side so that the other side will acknowledge their right to exist. Nobody applauds violence, but both sides are stuck looking at a history that seems to say violence is the only thing that works.

From Israel's perspective, they withdrew from Gaza and all they got in return was the election of Hamas. From the Palestinians' perspective, Fatah recognized Israel's right to exist only to receive nothing in return except for the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Neither side has given the other any reason to trust it lately.