Hamas’ actions are fucking stupid from the point of view of helping Gaza civilians. Of course, helping Gaza civilians is not necessarily the top priority of Hamas.
There is absolutely no way shooting a couple hundred bottle rockets will destroy or even seriously harm Israel. All it does is piss off Israel which now has an excuse to send in the air force.
There is absolutely no way digging tunnels for ~infiltrators~ to shoot random Israeli off-duty soldiers or civilians will destroy or even seriously harm Israel. All it does is piss off Israel which now has an excuse to send in the army.
“Your problem here is that you’re assuming that Israel is acting in response to what Hamas is doing. The fact of the matter is that they (Israel) began the bombing runs after their arrests of hamas officials wasn’t enough to provoke a response from Hamas proper.”
The whole thing is so ridiculously lopsided that “Hamas captures a single Israeli soldier” is counted as a major victory, which shows how desparate the fight is for Hamas.
“This is less “hey, we got someone!” and more “hey, we can use this guy as a bargaining chip!” Prisoners of war are a pretty huge deal when it comes to negotiations, capturing even one is a big deal, especially if the other side is actively trying to kill their captured soldiers. It also causes huge embarrassment among the Israeli politicians (providing disincentive to continue and risk more captures), and the testimonies of captured IDF soldiers tend to contribute in dispelling the notion that Hamas are crazed beheading terrorists.”
http://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/Gilad-Schalits-capture-in-his-own-words-Part-II-308198
Conversely, not shooting at Israeli territory has literally zero downsides.
The Israeli military is overwhelmingly stronger in any straight up fight anyway and losing one guy to a lucky bottle rocket every couple of years wouldn’t change that.
“The Qassam rockets are more for providing a bargaining chip with which to negotiate with; it gives them something to offer during peace talks, and prevents Israel from simply running into Gaza, blowing up what they want, then ending the conflict when they want because Israeli citizens are not particularly keen on getting hit by rockets, and would not accept an end that does not involve Hamas agreeing not to fire rockets.”
All the resources that went into getting rockets and building tunnels (which is actually where the vast majority of high quality cement/concrete available in Gaza goes) could have been invested in defense and building houses that are not death traps and don’t collapse when a bomb hits 150m away.
“Quassam’s are incredibly dirt cheap, they barely factor into Hamas’ budget whatsoever. about 30% of their budget goes to security and militias, and we have no hard facts on how expensive the cross-border tunnels cost, nor how many smuggling tunnels they create per year.”
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/iw/originals/2013/01/hamas-budget-transparency.html
Recall how the vast majority of Israeli casualties in any operation of the last couple of decades have been caused by standard guerilla fighting after entering enemy territory.
By not carrying out completely ineffective attacks, any “but you’re also civilian-murdering war criminals” accusation vanish into thin air. Israelis may currently be overwhelmingly in favour of bombing Gaza at the moment, but if no attacks on Israeli soil happen for several years, it’s rather hard to justify further expensive military adventures into the area. Maybe hard feelings might die down over time (or not, as the case may be).
“The problem is that again, Quassam rockets are very cheap, and there exist other militant groups besides Hamas. They can crack down on these groups when there is peace (the last ceasefire they employed approx. 900 citizens to hunt down rocket launches and crack down on the militants that fire them), but once half the strip is being bombed it’s much harder to stop launches, and draws ire from the citizens themselves.”
tl;dr: turning the other cheek is the least bad option for Palestinians because it potentially allows actual improvements to their quality of live to happen and gives Israel less of an excuse to whip them around. Even if it doesn’t work, it won’t make things
“The problem is that the West Bank turned the other cheek, and in return they are slowly being herded into arab zoos for the settlers. By responding with rockets they can project some sort of cost to these invasions to the israeli public, and continue to have some sort of bartering chip in these peace talks (see how Israel constantly goes behind Abbas’ back when they form agreements, and PLO rolling over for them).
For the record, I don’t mean to jump you or anything, you’re being far more reasonable than the usual dissenters, there’s just very real responses to what you’ve said that can’t be ignored.”
Parlance Province 