Yes but how about answering the question because lives depend on it. What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them? Give up and move ten million people (including some ~20% Muslims & Arabs) to somewhere else? Where? Let's get serious! Again, what to do? How about a constructive response including your advice to Israel under these circumstances. I have no dog in the fight, criticize Israel how you like (undoubtedly much of it justified) but what's the solution? If there is none forthcoming, and there has not, then we move to Clauswitz. Whatever he meant with his famous dictum, that says there is no alternative.
Appalling, much like the Ukraine/Russia horror show.
back
2 comments
> What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them?
Giving concessions to the population and offering them an equitable stake in society would go a long way to dissipating support for armed resistance.
It's not a conflict on the same scale but you can look to the resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland for parallels. Denying people their basic chances in life and doing so with the threat of violence it's never going to win people to your side.
At some point you either have to talk to them or kill them all. The situation now is only creating martyrs and enough trauma to fuel the next generation of the cycle.
I completely agree with your comment and would also note that the median age in Gaza is roughly 18 which is coincidentally also roughly the last time they had an election, which means most Palestinians have had no influence on their government.
This feels a lot like the American reaction after 9/11 where a great crime was committed but less violent options were rejected by hardliners who wanted to overcompensate for having missed the threat after having made “we will protect you” a major campaign point, and likely also seeing an opportunity for something they could not do following the normal political process. In this case it seems all the more tragic because there’s no natural separation due to distance, and it’s hard to see this not resulting in more tragedies for decades with so much fresh blood to avenge.
That's what Oslo peace agreement was about. Palestinians rejected it and went back to intifada. They received the land and independence. Gaza had an international airport that Clinton landed in. They overwhelmingly rejected it.
They elected Hamas and strive to erase Israel. There is no such thing as land concessions, they see it as a weakness and demand more. The national Palestinian idea is the genocide of Jews and the establishment of an Islamic state on all of Israel's borders. That's Hamas's stated goal and it is supported by 80% of the Gaza population. Judea & Samaria are the same, despite PLO geriatrics being in control most of the population supports genocide of Jews.
It can't be compared to Ireland since the Irish never sought the destruction of Britain and the genocide of the English. The same with Japan. You can't compare.
You see it with Western eyes and can't really understand or willfully ignore the Palestinian aspirations.
A supermajority of Gazans are literally not old enough to have ever voted in an election. Hamas won the 2006 election by force, and immediately replaced open democratic process with a system of internal Shura councils. Palestine did not elect Hamas.
"Palestine" most certainly elected Hamas.
According to international observers the elections in Gaza that Hamas won in 2007 were democratic and fair:
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) in partnership with The Carter Center reported "a professional and impartial performance of election officials".[33] The European Union delegation reported "there was nothing which would indicate that the final result was not the outcome chosen by the voters".[34] A CRS Report for Congress on the 2006 elections concluded: "The election was overseen by 17,268 domestic observers, complemented by 900 credentialed international monitors. ... The Bush Administration accepted the outcome of the Palestinian legislative elections and praised the PA for holding free and fair elections. ... The conduct of the election was widely considered to be free and fair."[45]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
Indeed, the entity that did its best to obstruct the democratic protest was Israel:
In the lead-up to the elections, on 26 September 2005 Israel launched a campaign of arrests against PLC members. 450 members of Hamas were detained, mostly those involved in the 2006 PLC elections. The majority of them were kept in administrative detention for different periods.[23] In the election period, 15 PLC members were captured and held as prisoners.[24]
During the elections, the Israeli authorities banned the candidates from holding election campaigns inside Jerusalem. Rallies and public meetings were prohibited. The Jerusalem identity cards of some PLC members were also revoked.[25] The Carter Center, which monitored the elections, criticised the detentions of persons who "are guilty of nothing more than winning a parliamentary seat in an open and honest election".[26]
Israeli obstruction during the election resulted in estimated 123,000 voters in East Jerusalem being prevented from registering until ten days before the elections, creating a number of logistical problems shortly before the election day. The checkpoints of Israel also continued to pose serious obstacles to all Palestiniain parties during the electoral campaign as well as on voting day itself. It was also noted that Palestinian refugees in exile and 9,000 prisoners remained ineligible to vote.[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
The only problem with the elections was that the Palestinians elected the wrong party. The US, that great champion of liberal democracy around the world, did its utmost best to correct the result: they sponsored, armed and trained a Fatah faction to stage a coup; which backfired and left Hamas in control of Gaza.
The report said that instead of driving its enemies out of power, the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser a month after the Hamas takeover, said he believed that Hamas had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand. "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen," he was quoted as saying. Wurmser said that the Bush administration engaged in a "dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] with victory." Wurmser said he was especially galled by the Bush administration's hypocrisy. "There is a stunning disconnect between the president's call for Middle East democracy and this policy," he said. "It directly contradicts it.".[69]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
The reason you're talking about an election that took place 18 years ago is that, after seizing control in Gaza, Hamas refused to ever hold another election. A supermajority of Gazan residents aren't old enough ever to have voted in an election held in Gaza. Whatever happened in 2006 --- and you'll get lots of stories about it if you go digging --- the Palestine that exists in 2024 did not elect Hamas.
No, the reason was constant attacks by Israel in multiple military operations against Gaza, what is allegedly known as "mowing the grass" in Gaza.
Wikipedia has an extensive timeline:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict#2...
And there is no reason to "go digging" and look for "stories". You can read the wikipedia article I quote above, about the US-backed Fatah coup and follow the sources, which are entirely public and mainstream. One of them is actual Vanity Fair.
The "US-backed Fatah coup"? Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2006, and won a war against Fatah in 2007. Most Palestinians are too young ever to have voted for Hamas.
Would you say elections from 20 years ago are representative of the political mood in your country today?
Also:
1. Most of the current population wasn't born then.
2. Voting for the political wing of a violent group isn't the same as supporting violence. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, are the biggest party in Northern Ireland almost 30 years since the cease fire.
That's right, but we do have up-to-date information that suggests Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank both support Hamas (though not overwhelmingly so) and consider the 7th October attacks to be justified. This is from the AP (I also posted the link earlier):
Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign
Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching the October attack, the poll indicated.
(...)
Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% called for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and ineffective.
At the same time, 44% in the West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up slightly from 38% three months ago.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion...
But, just to be perfectly clear lest there be some misunderstanding: Palestinians may support whomever they want and whatever they want, that does not justify their endless slaughter and apparent ethnic cleansing by Israel. That is in the same way that the almost universal support of the far right by the Israeli public does not justify terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
This kind of conversation is always about morality, as well as other considerations. The killing of women and children and unarmed men will always elicit moral outrage, as well it should. In a context as inhumane and cruel as the brutal occupation of the Palestinian lands by Israel there is very little safe moral ground that any side can occupy. Hamas are the democratically elected government of Gaza, they are the legitimate resistance against the occupation and at the same time they are the perpetrators of shocking atrocities against Israeli civilians. The Israeli government is democratically elected and enjoys the support of a majority of the Israeli population and the current "war" has the full support of the majority of the Israeli public. The only unassailable moral stance remains to respect the facts on the ground, discuss them as one understands them, and not try to twist them for political reasons. My thoughts anyway.
To make it plain: so what if Palestinians support Hamas? Massacring a defenseless civilian population is never justified.
Many distortions above; let's just pick one:
They elected Hamas
Hamas won a narrow plurality in the 2006 legislative elections. That government dissolved entirely in 2007 after a military conflict between Hamas and Fatah.
So since 2007, Hamas has not been "elected". In any case it's main function since then has been as an instrument of Israeli policy. In Bibi's own words, just a few years ago: "Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas."
So if you are unhappy with Hamas still being around, you know who to direct your concerns at.
That is certainly not Hamas's main function. Netanyahu is obviously in some sense culpable for funneling resources to Hamas, but Hamas is, obviously, an independent actor; if it's an instrument of anyone's policy, it's Iran's --- though, since October 7, the aQB wing of Hamas appears to be completely on its own.
Netanyahu funded Hamas because he had a cunning plan:
‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas
As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
What a guy, that Bibi. He's so cute and smart, you just want to pinch his cheek and ruffle his hair. He funded Hamas to encourage them to fight the PA so they would not work together to create a Palestinian state. What an amazingly bright plan! Sending millions to Hamas? I mean what could ever possibly go wrong?
If it wasn't clear, both myself and 'racional are making the same point. We're disputing the long-term impact of that funding, not whether or why it took place.
Of course it's an independent actor, but I'm talking about the bigger picture and the strategic rational behind its continued existence. The Leitmotif if you will.
The IRGC was going to make sure Hamas continued to exist, to the extent it needed external support at all. Hamas isn't a creation of Israel; Israeli support is not the rationale for its continued existence.
I don't agree, but more to the point I didn't say or even suggest this:
Hamas is a creation of Israel
So I think we can wrap up here.
Tough luck, maybe Bibi et al should check for underground water chi flows or indian graves or something causing this misfortune!
But hopefully more bombing will fix this soon! Insallah!?
> Palestinians rejected it and went back to intifada.
Um, not really. Hamas did. And their radical brethren who assassinated Yitzhak.
It did end up extremely bad for everyone involved.
(I don't want to downplay the anti-Oslo sentiment [0], especially that Oslo I-II got signed despite the attacks previously.
Also it's hard to say how well the PLO represented the people, but it's sure that they were more accepted than Hamas. After all Arafat got elected in 1996 despite participating in the peace process.
It seems fairly clear that the peace process was a very unfortunate Schelling point for extremists on both sides, and their tireless cooperation successfully pushed the region away from peace and prosperity.
And, it's also important to note that it's perfectly possible that Arafat was simply deceitful, and the PLO wanted to get some breathing space to gather an army, blablabla. Sure. And that would/could have lead to ... exactly here anyway. Or maybe it would be even worse! Those are all legitimate concerns that have to be addressed, but very few things can simply make the basic issues irrelevant, and as long as people are there they will inevitably bear the burden of living with those unaddressed issues.)
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_views_on_the_pea...
>> What should Israel do?
Israel should make peace with the Palestinians. It is only Israel that can decide to have peace, because it is the overwhelmingly more powerful side, militarily and in every other way, and even if Hamas put down its weapons and surrendered, there would be no peace if Israel did not agree to it.
And just to be sure this is well understood: Israel does not want peace. Israel has maintained its brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories for years well before Hamas, it has broken ceasefires left and right for years, it has continued to massacre the Palestinians every chance it gets, it has continued to settle more and more of the lands where the Palestinians live, and even when the top leadership of Hamas proposed a long-lasting truce, Israel responded by assassinating them, just in case anyone took them to their word:
According to Tristan Dunning, Israel has never responded to repeated offers by Hamas over subsequent years for a quid pro quo moratorium on attacks against civilians.[176] It has engaged in several tadi'a (periods of calm), and proposed a number of ceasefires.[176] In January 2004, Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, prior to his assassination, said that the group would end armed resistance against Israel for a 10-year hudna[k] in exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, and that restoring Palestinians' "historical rights" (relating to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight) "would be left for future generations". His views were quickly echoed by senior Hamas official Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who added that Hamas envisaged a "phased liberation".[178] Israel's response was to assassinate Yassin in March in a targeted Israeli air strike, and then al-Rantisi in a similar air strike in April.[179]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Second_Intifada
And let's not forget that the current leadership of Israel has made it exceedingly clear that it is hell-bent against any ideas of a "two state" solution, that it has complete disrespect for any UN resolutions trying to establish any kind of solution that involves Palestinian independence, and has of course worked hard to reduce the Oslo accords to a farce.
I don't think any of this is a particularly fair summary of the situation. In particular, it ratifies Hamas and the 2022 Netanyahu coalition as the leaders of both sides of the broader conflict; neither are really representative of the populations they serve. Hamas has at least since 2017 been run by a millenarian Bond villain, causing much of Hamas's political leadership to flee the country. Netanyahu assembled a neo-Kahanist fringe coalition as a parliamentary maneuver to keep from losing his post, because it's widely believed he's going to end up in prison as soon as he leaves.
Meanwhile: if we're talking about peace in the context of what happened after October 7, there's no country in the world that would have failed to respond militarily to an attack like that, which was the point of the attack in the first place. Sinwar expected Iran to go all-in on a final war that would wipe Israel off the map; instead, Hezbollah stayed home, and the whole plan fizzled.
The Israel/Palestine situation is widely considered one of the more complicated geopolitical crises, and for good reason. If you think you have a simple summary of it, like "Israel does not want peace", you're probably glossing over a lot of stuff.
Btw, this happened just as I was replying to your comment. tl;dr Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal and Israel started attacking Rafah:
Israel’s military is now launching targeted strikes in eastern Rafah, Reuters and AP reported citing a statement. Israel says it is striking Hamas targets in the region. But more than 1 million displaced Palestinian people have sought refuge in Rafah amid Israel’s attacks in Gaza, the Washington Post reported.
Hamas says it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal to halt the seven-month war with Israel. It issued a statement on Monday saying its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had delivered the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister.
An IDF spokesperson said Israel will continue to act in a “operational manner” in Gaza despite Hamas announcing that it accepted a Gaza ceasefire deal on Monday. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel is going to continue to act in an operational manner, saying earlier that Israel has a right to defend itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/06/israel-ga...
Israel does not want peace and there is nothing simplistic in that observation.
This is breaking news from like 4 hours ago. It did not happen just as you were writing these comments.
I don't think you're going to find many people to take the other side of your "Netanyahu is a monster" argument. The IDF has crushed Hamas militarily. There was no reason for Netanyahu not to accept a ceasefire on any terms that gave hostages back. This is why the streets in Israel are full of gigantic demonstrations about the return of the hostages.
>> This is why the streets in Israel are full of gigantic demonstrations about the return of the hostages.
Yes, what may not be clear is that those people are demonstrating for the return of the hostages, not the end of the massacre of the Palestinians. They couldn't care less about the Palestinians. As I point out in another comment there is widespread support among the Israeli public for the war and near zero concern about what it will do to Palestinian civilians, including children.
This is false.
You keep ignoring every link I post here and still insist you understand the situation.
The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine
https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-decisive-plan-israeli-public...
As trauma of October 7 massacres endures, Israeli support for Gaza war remains high
https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-g...
How Israeli youth helped usher in the farthest right-wing government ever
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/23/23609584/israel...
Here is the full text of the ceasefire proposal as accepted by Hamas:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/6/text-of-the-ceasefir...
I don’t think Netanyahu on his own is able to reject this deal and invade Rafah. Especially with protests in both Israel as well as the USA, and with USA having set a red line here.
No, I think it is wildly simplistic to blame this on him, and there is a deep understanding inside the entire Israeli leadership that the genocide continues, no matter the cost. The Israeli public may not agree with it, however from what I see in the protests, there is very little talk—if any—of the lives of Palestinians. So it doesn’t really seem that Palestinian lives matter as much as the hostages for the Israeli public at large.
If e.g. Benny Gantz were to become the Prime Minister, there is little evidence he would behave any differently, this is for example how he is reacting to Hamas’ accepting of the ceasefire deal:
> “Every decision will be brought before the war cabinet—there will be no political considerations”
> “The military action in Rafah is also an inseparable part of our continued efforts and commitment to return our hostages and change the security reality in the south.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/389518
There are not many—if any—political regimes plausible in Israel at the moment who do not take a very hawkish and a criminal approach in denying Palestinians their states. The political reality is that without an intifada, there will be no political avenue for Palestine to gain their freedom from oppression.
You're saying all this and I guess I get why, but I'm coming at this from the opposite angle. I don't believe Israel has any further military objectives to pursue in Gaza beyond getting the hostages back.
There are allegedly 4 remaining combat-ready Hamas battalions (Google the ISW's al-Qassam Brigades Order of Battle for more information than you've ever wanted on this topic), all in or around Rafah. The other 15 battalions have all been disabled. Israel is believed to have killed or captured a full 1/4 of all Hamas fighters, but that figure understates the damage they did to Hamas; for instance, it really seems like they've more or less killed Hamas's entire officer cadre. Hezbollah fought the IDF to a standstill a few years back. Hamas did not repeat the performance. The IDF won, decisively.
Netanyahu's ghoulish neo-Kahanist coalition says things about completely eradicating Hamas, and, yes, about collectively punishing Gazans (this whole thing about Hamas being the duly elected representatives of Gaza is one of their talking points). But they're incompetent and these aren't military goals. If you killed literally every Hamas fighter, they'd be in approximately the same place: within 10 years of rehabilitation as a combat force given the same 9-figure p.a. disbursals they get from the IRGC and Syria.
There's a persuasive argument that Netanyahu needs this conflict to stay hot in order to stay in office; his incentives are very like those of the US's ex-President: being in office prevents his prosecution and eventual imprisonment (not unprecedented in Israel). I don't put it past him. Nixon probably prolonged the Vietnam War for electoral reasons. People do awful things.
I'm just saying: there's no coherent security reason for them to continue active combat operations. I think the Al-Aqsa Flood Attack is somewhat like the 9/11 hijackers storming the cockpits; it worked once, but it's never going to work again.
But, of course, Sinwar is no better. I assume Haniya is telling him about the alfalfa they're going to plant for the rabbits, and how Sinwar will get to tend the rabbits. My advice to Hamas people, once this all settles out, would be not to get in a motor vehicle with either of the Sinwar brothers ever again. It's an achievement to piss off Hamas and Fatah, the IRGC, and the IDF simultaneously.
>> (this whole thing about Hamas being the duly elected representatives of Gaza is one of their talking points).
It doesn't matter whose talking point it is. Hamas was elected fair and square in proper democratic elections. They are the only legitimate authority in Gaza. Those are the facts on the ground and there is no world where it makes sense to ignore this.
I suspect you assume this somehow justifies the atrocities committed by Israel, along the lines of Isaac Herzog's comment about innocent civilians in Gaza [1] but that's just nuts. We're not going to ignore reality because a bunch of blood-crazed fascists are trying to twist it to their needs.
_____________
[1] https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-g...
"Netanyahu assembled a neo-Kahanist fringe coalition as a parliamentary maneuver to keep from losing his post, because it's widely believed he's going to end up in prison as soon as he leaves."
It may be "widely believed" but that doesn't make it true. It's highly unlikely that Netanyahu would end up in prison. The only case with a real threat of prison (case 4000) has been collapsing steadily since the start, with dismal prosecution witnesses, and judges were pushing the prosecution team for a plea bargain [1] due to the low chances of successful conviction.
It's also clear that the court proceedings would last until the end of the decade, so extending the war by months wouldn't buy him much time. Not to mention that the war cabinet is a unity wartime cabinet that is made up of the main centrist leaders too.
The idea that Netanyahu's war strategy is based on him clinging to power is lazy thinking that keeps on getting trotted out in order to bolster the argument that the war is unjust. In fact, the Israeli public are clearly behind the war aim of dismantling Hamas, the only significant split in public opinion is whether to risk a hostage deal that may not result in many living hostages released in practice and will only encourage further hostage taking by terrorists in the future.
Only ben-Gvir can be accused of having neo-Kahanist tendencies, the rest are "merely" right wing. And forming a coalition with a large parliamentary majority after an election is hardly a "parliamentary manoeuvre", it's democracy and all too predictable after multiple elections and failure for 5 years for centrist coalition to stick together.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/prosecution-rejects-retreat-fr...
All but a tiny fringe of people everywhere favor the dismantling of Hamas --- something that has largely been accomplished at this point. For normal people who aren't poisoned by Twitter, the contention isn't that Hamas is worth saving, but rather that Israel's operations amount in practice to a collective punishment of Gazans for the actions of Hamas. I am deeply sympathetic to this argument, and disagree with most of what you have to say.
I was pointing out that the simplistic theory that Netanyahu is at real risk of going to prison is not true. It's a view that's put out to turn Natenyahu into a "monster" and make it easy to glibly view the war as serving Natenyahu's interests instead of the harder to swallow reality that it supported by the vast majority of Israelis (who don't have the luxury of merely "favor"ing Hamas' destruction, but as a existential necessity to ensuring Oct 7 is not repeated).
The rest of your comment is predicated on the fact that Hamas is a spent force which is nonsense. If there was a ceasefire today it's clear Hamas will regroup and reestablish. Most media sources claim 4 of their battalions are almost fully intact in Rafah.
The war aim, supported by vast majority of Israelis, is that Hamas is no longer a fighting force and will never threaten Israel again. Yes, there may be new terrorist groups that pop up, but the essential deterrent - that Israel is capable and will fully dismantle any good group that wars against it - will be reestablished. (Plus Israel has learnt a lot of lessons about how to ensure Hamas 2.0 is less of threat, including a renewed focus on insisting to the world for a Marshall-plan-style deradicalization, and the realisation that there are no bounds to what terrorists will do even if you ply them with cash and improve work opportunities for Gazans as Netanyahu and many previous governments did prior to Oct 7).
This war involves the most difficult urban warfare the world has ever seen - it's Mosul or Raqah combined with Vietnam, with extensive extensive secret tunnels and the use of civilian infrastructure to wage war. The civilian casualties and destruction where inevitable and the "collective punishment" argument simply does not stack up in this war.
I disagree with all of this. Hamas could be eliminated root and branch and still reconstitute within 10 years. My claim is that Israel has already accomplished the goal you lay out in your third paragraph. I don't believe there is any such thing as "Marshall-plan-style deradicalization".
Of course, what's really happening here is that our premises are too far apart for us to productively discuss things. To continue talking, we'd just be playing to the crowd, hoping to attract some other commenter on this benighted threat to chime in our side. Maybe there's some value in us just calling out the places where we disagree and leaving it at that?
Only Ben-Gvir can be accused of having neo-Kahanist tendencies, the rest are "merely" right wing.
Though that certain other major cabinet figure you're not mentioning (Smotrich) avoids the explicit affiliation and more obvious rhetoric -- his actions clearly resonate with the Kahanist agenda.
Other coalition members seem to be "out there" on the Kahanist spectrum. Meet Orik Strook (aka Minister of Settlements and National Missions), for example:
In 2007, Strook's son Zvi was convicted of abusing a Palestinian boy and killing a young goat, and spent thirty months in an Israeli prison as a result. In response to the ruling, Strook stated that, "Unlike the Court, who preferred to believe the Arab witnesses, we are sure of Zvi's innocence, and are hurting from the success of his haters and would assist him to deal with the difficult sentence imposed on him".
You've also got Zvi Sukkot:
In 2012, [Sukkot] was expelled from the West Bank under suspicion that he was part of a group of 12 that had planned and carried out violent attacks against Palestinians and their property. ... On 6 July 2017, he was arrested on suspicion of engaging in "price tagging". ... At the onset of the Huwara rampage, Sukkot tweeted that "Huwara's killers' nest needs to be taken care of", and posted a picture of himself among a group of settlers gathering at Tapuach Junction, to the immediate south of Huwara.
Finally, it's important to note that the vast majority of the folks who helped the Nazis do their dirty work throughout Europe were not members of their local Nazi parties (or if so, only on paper and sometimes under duress). By and large, they were "merely" right-wing or apolitical.
Looks like a duck, talks like a duck ...
No, I think it is your account that is attempting to over-simplify world politics into a Tolkien-esque story of good vs. evil, with Yahya Sinwar as a Bond-like villain and Iran as the secretive puppet master, pulling the strings, pulling the strings from the shadows. The problem is that this simplistic story doesn't seem to have much to do with the facts on the ground, as we can observe them, and not imagine them.
For example, I cannot find any information about Ismail Haniyeh having left for Qater with his merry band of revelers because of Sinwar. The scant information we have about the support of Hamas among Palestinians suggests that Hamas is popular enough among Palestinians in Gaza, and certainly in the West Bank, that if there was another election they would easily win it [1].
The same goes for the Israeli government. Certainly everyone agrees that Bibi is doing everything he can to prolong the war to save his ass, but at the same time his government coalition enjoys the support of a majority of the Israeli voters, whom, after all, it represents [2] [3]. And a majority of Israeli civilians support the "war" [4]. Scare quotes because that's not a war but an unhindered massacre of a defenseless civilian population.
>> Sinwar expected Iran to go all-in on a final war that would wipe Israel off the map; instead, Hezbollah stayed home, and the whole plan fizzled.
There is absolutely no reason to assume any of that is true. We do not know what were the strategic goals that Hamas had in invading Israel. They have given some reasons but they're not exactly a trustworthy source so the best thing to do is to avoid launching into wild speculation.
_______________
[1] Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign
Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% called for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and ineffective.
At the same time, 44% in the West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up slightly from 38% three months ago.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion...
[2] The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine
The terrifying Smotrichization of the Israeli public is embodied in the total willingness to sacrifice the lives of every last Palestinian in Gaza for the ultimate victory that the far-right minister promised in his plan. It is the terrifying indifference to the astronomical number of dead children, and the complete internalization of the idea that any thought of struggle and freedom on the other side of the fence must be extinguished, no matter the human cost.
https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-decisive-plan-israeli-public...
[3] How Israeli youth helped usher in the farthest right-wing government ever
Recent polling backs that surprising observation: A joint poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute last month found that 73 percent of Jewish Israelis between ages 18 and 24 identify as right-wing, compared with only 46 percent of Jewish Israelis over 65. Young Jewish Israelis are showing up to rallies and polling stations for the extremist politicians whose November electoral victory ushered in Israel’s farthest right-wing government ever.
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/23/23609584/israel...
[4] As trauma of October 7 massacres endures, Israeli support for Gaza war remains high
https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-trauma-of-october-7-massacr...
It is not my contention that the IRGC controlled Hamas leading up to October 7. The IRGC has trained and funded Hamas for over two decades.