
Originally Posted by
time4fun
Hamas is not a part of the Palestinian National Authority. (i.e. the State of Palestine) It's a terrorist group that used a mixture of politics and weapons to take over Gaza in the 90s (HUGE irony here) Gaza is a completely separate territory, and Hamas runs everything there. They co-exist peacefully with the PNA, but they are officially enemies.
As for Palestinian support of Hamas, it's not what you think it is. Even in Gaza, support is less than 60%. And they have something like 40% support in the West Bank.
And Israel very much created the circumstances that have allowed Hamas to thrive. Israel has been literally starving the Palestinian people for decades. Part of their occupation strategy has been to keep food, medicine, and fuel levels far below what the population needs- that is when they're allowing those things into Palestine at all. You want to know why people started supporting Hamas? Because Hamas was feeding them and giving them medicine and clothing. People literally depended on them for survival because of Israel. I don't think you quite get how horrific life has been under Israeli occupation.
The people in Gaza depend entirely on Hamas for everything, and people believe (very reasonably) that Hamas is the only thing keeping Israel from taking over Gaza and kicking all of the Palestinians out. (not that there's any place for them to go, by the way) Of course, Hamas also uses civilians as human shields. They're horrible. And that should tell you a lot about how dire things are for the people in Gaza.
I'll also remind you that Israel has absolutely no legal right to occupy any part of Palestine. No more than Russia had any right to annex and invade Ukraine. They're actually VERY similar situations in terms of the motivations for the occupying countries. Except Russia isn't forcing Ukraine to live in poverty for decades. And they're not killing Ukrainians in occupied areas to make room for more Russian settlements (at least not that I'm aware of).
The Palestinians aren't "savages"- they are real human beings in a horrific situation that they didn't ask for. Hamas is fucking evil, no doubt. They're an anti-semetic cancer whose main goal is to eradicate Israel.
But that doesn't make Israel the "good guy" here. Sometimes there are no good guys. Just bad guys and even worse ones.