Hamas' primary goal is not battling Israel but marginalizing secular Palestinians in Fatah and taking over the national movement.
When Hamas fighters broke through the Israeli border fence on October 7, it was seeking to provoke Israel into miscalculations driven by outrage. When insurgent or terrorist groups engage in spectacular overkill attacks, they typically seek to destabilize the target society and inflame a toxic mixture of shock, outrage, panic and wrath such that the dominant power inflicts much greater blows against itself than insurgents ever could.
After two elections in which Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas overwhelmingly won the presidency but Hamas-backed candidates twice emerged as the biggest legislative bloc, Hamas violently expelled Fatah from Gaza. The Palestinian split continues to this day, but compared to the West Bank, Gaza is far less culturally and historically significant.Hamas obviously thinks that if it wants to take over the Palestinian movement, it needs another sustained insurgency against Israeli occupation.
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