In Reply to: BobinMd's Senator on Hamas and Israel posted by DSCBruin on April 23, 2024 at 10:32:44
that Netanyahu was propping up Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority. He wants to keep the Palestinians divided.
But his moves backfired in spectacular fashion - it turned out that Hamas was much stronger than anyone realized.
However, we must consider another possibility: perhaps Netanyahu knew about Hamas's capabilities, and was willing to sacrifice hundreds of Israeli lives in order initiate a war with Iran. He recently had his chance to escalate the tit-for-tat exchanges into a full-on war, but shockingly it was Iran which chose a face-saving gesture (a weak retaliatory strike) instead of playing into Netanyahu's trap.
I suspect someday we will learn that the Biden administration was making some strong moves behind the scenes to prevent the war that Netanyahu has been seeking.