Israel supported Hamas as a tactic to destroy their neighbours without restraint as classical war strategy called divide and conquer as most history or war nerds know it.
It's unsurprising classical geopolitics as known from academia 25 years ago before 9/11.
This is an important aspect when people support the measures, the 6000+ bombed kids or that palestinians just voted for them with other options.
In reality the Hamas support, blockades, and forced poverty in Gaza were part of a military plan to create desperation, hellish conditions and radicalisation from constant oppression to eventually weaken or annex depending on sources.
This has been known for long internally in the Israeli press, even mentioned in Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media in the past then called "conspiracy", before again surfacing today with the NYT articles.
Examples below with lots of sources:
The New York Times (today): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Wall Street Journal (2008/2023): https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.... https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-gaza-humanitaria...
The Intercept (2018): https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
Haaretz (2023): https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-op...