> Like, if Israel doesn't want the Gaza strip/west bank, then why hasn't there been a two state solution?
Because Hamas wants Israel destroyed, and a state actor doing that is a much bigger problem for Israel than a non-state actor.
Because Hamas wants Israel destroyed, and a state actor doing that is a much bigger problem for Israel than a non-state actor.
Hamas is fundamentally a response to the co-option of the PA by (perceived) western/israeli governments. It's rather like the provisional IRA versus the constitutional nationalists in Ireland.
If people see that only violence has any impact, there will be more violence. The events post October 7th (i.e. what's happened in Gaza) have basically created the next Hamas, even in the vanishingly unlikely case that the IDF can wipe them out now.
Israel has had a long-standing policy of propping up Hamas in order to divide Palestinians and thwart the creation of a Palestinian state. Here's an actual quote from Netanyahu on this from 2019 :
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...