Preventing the systematic extermination of your entire ethnic group? Read your own comment back to yourself and imagine it's about the Jews in Germany.
But it doesn’t. It hardens resolve on the other side that you are actually monsters. It’s the same reason “strategic” air bombing campaigns like the London Blitz, designed to wear down a population, systematically fail.
> Read your own comment back to yourself and imagine it's about the Jews in Germany
German Jews weren’t systematically targeting German civilians in attacks. If they had been, it would have probably backfired. (They didn’t have a military to “strike” the Nazis in any conventional sense. The Poles in Warsaw did. Guess what they, too, didn’t do.)
I’m not saying I don’t understand the impulse. If I were occupied and facing extinction, I’d probably lash out. What I’m saying is I hope I’d stop and realize, not necessarily that it’s wrong and mis-targeted, but that it’s ineffective and likely counterproductive.
Aim at military targets. People can tell when you’re trying and missing versus conducting a terror campaign. And degrading the adversary’s military will save more of your lives than pissing off its civilians.
In fact the predecessor to Hamas - the PLO - did stop attacking Israel and tried hard to negotiate instead. Do you know what Israel did in response?
That's right, Israel deposed the PLO and put Hamas in power instead.
I never said to stop attacking. I said not to target civilians.
Forward looking, for Hamas to credibly swear off civilian violence, it would have to hold its leaders who ordered those attacks who remain accountable. I don’t see that. I do, however, see such an action pretty aggressively shifting attitudes in Europe and Asia, potentially also America, potentially even in Israel given they’re in an election where Netanyahu is on the back foot.
> Israel deposed the PLO and put Hamas in power instead
This was a concerted effort between Israel, America and Iran. (Hamas is pretty decently modeled as an Iranian occupying force. This analogy extends to Hezbollah.)