Don't treat the Palestinians like they have no agency...

Based on what I know about Palestinians, they appear to be close to having no agency. They don't control what crosses their border, the Israeli government may well be trying to destroy them and their politics are the plaything of regional and non-regional powers. For example, Israel played a role in incubating Hamas [0, 1].

Now if I were in Gaza my opinion is that what they are doing is stupid. They don't really have a choice but to like it and make the best of their situation with charity, tolerance and love. All the other plays lead to worse results. But there aren't many political bodies with less agency.

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30...

They have no power, and israel and hamas are killing them in the middle of their war. That is just a misleading comment. They have very very very little power to change things right now. It looks like people are just hoping not to die, and people are dieing all around them.

Never said that they were saints. It's important to know what you're actually dealing with though.

From the article:

"In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place."

I cannot help but see most of the arguments that people make equating Hamas with Palestinians as bad faith. Explanations are not excuses and knowing why things are happening is the first real step towards fixing anything.

> In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place.

And, for the same reason, the ones that were born largely couldn't vote.

Yes, it's inferrable with some caution.

There's also the obvious elephant in the room that Israel is executing a disproportional response to the terror attacks and the conditions they're creating will only extend this conflict and create more terror. As the article states, it's pretty well understood that citizens need stable material conditions before voting really works well, otherwise they tend to trend towards the reactionary.

> Additional friendly reminder that Bush Jr is responsible for Hamas.

Israeli policy during the occupation is responsible for Hamas, and it existed before W had any foreign policy influence.

Blaming Bush for Hamas because he was somehow responsible for the elections happening is stupid. The elections happening was a good thing. Fatah stupidly rejecting the idea of a national unity government was a bad thing. Israel deliberately seeking to assure a Hamas victory by interfering with campaigning, and voter registration, conducting a targeted campaign of arrests of Palestinian politicians, and doing everything possible to make the Fatah-led PA look weak, complicit, and corrupt in Israel's favor in the immediate runup to the elections was horrible -- but predictable given the entire history of Israel actively promoting Hamas, from its founding, as a tool to divide Palestinians and assure that there was a public face of opposition less sympathetic to, particularly, the population of Israel's Western Allies (particularly the US) than the more secular nationalists of the PLO during the height of occupation, and Fatah as a political party once there was an entity to have political parties.

Sorry, it was an oversimplification, but the article here is pretty decent. The major takeaway is that conditions were not right and the whole election cycle was a bit ham fisted. Your break down is appreciated as it's got a lot of moving parts!