Could you please clarify what you mean by "Hamas wanted in ghe first place"? If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to the attack on the 7th of October, right? May I perhaps add that just on the days preceding that attack, Israelis killed a Palestinian in the West Bank[0]. So it was not really peaceful before that specific date.
I don't see any point in rehashing the I/P infinite regress. You end up trying to figure out where bronze age tribes lived. For the purposes of this conversation I'm going to step away from I/P and look at the strategy that I believe was used in the abstract.
You've got two sides, Able and Baker, with a range of opinions on both sides, from a moderate majority to an extreme minority.
Able extremists attack Baker in a way which is big, shocking and violent.
Baker is provoked into retaliation against Able. Crucially, the retaliation is against the whole of Able, including the moderates.
When it all dies down, there are less Able moderates and more Able extremists. (Because if someone dropped an Acme piano on my family, I'd be tempted to strap on the Acme exploding underpants, too).
This "leverage your enemy's strength to radicalize your own people" approach is common. 9/11 is probably the clearest example, but you could even see the non-violent Civil Rights protests in America in this light (march, provoke violent response, gain converts and sympathy). If this wasn't one of the factors behind the October attacks, Hamas are dumber than I give them credit for.
Thus, I see "the Palestinian people will not forget this" as "the cycle of violence is locked in for another generation".
I agree with you. Let's not rehash this finger pointing argument. It doesn't get us anywhere.
I however disagree with the framing in the example. Starting from the event that Able attacked Baker without mentioning the reasons or the context clearly portrays Baker as not having done anything to provoke such an attack. Nothing ever happens in a vaccuum.
> Starting from the event that Able attacked Baker without mentioning the reasons or the context clearly portrays Baker as not having done anything to provoke such an attack.
Adding at "step zero" with that information in would not change my argument at all. The relative righteousness of the two sides has nothing to do with strategy selection. For the purposes of this abstract argument, it's unnecessary fluff.
I wasn't necessarily trying to point fingers at a specific party. I wanted to better understand the parent's comment and while doing I wrote what I assumed was meant by them. I agree that to solve this issue that has been going on for many, many years we will have to go to the root cause and address that.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-killed...