Comment by RoyalHenOil
1 year ago
They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.
If you want to quell extremism in a country, you have to give them a genuine alternative to extremism. If all of the moderate options get them nowhere, they will reject them.
This is a vital lesson we learned from WWII. Incentives matter.
> They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.
Prosperity through Hamas? Only for a select few who live in other countries. With the amount of aid and money thrown at Gaza, any third rate politician could have achieved prosperity if only they were genuinely in it for the good of the people.
Hamas didn't, because their priority doesn't lie in the welfare of the Palestinian people but in the eradication of Israel.
(and potentially not even that: there are more billions to amass while living in the safety and comfort of some emirate when the situation on the ground remains volatile and the Palestinian people miserable. In that case, Palestinians don't even have a "way out" of their misery by completing Hamas' mission, because their misery _is_ Hamas' mission.)
Yes, it is an extremely low bar.
But from the perspective of someone living in the West Bank, Hamas is the least horrible of the options. It is the only organization that looks like it might eventually push back Israeli settlements and give West Bank Palestinians back their homes.
If we want don't want people on the West Bank to support Hamas, give them a better alternative. The PA is utterly failing to resist the encroaching settlements. Of course they're going to turn to Hamas!
If there was a third option that wasn't a corrupt terrorist organization, but had the teeth to remove Israeli settlements from the West Bank, you would see support for Hamas fall.