Hamas is only responding to the violence initiated by Israeli colonialism [1] [2]. There was no Hamas in 1948, when Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine and began occupying Palestinian villages [3] [4]; there was no Hamas in 1967, when Israel escalated their occupation and ended up occupying Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights (part of Syria). The Oslo Accords, the supposed “peaceful and diplomatic” avenue—mainly representing the Palestinian Authority, which is seen as a more peaceful alternative to Hamas—to a “two-state solution” (i.e. some Palestinian government with its own autonomy over East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, with the territories seized in 1948 still deemed “Israeli”) were undermined by the Israeli government itself, just as Israel shot innocent protestors peacefully marching along the militarized borders of the Gaza Strip.

Violent resistance to Israel is simply a response to their own violence, of which all of this could be ended by Israel agreeing to end their occupation/apartheid system. Israel has the complete power to eliminate these conditions of oppression that brought Hamas into existence, and nothing positive will come of them escalating this to the nth degree. This is to of course assume that Israel is merely targeting “Hamas terrorists” in the current fighting rather than using their resistance as a scapegoat to expedite the ongoing settler-colonial genocide.