I wanna follow up on my Palestine/Israel post from yesterday because I've been closely monitoring the current situation and cannot figure out what the hell Hamas is thinking. For those who don't keep up with this, I'll give a summary: In early June three Israeli boys were kidnapped in the West Bank, and were later found dead. Before their bodies were discovered, the Israeli government rounded up hundreds of Palestinians and a few people were killed in the process. Soon afterward a Palestinian boy was captured and burned to death in what was probably retaliation for the three Israeli boys. The anger between the two sides has been mounting, and the Israeli government and Hamas have been exchanging rocket fire for the past couple of weeks whilst Israeli is calling up its reserves.

For this current conflict I think Israel is definitely in the wrong. Although what happened to the boys was tragic, it should've been treated as a criminal investigation. The government definitely took advantage of the situation to detain prominent Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. It's not a situation that any government, community, or person can easily accept without giving some sort of payback. I understand that. However I don't see what Hamas gets for goading Israel. Do they realize that if it turns into a full war, Israel is literally going to flatten the West Bank? There's no way they can win. It would just be annihilation. Perhaps Jordan would step in, but I doubt they'd risk it. Maybe Hamas thinks they could play the victim card much like Lebanon a few years ago when those soldiers were kidnapped, but given Israel's conduct in the past month the Palestinians can already do that. The way that they're going now, I can't imagine it ending well for them.