<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">In the three and a half decades since it began as an underground militant group, Hamas has pursued a consistently violent strategy aimed at rolling back Israeli rule — and it has made steady progress despite bringing enormous suffering to both sides of the conflict.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But its stunning incursion into Israel over the weekend marks its deadliest gambit yet, and the already unprecedented response from Israel threatens to bring an end to its 16-year rule over the Gaza Strip.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas assault, in which over 1,200 people were killed in Israel and dozens dragged into Gaza as hostages, will likely bring a far greater magnitude of death and destruction to Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians have nowhere to flee and where 1,100 have already been killed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas officials say they are prepared for any scenario, including a drawn-out war, and that allies like Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah will join the battle if Israel goes too far.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t think anyone really knows what the endgame is at the moment,” said Tahani Mustafa, a Palestinian analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank. But given the amount of planning involved in the assault, “it’s difficult to imagine they haven’t tried to strategize every possible scenario.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Shaul Shay, an Israeli researcher and retired colonel who served in military intelligence, said Hamas “miscalculated” Israel’s response and now faces a far worse conflict than it had anticipated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I hope and I believe that Israel will not stop until Hamas has been defeated in the Gaza Strip, and I don’t think that this was their expectation before the operation,” Shay said of Hamas.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas attacks were met with massive Israeli military incursions into the occupied West Bank and Gaza that exacted a far heavier death toll on Palestinians. But as the violence wound down in 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and some 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, while maintaining tight control over access to the enclave by land, air and sea.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas claimed the withdrawal as vindication for its approach, and the following year it won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections. In 2007, after bitter infighting, it violently seized Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the next 16 years, through four wars and countless smaller battles with Israel that rained devastation upon Gaza, Hamas only grew more powerful. Each time it had more rockets that traveled farther. Each time its top leaders survived, securing a cease-fire and the gradual easing of a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt. In the meantime, it built a government — including a police force, ministries and border terminals with metal detectors and passport control.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And what of the thousands of Palestinians killed, the flattened apartment blocks, the crumbling infrastructure, the suffocating travel restrictions, the countless dreams deferred in Gaza, a 40-kilometer (25-mile) coastal strip sandwiched between Israel and Egypt?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas blamed Israel, as did many Palestinians. The Hamas government has seen only sporadic protests over the years and has quickly and violently suppressed them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If Hamas’ armed struggle against Israel looks like a failure — or much worse — consider the alternative.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank recognized Israel and renounced armed struggle over three decades ago, hoping it would lead to a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the talks repeatedly broke down, partly because of Hamas’ violence but also because of Israel’s relentless expansion of settlements, now home to more than a half million Israelis. There have been no serious peace talks in well over a decade, and the Palestinian Authority has become little more than an administrative body in the 40% of the occupied West Bank where it is allowed to operate. AP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">&nbsp;bnbd24/kh</div>