Hamas has long dehumanized Palestinians, treating their lives as expendable and their deaths as losses that can be replaced by more births. Its own leaders have made that clear. In their eyes, Palestinian lives are theirs to sacrifice for their delusions and Islamist agenda. - Yahya Sinwar: "We are ready to be annihilated, every single one of us, down to our last child." - Ismail Haniyeh said Palestinians need the blood of women, children, and the elderly to awaken their revolutionary spirit. - Mousa Abu Marzouk said Hamas's tunnels were built to protect its fighters, and that protecting Gaza's civilians was the responsibility of the UN and Israel. - Ghazi Hamad: "Even if Israel kills 20,000 or another 100,000, this is a strong card in our hands."

No, Hussain. Hamas has never agreed to a peace process or a two-state solution, despite what its propagandists, some of whom unfortunately call themselves academics, keep claiming. They point to Hamas's 2017 document, which I have read in both Arabic and English. It accepts a state on the 1967 lines only as a "formula of national consensus," while refusing to recognize Israel and vowing never to give up on "liberating" all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea. That is not a two-state solution. It is a phase in a longer war. But the restrictions on Gaza did not begin when Hamas seized it in 2007. Israel's permit and closure regime goes back decades before that, and even after it withdrew its army and settlers in 2005, Israel kept control of Gaza. I was not expecting Israel to allow millions of dollars in Qatari cash to flow into Gaza in suitcases. The Palestinian Authority repeatedly tried to pressure Hamas by cutting salaries and electricity payments, while Israel helped keep Hamas afloat. As for people entering and leaving freely: that is a right, not a favor from anyone. Palestinians in Gaza should be able to come and go as they choose. Instead, they were almost never allowed to travel even to the West Bank, except in rare cases. In general, yes, people there lived, and still live, in an open-air prison. Absolving Israel completely is not a serious conversation. For years, its leaders preferred Hamas in Gaza and a weakened PA in the West Bank, because a divided Palestinian leadership meant no negotiations. I also blame the Palestinian Authority for failing to stop Hamas from taking over Gaza in 2007. Any authority trying to build a state must never let a terrorist organization seize territory. The original mistake was allowing Hamas to run in the 2006 elections without handing over its weapons and dissolving its military wing, and it looks like the same mistake is about to be repeated. Even the architects of the 2005 withdrawal were honest about its purpose. Dov Weissglas, Sharon's chief of staff and one of the plan's key architects, told Haaretz in 2004 that the disengagement was "formaldehyde," meant to freeze the political process and prevent a Palestinian state.