"Hamas's Goal in Gaza

For a decade, the Israeli security forces no longer considered the Gaza Strip to be an area that could endanger Israel. The presence of defensive means, such as the Iron Dome, and the ability to carry out targeted interventions, including intense ones, as in 2014, seemed to have condemned Hamas to maintaining a defensive position. However, the attack on 7 October showed that the border was not watertight, resulting in the deaths of 1,200 Israeli citizens and the taking hostage of 240 others. The Israeli response is believed to have caused almost 20,000 deaths to date. This puts Gaza back at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the now troubled context of normalisation between Israel and the Arab countries.