Are they though? Israel's Minister of Communication just spoke on national TV about the need to make the people of Gaza leave "voluntarily".
They want the land. That was always the goal, clearly. Because:
How does murdering 20,000 women and children remove the threat of Hamas?
How does leveling 75% of residential buildings remove the threat of Hamas?
How does salting the earth and destroying all the infrastructure necessary for life remove Hamas?
How does bombing historic mosques and churches, or universities and civic buildings remove Hamas?
How does blockading food, electricity, internet, essential medicine, and even water remove Hamas?
30,000 Palestinians have been murdered during those war crimes.
Israel are bombing and destroying refugee camps, UN shelters, UN schools, humanitarian corridors, and hospitals.
In all this, they haven't taken out one single senior Hamas leader in Gaza.
NOT ONE.
Israel hasn't rescued a single hostage. In fact, when they found three hostages - shirtless, waving white flags and calling out in Hebrew - they murdered them.
Can you imagine spending over ten billion dollars, and failing to take out one senior leader or rescue a single hostage? Even when allowed and encouraged by your leadership to kill as many civilians and destroy as much as you need to, to the point where ~90% of the population is now homeless?
Really - try, if you can, to imagine that level of failure. The world's fourth largest military, killing 10,000 babies in an effort to save a single hostage or kill a single senior Hamas leader. And failing.
And people think this will prevent terror? Absurd. Farcical.
I find it hard to believe that anyone is taken in by this - and in fact, most of the world isn't. Even a majority of Americans want a ceasefire, and they're Israel's closest ally.
> Hamas has embedded itself in civilian population, Hamas is not coming out to fight man to man in an open field
That doesn't excuse war crimes, or genocide. Neither did the atrocities of October 7th. The Genocide Convention, which Israel signed over 70 years ago, is very clear on that fact.
> how is it supposed to do that other than actually go after Hamas?
Consider - making sure 2.3 million people have nothing to lose is a profoundly stupid way to try and fight terrorism. Israel isn't defending itself - when you invade an occupied land, destroy everything, massacre refugees and kill 5 children every hour for a hundred days straight, that's not defense. It's ethnic cleansing. It's genocide.
And denying that makes you a genocide denier. Palestinians have provided HD footage of their suffering, their nightmare, their horror, for 100 days.
Israeli leadership have made little attempt to hide their intent - go to israelquotes.com and filter for the word "genocide". You can't claim ignorance any more.