However, I do indeed believe that once such a long-term "truce", with a functional Palestine state, has been established, and manages to last for a few years, the conflict would likely be over for good. After all, such a Palestinian state wouldn't have a ghost of a chance against Israel in a conventional war on its own, for many decades to come at a minimum, and meanwhile Israel would have time to finally normalize its relations with the Arab nations.

And I also think that Hamas is smart enough to realize that. Which is why I'm not particularly concerned about that distinction you make.

I wasn't exactly calling them, or Palestine, a model of democracy. The point is, they are bearing political responsibilities, running a state of sorts, and they are aware that this requires a rather different approach than just being a terrorist group - on the one hand it obviously gives them much more power, on the other it restrains them and forces them to act more responsibly.

Of course Likud's charter isn't remotely as radical as what you'll find in Hamas' charter, I never said it was. They are very different parties with very different histories, and the cirumcstances in which their charters were drawn up are also very different. I have no intention of engaging in "moral equivalency", it's primarily practical factors that concern me - the negotiating positions, as you say, the point that I made that political movements who are willing to surrender long-stated goals in the course of a negotiation, are not very likely to officially surrender said goals beforehand.

I don't know about "wanted" to moderate, so much. Don't mistake me for someone who thinks Hamas is in any way admirable. But all the same, however grudgingly, they did moderate.

I see you completely ignored the part of my post about how it wouldn't exactly help Fatah to be handed the Gaza Strip after Israel has killed a few thousand people (by the time they'd be finished) in it and uprooted Hamas.

Divide and conquer is a fine strategy for a conventional war, but not so much for establishing peace in this kind of unconventional war; you need to have the large majority of the political actors and popular opinion to support the leader who will be signing the peace with you, so that they have the authority to deal with the minority who refuses on their own. But that doesn't work if you make him look like a powerless loser, who is humiliated by you handing him parts of his own state from which you've forcibly ejected his rivals. And to do that mere months after he managed to create a unity government, at least nominally supported by said rivals, well, at that point it almost looks like you're intentionally sabotaging him.

I certainly don't want Hamas to prevail, but that doesn't mean it was necessary or remotely smart to do what the IDF is doing.