The answer is as clear as why rats push a button in a laboratory cage. Each side is getting politically and emotionally rewarded in the short term in ways that make the long-term logical losses irrelevant. Testosterone rush rules both sides, as it always does in these cases. The irrational is in command; only later will rational thought begin to timidly re-emerge to survey the devastation emotional has wrought.
Here’s a small insight from Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, writing in the NY Times:
Hamas’s desire to best Hezbollah’s achievements is natural, but more to the point, it is radicalizing. One of the reasons, among many, that Hamas felt compelled to break its cease-fire with Israel last month was to prove its potency to Muslims impressed with Hezbollah.Read Why Israel Can’t Make Peace with Hamas.
Isabel Kershner hit the nail on the head from the Israeli point of view.
Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.Read War on Hamas Saps Palentinian Leaders.
But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.
The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority.
Anthropolists, brand marketers and even economists are telling us that emotions rule human actions more than we know or want to admit. It’s time politicians and “statesmen” recognized that fundamental truth.
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