Israel-Gaza war

[SInNYC]

I have a very superficial knowledge on the conflict, so i have a few questions:

Does Hamas have a presence on the West Bank or is it only limited to Gaza?

If Hamas is such a threat, what stoped Israel from invading the strip and toppling the Gazan administration? They've conducted strikes and bombings there before, would a full on invasion be considered risky or undesirable in some way?

I know Hamas has support in Iran and Lebanon, but elsewere in the region is it seen as a legitimate authority of the palestinian organizations, or is Fatah the prefered one? Would anyone object to Hamas being ousted?

2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza.

2006 Palestine has first and final elections. Hamas does well in Gaza, Fatah, traditional leaders and party of current Palestinian President Abbas and ex-Palestinian President Arafat wins in West Bank. Later in 2006 Hamas seizes control of Gaza and effectively secedes from Palestinian Authority leadership, running a separate regime.

Since 2006, negotiations between Israel and Palestinian Authority have been rocky in part because the Palestinian Authority can't speak for Hamas and Gaza. Hard liners on both sides benefit from violence and the regular cycle over the last 17 years of "Hamas attacks out of Gaza, Israel retaliates" is good for the Israeli right and far right in terms of making security the main issue and good for Hamas because they recruit off of blown up buildings and such in Gaza and garner international sympathy. Meanwhile settlement continues to creep into West Bank and people conflate the mess in the West Bank with the different mess in Gaza.

Basically the entire world accepts the government of the Palestinians as the Palestinian Authority, which is run by Fatah. The only people who accept Hamas as legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people are people like Laki. Hamas has never accepted going back into the Palestinian Authority and is terrified of the idea of another Palestinian election, which is why they haven't participated in one since 2006, because they know Fatah will win and would have a claim to regain control of Gaza.

This is factually incorrect. Hamas won 74 seats while Fatah won 45 seats in the 2006 election. Hamas beat Fatah 45-17 in district-based seats, winning both the West Bank and Gaza. These numbers are all on wikipedia if you dont believe me. Haniya (Hamas) became the leader, but Israel (and the US) refused to recognize the election results since Hamas won. Israel also refused to release the PA tax money to a Hamas government. After some monkeying around by Israel and the US, they somehow got Fatah to take over West Bank, with Hamas in Gaza.

There was never another election but nobody, neither Israel, the US, nor Fatah wants another election, and its questionable whether anybody would accept the results of an election in which the wrong party won.

I dont like Hamas either, but lets not repeat the common revisionist history about these elections.

[SInNYC]

Netanhayu has made it pretty clear from day 1 that the only choices in the negotiations are either Gaza gets leveled now or it gets leveled after the hostages are released. Meanwhile, Hamas has said with slightly less force that any negotiations must leave them in power or at least safe after hostages are released.

This is why I dont put much faith in any of the negotiations that we keep hearing about.

[SInNYC]

If Bibi actually cared about Hamas and avoiding any catastrophe, he would have bombed their Qatar mansions out of orbit. But he's said - out loud - that there can be no election during a war. So he wants to prolong it, and his rule, as long and inefficiently as possible and doesn't care how many people get killed.
Bibi and Hamas have a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.

As the drone flies, it's a 1,760km journey from Ramon to Doha, most of it over Saudi airspace. The Saudis have some pretty capable air defence.

So too, does Qatar, being one of the richest places on Earth.

Saudi Arabia allegedly hates Qatar (even though they're just two sides of same the inbred blood money sportswashing Gulf monarchy coin.) For example Al Jazeera was already banned in SA before it was banned in Israel. They should help 'em out.

Well the Saudis and UAE were allegedly planning to invade Qatar in 2017 until Secretary of State Rex Tillerson found out about it from his oil buddies and squashed it, so yeah, I'd say "hates" is pretty accurate.

Not just invade. The Saudis were planning on building a canal and turning Qatar into an island (google for salwa canal). And stick a nuclear waste dump on the Saudi side of the canal. They also blockaded Qatar which was forced to get food/basics from Turkey instead. They also closed off their airspace to Qatar, which made Qatar Air's flight paths interesting.

Mostly this was because of Qatar's refusal to join the Saudis and Emirates in their proxy wars against Iran (though Al Jazeeras reporting of the Arab spring didnt help).