You’re forgetting the key aspect – they want Israel to attack. These are hardcore committed militants. They want to kill their enemies or die trying. They want other people to feel the same way, but too many Palestinians are just trying to live their lives and survive day-to-day.

By attacking Israel, they know they’re going to prompt a vicious counter attack that will kill and maim a lot of Palestinians. That’s good from the point of view of the Palestinian militants. More people who lose their loved ones to Israeli attacks means more angry people wanting to lash out. That means more of them will hate Israel even more, and be even more willing to risk their lives to try to destroy Israel.

It’s also a gift to Netanyahu and the right-wingers in Israel. They want the Israeli population to be scared and angry, because when they’re scared and angry they support the right-wingers. This instantly solves all the political and legal problems that Netanyahu had.

This is the same strategy that Osama bin Laden used with the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, and it worked perfectly. He knew that the US would flip out and overreact and kill hundreds of thousands of people as a result. He hoped they’d attack Saudi Arabia because his biggest conflict was not with the US, but with the government there. Instead the US attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, but that was almost as good. It drove recruitment for al Qaeda, and later for the Islamic State.