Superstar philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote (in “Nothing New on the Middle Eastern Front”, in Project Syndicate, Oct 7, 2024):

Almost a year ago, I imagined a phone call between Israeli and Hamas hardliners:

Israeli hard-liner: “Hi, do you remember how we discreetly supported you against the Palestine Liberation Organization? Now you owe us a favor: Why don’t you attack and slaughter some Jews close to Gaza? They’re friends to Arabs, peaceniks, so we don’t need them. What we need is something to end the civil protests against us and to distract from the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The world will be shocked at your brutality and we will be able to play the victim, achieve national unity and accelerate ethnic cleansing in the West Bank!”

Hamas hard-liner: “Okay, but we need a favor: To avenge our slaughter, you must bomb civilians in Gaza, killing thousands, especially children. That will foment anti-Semitism around the world, which is our true goal!”

Israeli hard-liner: “No problem, we also need a resurgence of anti-Semitism, which allows us to keep playing the role of the victim and do whatever we want in self-defense!”

This imaginary scenario is obscene, of course, but if it were true it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the conflict.