Many analysts have asked over and over the obvious question: Why do Arabs start fights with Israel when they know before-hand that they will not gain anything but more suffering for the people they are fighting for?

To answer this question, we must first ask a very important question which is NEVER asked regarding Palestinian terror orgs: Why are there so many? Why isn't there ONE organization that leads the fight against Israel?

In order to understand the answer, we must first explain: Terror organizations are run like gangs you may see in American cities. You could ask the same question about the many different criminal gangs, or even Italian, or Russian mafias. 

The answer to this is quite simple: MONEY and POWER. 

There is no more "ideology" or "target" among Palestinian terror orgs than rival street gangs in LA or any other city. 

Each gang has a leader; charismatic, "street savvy" and strong at the top. Around him are his officers, men who the leader can more or less trust to do what he decides for them to do. Underneath them are the "players" - those little thugs of muscle who do the dirty work.
The gang has it's "symbols"; a unique tattoo, clothing, mode of life that the younger generation looks up to and makes them want to do anything to join. 

The leader sees his thugs as pawns to do his bidding, and if the get killed, he will help the family, give a great speech at their funeral and sign up more to take his place.

While the leader of the gang may initially fight and commit his own criminal actions, after some success, he remains hidden, with his women and gold chains to live the good life, thus giving an example to his officers and thugs or how great his gang is.
Then someone comes along who is sure he is charismatic enough to start his own gang. Why be a thug when you can become a leader yourself? It is not for any other reason. 

Of course, the minute the leader of the "top" gang sits too long without action, he loses. To keep up in the elite, he needs to act.
Now, one can understand better the dilemma of Hamas. To join in the fight against the PIJ and be able to tell your people that you are the best gang, or let the PIJ fight, get (hopefully) smashed by Israel and be strengthened by default?

Now to the first question we asked: How do they make MONEY and POWER out of fighting Israel, even if they lose?

The process is:

1) You fight.
2) You lose.
3) You stand among the rubble and yell: We won!
4) Arabs and Muslims echo your cry: “We won!” and then make speeches which admire you.
5) You ask Iran, Arab countries, the EU, the UN and even Joe Biden to donate money to help rebuild the destruction in Gaza
6) You start rebuilding, but first take a HUGE cut from the money donated.
7) The money that is left goes to rebuild both damages and more rockets
8) You groom the younger generation with videos, graphics and enlist the volunteers who do not go to the rival Hamas or other groups because they see you as a more macho group.
9) You wait until you are strong enough for the next fight.

After the last big operation of May 2021, "Guardians of the Wall" in which Hamas took lead role and was firmly beat – but something irregular happened. 

The Arab countries told Hamas that they would NOT put donation money in cash into their hands, but would put it in a bank where they could supervise its use. Why? From the above you understand that the Arab donors knew where most of the money would go and refused to allow this.
What was the result? Hamas, until this very day has not accepted these terms and the promised money from Arab donors NEVER arrived. 

To this day, the damage of 2021 was never repaired. Hamas stuck to their guns and said - either cash in our hands - or nothing.

Again - instead of thinking of the terror orgs as some pure ideology group fighting for their people, think of them as super-gangs, and all of the sudden many difficult questions become easy to understand.

If we needed another way to prove this, take a look at how the 600,000 Jews in the British mandate and how they fought the British and then the Arab countries that invaded the new state of Israel.

It is true that there were a few different organizations, the Palmach, Etzel, the Irgun - but they were split along ideological lines. When the British left and the Arabs invaded, they blended into one group - the IDF - and have stayed that way since. 

Their leaders, Ben-Gurion, Golda and Menachem Begin lived extremely humble lives.