I have been, from my perspective there is truth to what you are saying. I would agree on the following points: If it weren't for the religious extremists in Gaza the majority of Gazans would be fine to co-exist with Israel. It would lessen the spiral of aggressive reactivity between both people. Perhaps it would mean Israel would be less aggressive too.
Gaza and Palestine have been under a military occupation ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice for decades. Under international law, occupied people have a right to resist that - that's not extremism.
Gaza
had a 98% literacy rate, higher than Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Gulf states, all while under a brutal occupation. Calling 2.3 million people "religious extremists" is a pretty big stretch when you're talking about one of the most educated populations in the region. That infrastructure is now rubble.
And the idea that Palestinians would be fine to co-exist "if it weren't for the extremists" kind of has it backwards. The PLO recognised Israel in 1993 and accepted a two-state solution, what they got back was settlements doubling, land confiscation, and a military blockade.
Netanyahu's government actively funded Hamas for years to divide Palestinian leadership and kill the case for a Palestinian state - then pointed to Hamas as the reason peace wasn't possible.
You can't "co-exist" with an occupier who controls your water, electricity, borders, and airspace, who calculates the minimum caloric intake for your population, and who uses the term "mowing the lawn" to describe military operations to thin population numbers at will.
The occupation and Israel are the obstacle. And if we're going to talk about extremists preventing peace, Israel has open advocates for genocide, ethnic cleansing and annexation sitting in its current cabinet. That asymmetry of power matters when we're deciding where to point the finger.
Israel has the US, UK, EU and the majority of the western alliance backing its actions and funding its war. Palestinians have no standing army, no great powers in their corner fighting for their self-determination. So they have to fight for it themselves, against arguably the world's greatest powers. Hamas fills that void.
And now Palestinians can't even show the world what's being done to them. Legacy media barely cover the mass killings while algorithms across social media now actively suppress content from Palestine. The asymmetry isn't just military, it's informational.
