It is always uncertain to speculate about undisclosed motives, but in this instance it is unavoidable. After the June 12 kidnapping incident Israel both initiated an anti-Hamas revenge campaign in the West Bank arresting hundreds and engaging in state terror, and incited anti-Palestinian rage among the Israeli population leading to several horrible vengeful incidents. Israel also made several air strikes against Gaza, seemingly to provoke Hamas rockets so as to have a pretext for the launch of Protective Edge, the name given to its military operation.
I believe the true motives of this hideous attack on Gaza are two: first, to warn the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah that moves toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah will not be tolerated; second, to remove Hamas as an obstacle in the Israeli moves to incorporate most of the West Bank into Israel, and move toward an Israeli one-state solution. The Knesset just elected Reuven Rivlin as the next President of Israel, and he is a prominent Israeli ‘one-stater’.
Can it go on killing innocent civilians in the name of dealing with Hamas militants?
Governments, including in the Arab world, have not been willing to act in solidarity with the Palestinian victims of Israeli criminality, partly for sectarian reasons and partly because preoccupied with their own stability in a turbulent region. There is an outcry at the grassroots level, including in the United States. There will be a big move toward support for the global solidarity movement, especially its BDS campaign (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). Israel is increasingly in the position that apartheid South Africa found itself in during the late 1980s. It is not only a rogue state, it is quickly becoming a pariah state.