Of course the underlying objective is not hostages or even Hamas - it is replacement of Palestinians by Jews. And this is what Israeli Zionist public wants. That Gaza has no "Arabs" anymore and they build nice cottages by the seaside there for themselves. They call it "making it civilized". That was the plan since 1948, when the Gaza Strip was created out of people who were expelled from their homes in what is now "Israel". The survivors of the massacres of ethnic cleansing. Back then, Zionists started the long-term plan of first making a ghetto, then slowly removing the inhabitants from even that piece of land . First they tried the "West Bank model", building settlements there and thus pushing the Gaza ghetto inmates further and further out. That did not work, because the demographic were not in Zionist favor, so they created the "kill and kill" plan - To seal Gaza off and create inhumane conditions for the population there, so that the population starts to revolt, and Israel has a pretext to kill them en masse. Now Zios lose patience and don't want to do it slowly, "mowing the lawn" anymore .The phrase "mowing the lawn" had a demographic meaning, means killing so many adults and children that Palestinian population does not threaten Israeli demographics. And of course Israeli monstrous plan had and has nothing to do with whatever Palestinians or their political leadership do to resist: armed resistance or unarmed, peaceful or angry, it does not matter. Human beings in Gaza are seen by Zionists as house pest that must be eradicated.