The simple answer is yes: Hamas’s political objective is the destruction of Israel. On a more complicated level, that objective is affected by a variety of factors, including what seems possible at the moment, internecine differences within Hamas, relations with the Palestine Authority, Hamas’s political standing at the moment, and more. The current war reflects not only the overall Hamas strategy vis-a-vis Israel but internal battles inside Hamas on how to do deal with its strategic decline since the fall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi.