Thats the point. Israel needs to have Hamas exist, so that they can have Hamas as the bad guy - the non-trusted entity that can never be welcomed into negotiation. As a result of that, they will only negotiate with the good guy - The Palestinian Authority - the only so-called legitimate representative of Palestinian people. They problem is, the good guy is not doing anything favorable for the people that they represent, and instead they become a tool to the the Israel gov itself, so that at the end of the day instead of achieving their goal of 'building a state on 1967 borders', they are actually loosing more land to the illegal settlers. Israel is of course happy with the outcome.

EDIT: I'll add below some more 'perceived' insight to this as I got more free time now

The Palestinian Authority - the only so-called legitimate representative of Palestinian people.

Why do I label the as the 'so-called representative? Because they are not legitimate Palestinian representative. Fatah lose 2006 election. They should relieve their power and transfer them to Hamas that won the Election. But they didn't. Technically they illegitimately grabbed the power given by the people to Hamas.

And how long has Palestinian Authority (Fatah) governs? Since 2006, that's about 17 years. 17 years without election. If that happens in other countries, we will call them dictator. But the West won't say anything because that will disrupt the status quo. The funny thing is, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) postponed the election in 2021 by giving a ridiculous reason: Israel has failed to confirm it will allow voting in East Jerusalem (source). The truth was, Mahmoud Abbas was afraid Fatah would lose (again) or even he would lose to others in his own party [source: Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called off next month's parliamentary elections after challengers from his own party threatened to weaken his hold on power.].

What I put forward here is to discuss what I think relevant to the article, the internal power struggle, at domestic level, that in some way led to what happened on the 7th.

I don't mind being proven wrong but I appreciate more replied that discussed on the internal issues instead of staying to the external issues (the world is to blame, ask them to stop bombing then etc). And please read the article before giving your views as the article is interesting because it was written not by a typical journalist, instead by a senior fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy who used to hold various position in the Palestinian Authority.