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It was a bad war, but what other choice did Israel have? Not retaliating or trying to get the hostages would have been politically untenable. Immediately entering negotiations for the return of the hostages would have had the effect of legitimizing hostage taking as a means of diplomacy. the only real option was to invade and hope that Hamas kept the hostages alive for leverage and wait until Hamas was sufficiently weakened to be in a position to make a deal. And that's just a deal, not necessarily a good deal.
Other choice? Accept the deal and do a prisoner exchange in return for the hostages. No war, no ICC prosecutions, no IDF members committing suicide due to the depravity of their actions, Israelis would be able to travel/holiday without worrying about getting convicted for crimes against humanity/genocide, no Hezbollah rocket campaign destroying their economy, no Houthi rocket campaign making their ports go bankrupt...
Israel refused to take the hostages back multiple times because they preferred to go in and wipe out Gaza in order to try and ethnically cleanse and then settle the territory. Itamar Ben Gvir said multiple times that he had made sure to sink any deal involving the hostages being returned, and there's a decent chance that Smotrich resigns from government because getting the hostages back isn't worth not being able to murder more Palestinians and steal their territory.
Your beliefs seem to be:
That Israel should have taken no action after October 7 accept to comply with Hamas's demands for the return of the hostages.
That Israel wants to kill or remove all 2 million people from Gaza and settle the area themselves.
Would this be accurate?
My personal belief is that Israel should adopt a single-state solution with full democracy and franchise for everyone within the borders of Israel and Palestine. As for number 1... yes, I would prefer if they negotiated a return of the hostages. It might seem like a bit of a weak response if you hatched out of an egg on October 6th and have no prior knowledge of the region, but Israel has done far more and far worse to the Palestinians in the past. It would have been better to bury the hatchet and sue for peace on October 6th, but... well, 2 is accurate. I don't think there's any real arguments against this claim given that it is the official position of many members of the Israeli government. Not only do they want to do this, they have sunk multiple deals to return the hostages in order to keep the violence and ethnic cleansing going.
And the Palestinians would promptly elect a government that at least attempts to do far worse to the Israelis than the Israelis are doing or have done to Palestinians.
I don't believe that would be the case if there was a legitimate, good-faith effort to bring the two populations together and live in peace. It'd be a complicated process that required a lot of time and effort, as well as participation from the international community - you would of course have to have protections against retributive genocide. It wouldn't be easy or free of complications, but I think it'd be much better than the current apartheid situation.
This is incongruent with the population of Gaza being given political power. Even if Israel for the last 50 years had engaged in solely defensive actions, accepted mass bombings as a thing that happens, and never did any counterstrikes, the Arab Palestinians would still try to genocide them.
How exactly do you know this? Do you have access to some kind of magical or scientific device that lets you understand people so well that you can definitively state how they would act in an alternative reality that's extremely different to our own? I personally don't think that the jews are such awful people that living near them for fifty years with no problems or violence would make people want to exterminate them. That said, you've left a few things out - would there still be an apartheid state? Would there still be settlements on Palestinian land? What exactly do you mean by "solely defensive actions"?
Do you hold yourself to this standard on baseless conjecture? How exactly do you know that the Palestinians will "live in peace" if they are fully integrated with a single state solution? The Gazans, who voted in the Kill all Jews Party, will just get along in Israel if they have representation? The ultraorthodox Jews who have been seizing land in the West Bank will be ok with sharing? What is your magical or scientific device that indicates Gazans will play nice, when have they ever done? What happened in other ME states, like Jordan and Lebanon, that accepted in large numbers Palestinians? What evidence do you have a one state solution would turn out well?
Israel: a nuclear armed state, with 5th generation jet fighters, top tier intelligence agencies. If you are wrong about integrating Palestinians into the Israeli state, and all current and historical evidence points to you being wrong, you will hand all of this over to the people who voted in Hamas.
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