Hamas put their civilians at huge risk by firing rockets into another country from densely populated areas. Simple as that.
They know full well that firing a rocket will produce a reaction from Israel and they know full well that more civilian deaths caused by Israeli strikes will only work in their favour.
They are essentially using the lives of Gaza civilians as political weapons and I can't see how anyone can even start to take the side of these monsters.
No, the rockets are a reaction to illegal Israeli acts, not the other way around. These rockets were fired this time because Israel illegally entered Gaza, illegally made mass arrests, of whom many would have been injured, hurt, and many completely innocent.
Israel is almost exclusively the aggressor, and the rockets are in retaliation to some Israel is doing 99% of the time.
Palestinian civilians are dying IN BETWEEN these larger conflicts, just not from bombs from planes, but small scale ground forces, taking/bulldozing homes, taking Palestinian land, etc, etc. People are acting like Israel is completely peaceful and does nothing wrong in between these conflicts, and only ever reacts to rocket fire.
If there was no threat of retaliation at all, Israel would have taken much much more of Palestine by now. If there is no cost to your actions, if there is no penalty, you wouldn't stop.
Unfortunately Israel(purely because of the funding they've had over the years) is now at a point where the cost in civilian deaths of their own is almost non existent, which is why they are being so aggressive, they know the cost is minor.
Israel does things like barging into Gaza to make mass arrests, over something they admit now they lied about, KNOWING Hamas would respond with rocket fire and knowing their own civilians would die.
The difference is they know the cost is tiny to them after years of building and military technology has improved, years of strangling Gaza(and as a result Hamas) financially leaving their "military" almost crippled.
Israel made those mass arrests knowing their own civilians could die, they were the aggressors, they started this entire conflict, they LIED as an excuse to provoke Palestine and then they've gone ultra offensive because they know the losses on their side would be small.