Maybe the whole world is stupid

Probably every month or so when I lived at home, I would get into a political argument with my parents. Usually, it came down to them saying something along the lines of hey, you're too young to understand everything.
I don't really agree with this attack on my omnicience, but I still try to avoid looking like I think I know everything. But there are some things that, like the noble groundhog, sort of force me out of this den of artificial humility to stand up, look around, and say, "wow, the world has chicken-shit for brains."
The way the US is dealing with Palestine is one such situation.
I don't know why we are this dumb. Seriously, the way we are handling this is reminiscent of some hormone driven teen trying to impress the girl with whom he is "goin' steady." We are so afraid of looking weak that we are willing to let the whole middle east go to hell in a poorly made handbasket.
Anyway, here's why I think this. Basically, you want the palestinians to not want to kill us and to not follow fundamentalist groups. But the reason they are following fundamentalist groups is because they have been the palestinian people's biggest supporters. Seriously, Hamas has helped palestinians, whether through schools, etc, and help = influence. That's why they are a problem, and it's why they are popular. They are like the YMCA with guns.
What we should do is eliminate the monopoly Hamas has on helping people. Give them some competition. But instead we pull everything out of palestine. If anything, we are making Hamas the only option for aid there is, only strengthening them.
Now, their thinking is that by pulling help out of palestine, we can force the palestinian people to associate their ever-worsening situation with their leaders. That or Hamas will give in. There are several problems with this idea.
First, we aren't the only sources of support. Middle eastern countries are going to help them, and the last thing we need is a palestine that is more closely aligned with Iran, the Saudis, etc.
Second, it's immoral. We are playing global chess with people's lives. Being manipulative is a cruddy thing to do, but it's worse when it begins hurting already hurt people.
Third, it polarizes people. What this does do, even they agree, is polarize people onto one of the two sides. The problem is that this doesn't help anyone. We don't want intense polarization, even if the average public opinion shifts toward us. Say you have country a. In country a 5% dislike the US enough to be violent. 10% doesn't like us, but not enough to be violent. 70% is sort of neutral. Another 10% likes us/hates violence. Another 5% really, really, likes us and does something active to stop violence.
Then you polarize is. So it looks like this: 10%, 15%, 30%, 20%, 15%. In terms of an average, we're doing a lot better. A lot more people like us more than their current leaders. Problem is that given that the method of terrorism dispropotionately assists small numbers of radical people in terms of effectiveness, a benefit to terrorists is much more efficiently used than a benefit to non-terrorist groups. This is because it's easier to strap a bomb around oneself than it is to defend against this person.
Ultimately, though, the current ideas on dealing with Palestine come from bad assumptions. It assumes we need to treat other countries as secondary to our amazing "superpower"-ness. It assumes that we should be playing global chess. It doesn't allow for the fact that we don't need to be these people's parents and that the reason it's that fucked up with to begin with is because we've tried in the past. The "tough love" thing doesn't work on the international scale and it has failed before. Now we are trying again. What's the definition for insanity again?