Israel responded with a series of helicopter raids into Gaza, targeting Hamas officials, including a failed strike at Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a top Hamas leader.
Though Israel argues such attacks weaken Hamas and will eventually destroy it, many analysts on both sides disagree.
The attacks, which often kill bystanders in Gaza streets, increase Palestinian anger with Israel and create a spike in Hamas' popularity, Jerbawi said.
"If you could dismantle [Hamas] by assassinating two or three people then I think Israel would have done this a long time ago," he said.
Nachman Tal, at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said it would be impossible to uproot Islamic militant groups like Hamas unless the Israeli government was willing to kill thousands of people, as Syria did in the 1970s and Iraq in the 1980s in their battles with Muslim extremists.
Abbas "is not able to give the goods that Israel wants," Tal said.
The support for Hamas among Palestinians has driven many Israelis to despair.
Columnist Ben-Dror Yemini said the Palestinians' determination belies the long-held Israeli notion that Arabs "understand only force."
"I wish they did understand force," he wrote in the Maariv daily. "Here they are, beaten and humiliated and wounded, and it only drives them on. The list of volunteers for the martyrs' brigades only gets longer, even though each such lunatic knows he will cause his family harm and their house will be destroyed. They don't care. They don't understand force."
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