That's why you can't conceive of their motives being anything other than what yours would be in the same situation.

Yes, they were just off a major fight, and looking for another. Why not? It happens. It happens a lot in daily life, in both large affairs and small. Why, look at Microsoft. Do they ever get tired of making, and then fending off, enemies left and right? And it can happen after losing the previous fight, too. Do the Palestinians ever get tired of losing, and decide to just settle for what they have? No.

Your scorn is a poor substitute for the imagination to conceive that other people think and feel differently than you would, even in other eras. Please forgive me for bringing the cultural context and the rest of the historical context into it, thus upsetting your preconceived notions.