Inside Hamas, a very different debate has erupted. The harsh response of Israeli soldiers on Monday has created “strong pressure” inside the movement for a military response, said Basem Naim, a former minister of health in Gaza who now works with the Hamas international relations office. “People say ‘If we have the capacity to resort to armed resistance, why not do it?’”

But the Hamas leadership was resisting such “emotional” calls, Mr. Haim said, in recognition of the rare public relations coup that their movement, once better known for suicide attacks and rocket strikes, had attained this week.

The strains of the blockade on Gaza, which Israel and Egypt imposed, citing security reasons, have been obscured in recent years by other crises in the Middle East. Now Hamas hopes to capitalize on the widespread outrage at images of Gazans being shot by Israeli solders to pressure Israel into making some concessions.

The effort seemed to make headway Friday with the vote by the United Nations council.

“Those responsible for violations must in the end be held accountable,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the head of the council, said in a statement Friday. “What do you become when you shoot to kill someone who is unarmed, and not an immediate threat to you? You are neither brave, nor a hero.”

Israel, which considers the council biased, said in a statement by the Foreign Ministry that the council “once again has proved itself to be a body made up of a built-in, anti-Israel majority, guided by hypocrisy and absurdity.”

As the Gaza protests evolved, they had a series of shifting goals in addition to casting Israel in a negative light: breaching the fence to symbolize the return to the lost lands; challenging the blockade to ease economic distress; and, ultimately, expressing Palestinian rejection of moving the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.