As someone who has had this opinion “Sisko is a war criminal who destroyed a planet’s biosphere” I encourage you to rewatch the episode.
the “refugees” are terrorists who developed the bomb Sisko used, he just returned it from cardassian DNA to human DNA
this is not about a personal vendetta, this is about the treaty with cardassia that will save lives.
These terrorists are jeopardizing peace just because they aren’t willing to relocate, not because they have a spiritual connection with the land (“TNG:Journey’s End”) but because they “Already built a home here” . The settlers Picard was going to remove by force actually joined the cardassians because they didn’t want to leave, but the Maqius are so racist they were willing to use said weapon to make the planet uninhabitable to cardassians
on racism: Eddington says “the Maqius are not killers” after blowing up a cardassian vessel.
yes they did have a vendetta but Sisko played that aspect of this conflict so Eddington would turn himself in.
It’s not confirmed in the show or anything, but I doubt the Maqius were only going to use that weapon defensively.