You are right.
God does "force" Himself onto some people.
Paul the Apostle and Jeremiah are two good examples.
You are also right when you observe that God empowers unbelief.
What you miss in Pharoah's case is the fact that he chose to use his free will initially to resist God/Moses.
The point is that IF a person chooses to resist God He will get fed up with you and give you an eternal shove toward unbelief.
What happened to Pharoah was written, in part to warn us that God has the option to treat us like Pharoah IF we do the same toward His Son.
The amount of chances that any given person gets is only known to God.
Pharoah demonstrates that God will not be defied without consequences.
Free will is so free that even God Himself DOES NOT KNOW if a person will choose to trust Him or not given the opportunity to do otherwise.
God is ready to react in either case but He does not know for certain until a person does what they actually do.
Genesis 22:12 proves my point. " now I know " was what God told Abraham. And until that moment God did not know if Abraham feared Him and Abe was at least 120 years old in that passage.
I also want to say that this topic of yours was objectively written. Much respect to you. WT