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I haven't read anything about what hamas thought would happen after the October 7th attack. Did they think Israel would do nothing because hamas had hostages?
Or were they trying to prompt a huge response? Certainly the abhorrent despicable acts perpetrated against women that were detailed in the article are something no one would ignore. Similar to Bucha in Ukraine, the horror won't make people surrender, just the opposite.
Obvious answer is they wanted Israel to invade Gaza.
They had no significant chance of beating them so why push for an invasion?
Propaganda, division and pulling other arab countries into a larger war.
Basically they Hamas wanted their own people to suffer....crazy
Don't forget that the Hamas leaders are living in luxury as billionaires in Qatar. If the Israeli response kills a few thousand Palestinians, then Hamas' leaders will shrug their shoulders and say "sounds like good PR" while lounging in a hot tub.
Their whole goal was got get Israel to look bad for killing people, it's also why they don't make efforts to separate the civilians from their militants.
They certainly wanted to provoke a huge reaction -- starting a war and derailing normalization of relations with other states in the ME. They were probably a bit like the dog that caught the car. It's doubtful they thought they would be as successful as they were. They were likely hoping the hostages would temper Israel's response. They probably didn't anticipate the success and brutality of the attack making the hostages less of a factor in Israel's decision-making.
I believe they are like most closed-minded religious fanatics, forethought doesn't exist. They live in the moment because they're ready to be with their god any time so any act is forgivable after death. The same can be said about Israel and the scale of its reaction and ability to slaughter children and civilians. Any act is forgivable if done for their god.
One clear thing about this entire catastrophe is that both Hamas and the IDF are absolutely uncaring about the fate of the Palestinian people.
This is what some people who cheer on Hamas don't seem to understand. Hamas was elected into power, yes, but they claimed to be moderates. Even so, they won a plurality, not a majority. Then, they cancelled all future elections and revealed themselves to be extremists.
The aid that goes to the Gaza Strip is either seized by the leaders of Hamas (who are billionaires living in luxury in Qatar) or are used to buy weapons to attack Israel. Very little actually goes to the Palestinian people.
Even if we set anything Israel-related aside, Hamas needs to go for the well being of the Palestinian people. At the very least, there should be free, fair, and regular elections so the government does what the people want instead of just what some billionaires in Qatar (who don't need to deal with the consequences) want.
Unfortunately for Palestinians, many Israelis do care
I haven’t been able to find a good answer to that either.
One of the speculations that I’ve heard kicked around is that they were trying to do something that would light a fuse, but there was no follow up. Hamas isn’t a bunch of student rebels out of Les Miserables, throwing caution to the wind but not having done the actual groundwork. It was a small attack that happened to have what I suspect was a far larger impact than they imagined. They obviously were doing prep work for the attack itself, if the stories we’re reading are to be believed, but it was a modest-sized incursion without coordination with either the West Bank or Lebanon assets. I think it was a terrorist attack - and I am not someone who throws that word around lightly - but I don’t think that they thought it was going to be this big of a hit.
I think it’s analogous to 9/11 where OBL wasn’t expecting the whole towers falling thing, and while trying to provoke a response, the US over-response exceeded his expectations. I don’t know if Hamas will survive this as an organization, but it’s really affected the global perception of Israel.
No it was not a small attack. It was light infantry against a full miltary but not small. It was planned and they stockpiled weapons and material to last months. What they were not expecting was to walk over the IDF military on the border (none of the videos released by the IDF show Hamas doing this). They were not expecting to get throught the defences so easily to get to the settlements. Remember most of the population of Gaza was ethnically cleansed from the land that these settlements are built on.
They are still fighting. The IDF is using tanks in urban warfare (this is a big tactical no no), so Hamas have the IDF where they want them. Even 2 months into the fighting we still see daily videos of IDF tanks (USD 3 million) being destroyed by rocket launchers (USD 200).
Strategically the Palestinians were being thrown under a bus by the rest of the Arabs so this attack put Hamas in control. It also destroyed the image of Israeli comptence which is a huge propaganda win.
If you look at the prisoner exchanges and the interviews afterwards you see the Israeli prisoners were treated well in captivity and the release was well managed and competent. This especially does not align with the story in the NY Times here. The release of the Palestinian prisoners was chaotic (tear gas was used in some places) and the prsioners were tortured and released with broken bones in some cases.
Although some of those kidnapped from Israel were given adequate food, clothing, bedding, and other necessities (what I assume you mean by "treated well"), others were subjected to psychological torture, denied lifesaving medicine and basic medical treatment, and assaulted, including children.
All of them were taken from their homes at gunpoint, some of them pulled from under the bodies of their murdered families, some of them non-fatally shot or seriously injured. Some of them have no homes or families to return to. The hostage release appeared orderly because Hamas threatened to harm their other family still held hostage if they said anything bad, and because Israel and Egypt worked together from Oct. 8 to carefully plan the safe and orderly transfer. Hamas in the West Bank and the PA had basically no plan to receive the released Palestinian prisoners, so there was chaos.
The whole "hostages were treated well" is such a weird talking point to me.
Weren't some hostages also drugged so they'd be "happy and smiling" for the cameras when released? I heard that, but don't know the authenticity.
Edit: I found many news sources that said they were. I know some folks don't trust anything Israel says so take reports like this with a grain of salt. Still, it's been confirmed that many of the hostages were drugged while in captivity. Especially the kids - to keep them quiet. (Anyone with little kids knows they can be loud while scared and this must have been extremely scary. As a father, the reaction of "drug the little kids" makes me angry.)
I am convinced the goal was to provoke a strong response from Israel. The reason is they knew the strong response from Israel would be disproportional and would damage relations between Israel and the rest of the ME.
Israel was approaching normalized relations with most of the major Arab nations around it, most importantly SA. Normalized relations with Israel would likely mean significantly less political and economical support coming to Hamas. Without outside resources Hamas is neutered.
So, seeing the real possibility of a large reduction in their economic and political power in the horizon they took desperate action to stop it, knowing full well the outcome.
Hamas wanted a response. Similar to how Al’Quada wanted a response from the US after the World Trade Center attacks. They knew Israel would bring the smoke after an attack like that.
More importantly Russia and Iran wanted a response to stir up the Middle East.
Israel and Saudi were in negotiations to become allies which would have swung the balance of power away from Iran.
Russia just wanted a distraction to take the US focus away from Ukraine.
The tools on this site that root for Hamas or the Houthis are just pawns caught up in the propaganda.
You're only going to get speculation on these forums.
The only way to know for sure what Hamas expected is to speak directly to their leaders.