What did Hamas think they would achieve through October 7?

[CroccyWoccy]

I don’t normally post in this section so please forgive the potentially naive or badly phrased question (I don’t like the word ‘achieve’ but struggling to think of a better one.

Without wanting to get into whether any particular actions are justified or proportionate, it seems that it was entirely foreseeable that an attack such as the one that took place on Oct 7 would trigger an Israeli response on the scale we have seen.

With that in mind, I cannot understand Hamas’s motivation for planning such an attack, given the outcome of death and destruction with Gaza was inevitable? Or by trying to attribute some kind of rational strategy of cause and effect to Hamas, am I completely misunderstanding how they operate?

I think they wanted to trigger a regional war before saudi normalisation. Reality is since the UAE basically explicitly said that Palestine was no longer going to be a critical bit of their foreign policy the issue of Palestine has lost saliency.

I also think it’s extremely personal, Sinwar was released from prison and probably immediately started thinking about what he wanted to do to Israel. This is not unusual anymore, Putins war is probably about a personal legacy, Trump is all motivated entirely by himself etc. The USA says there is no evidence that Iran actually knew about this particular attack and Hamas was going around reminding people about “promises made” which suggests they thought that if they started something that their friends had committed to helping (fairly sure that was directed at Hezbollah).

Gaza has been out of the news and replaced with Ukraine who are now getting money and attention. They thought they would bring the ire of Israel who would then attack Gaza and then the leaders (sitting in their mansions in Qatar) could advertise what a terrible life Gazan's have and they need more money that they can then siphon off and not give to their people.

And to disrupt the peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel

Two birds really

Well, if so, it worked. Now we CAN all see what a terrible life the Gazans have been leading and what monstrous neighbours they have.

Not sure that

And what horrific leaders they have that use children as shields and canon fodder.

And how horrific that while human shields might deter other countries, the IDF doesn’t care and just bombs children in their thousands anyway.

I agree.

This.

It’s not a conflict over land though is it, it’s a religious conflict. When Hamas attacked the Israeli’s they did so in the way of Jihad raping women, taking sex slaves, beheading and taking possessions. Same combination as happened to the Yazidi women and the Chibook schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram.
Hamas want the Jews to be exiled from Israel and many Israeli people are refugees from neighbouring Muslim countries who are intolerant to Jews.
In 1948, there were between 758,000 and 881,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,600. In some Arab states, such as Libya, which was about 3% Jewish, the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few dozen to a few hundred Jews remain.

I’m not condoning the bombing of innocent civilians in Gaza but I see how they would fight for their last stronghold as it is they have been exiled from the rest of the region.

I agree.

No it is not a religious conflict. It may be divided along predominantly religious lines but it is not about religion.

The Palestinians are stateless and most of them live either in Gaza, which has been described as both an open air prison or the world's largest concentration camp, or the West Bank where the Palestinians live under Israeli military law but the settlers live under Israeli civil law. A few live in Israel and nominally have equal rights but many report experiencing discrimination and they could not marry someone from the occupied territories and move their spouse to Israel, they would have to forfeit their right to live in Israel and move to the occupied territory where their spouse lived.

A solution to their statelessness was no one's priority and seemed to be slipping further down the list of anyone's concerns. They depended on Israel's brutal response to their incursion and violence in Israel to have any impact. We can be appalled at the atrocities they committed but you can not deny that Israel's retaliation has facilitated them in achieving their objective. The whole world is watching now.

I can’t see how this can be seen as a win for Hamas as tensions between the two populations will be raised again over the next decade and the Israeli’s and the Palestinians will be less likely than ever to settle for a political two state solution.

the Palestinians will be less likely than ever to settle for a political two state solution.

On Sky news last night it was an Israeli ambassador who dismissed the idea of a two-state solution.

https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-war-ambassador-says-israel-will-not-accept-two-state-solution-13029909

A solution to their statelessness was no one's priority and seemed to be slipping further down the list of anyone's concerns. They depended on Israel's brutal response to their incursion and violence in Israel to have any impact. We can be appalled at the atrocities they committed but you can not deny that Israel's retaliation has facilitated them in achieving their objective. The whole world is watching now.

The world may be watching but what good is that doing? The propsect of any peace or settlement that will improve the situation of ordinary Palestinians is further away now than it has been for decades and meanwhile they are suffering horrifically.

I don't want to suggest that there exists some kind of satisfactory answer that "justifies" what happened on Oct 7, but the idea that anyone would rationally think that the attackes would help Palestinians seems absurd.

I think if you hated Israel anyway you think this.

I think is you didn't have a pre-existing hatred of Israel you realise what viciously murderous and brutal enemies Israel has, you realise why Israel has blockades to keep those people out of Israel, and you realise that those enemies don't even care about their own people, as they hide in their tunnels or other countries and let their own citizens be slaughtered as a result of the slaughter that they (Hamas) deliberately brought on their own people. And then they even celebrate the murder of their own people as ' martyrs'.

The only optimistic thing I heard about how all this kill-fest is resolved was on the radio today where the journalist talked about how the horror the mass slaughter of WW2 led to long term peace in Europe. He said there were a lot of 'Ifs' along the way, but at least that was a possibility.

We can but hope.

To answer your question OP, I think Hamas were trying to destroy any chance of a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Israel. That is why they publicly glorified their utterly hideous, nightmare-ish cruelty and torture and sexual torture. And why they targeted the peace supporting communities in Israel. They don't want anyone to support a peaceful resolution anymore.

The world is watching and only the double standards rhetoric will be repeated in future disagreements and conflict. For example the west saying you can't do that to country X and the leader from X country stating well what happened to Palestine then if you're so concerned about international law and human rights you were happy to facilitate that.

Ah so because other countries killed people in wars it’s ok to keep on doing it. That’s Israel’s justification, is it? Thousands killed in world war 2 so it’s ok?

And no, I didn’t like Israel’s violent, racist behaviour before Oct 7th. Just as I loathe their savagery since Oct 7th. Which its defenders try to justify by comments like the stupid one made above.

The world is watching

The world sure is. Unfortunately for Israel. In spite of all the journalists they’ve banned and killed they can’t censor this under the carpet.

Netanyahu's USP is claiming that he's the only person who can prevent a two state solution. Likud, his political party, has never supported a two state solution.

The aim of the Gaza blockade was to put all "two state" negotiations on ice indefinitely. Israel intermittently enter Gaza to "mow the grass", this usually means finding some pretext to kill hundreds of civilians and destroy homes and infrastructure as a mechanism to keep the Palestinians compliant with their imprisonment.

Israel continue to claim that the Palestinians have rejected all offers of a two state solution and yet an American official (name escapes me right now) stated that at the Camp David negotiations the Palestinians made far more concessions that the Israelis. One of the main sticking points is "right of return". Jewish people who have never even been to Israel have "right of return" but forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees do not. Does that sound fair?

I think they wanted to upset the status quo and provoke an attack from Israel that would garner international sympathy and support. They needed Palestinian children to die to achieve this, and they were fine with that...but I bet their own children were in a place of safety.

@Thereissomelight I hope your comment wasn't aimed at mine because justifying Israel's atrocities now and pre 7th Oct opens back doors for future conflicts. I mean right now who would take the wests stance in democracy, human rights seriously when they are funding the killing of civilians and a life of living in dungeons for decades?

@tealightfire
I completely agree that this savagery will fan the flames of terrorism for many years to come. All those traumatised and orphaned children are going to come of age at some point and many of them will want revenge. Ffs why do you think so many people IN THE WEST are protesting and want a ceasefire? For the sake of Gazans, innocent Israelis, and the whole bloody rest of us too.

Was that in response to me? Is that honestly what you took from the WW2 reference? If so, that is an astonishingly wrong reading.

If so , please go back and read again.

Yes they did want that. I think we’re agreed.

And luckily for Hamas Israel rose to the challenge and murdered thousands of innocent children, so now everyone has much more awareness of and sympathy with Palestine.

World War 2’s kill-fest led to peace because everyone was so shocked that they set up the UN and the ICC to reduce the risk of a recurrence.

Israel has blatantly ignored both.