I see the topic of "what was the Hamas thinking??!!" coming up here and there. Both online and offline.
They are way out of their league compared to the Israel Defense Forces. Ofc, they won't fight an open battle but asymmetrical war, but there is no question, the Jewish army can flatten the whole Gaza strip, and has enough man- and firepower to go through the place, house to house, rubble heap to rubble heap and liquidate any armed Palestine there. Probably causing harm to many civilians on the way.
Now that I'm thinking about it, even their attack wasn't even that high in volume. How many soldier/guerrilla/terrorist/whatever of theirs went out and participated the attack into Israel on foot (by glider, boat, bike, etc.). Really just the amount of rockets was large. How many man left Gaza? Hundreds? A thousand? That's nothingburger.
Hmm. Maybe in a defensive scenario... They estimate the Hamas troops about 40K. Right now Israel is amassing 500K. But that 500K aren't all boots on the ground who have to go in and poke into the strong points of the Hamas. And they aren't all proficient in all that. If it comes to a ground operation, many of them will die. I imagine the Hamas has prepared bunkers, tunnels, and traps. I'm sure the IDF (and the assorted intelligence agencies) are know this. So will they move into Gaza? Or will they be fine by just levelling it? Either way humanitarian catastrophe (implications of war crimes, genocide) is guaranteed. Probably right at this point it's already guaranteed.
And probably Hamas was aware of this too.
So was this their endgame?
Provoking Israel for a reaction is one thing, only the means, the real events, the real consequences will come after that. They pushed the first domino, but will the rest take the route they planned for it? Or will they fall into some other direction and trigger other events?