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

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.

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.

One clear thing about this entire catastrophe is that both Hamas and the IDF are absolutely uncaring about the fate of the Palestinian people.

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.

Money doesn't want them to.