I can only think that Hamas thought that Israel my initiate a land attack on the Gaza Strip but they would be protected by holding hostages, using their tunnel system to defend themselves, and other middle eastern countries intervening to come to their defense. I don't think they ever thought Israel would flatten the Gaza Strip, while other middle eastern countries would sit back and not take military action.

Personally, I think it's pretty amazing that Israel continues to bombard the Gaza Strip and the US is looking like peacemakers during this conflict. The US is usually portrayed as the bad guy no matter what. I mean, we can send billions of dollars to help Haiti recover from an earthquake and we're still portrayed as the bad guys ......

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