Understanding Hamas

Why is Hamas acting the way it does in the war in Gaza and why does it behave it does in the indirect negotiations with Israel? Hamas has prepared for this war for two decades and has a fixed long-term strategy with long beforehand decided-on military tactics. Hamas is well-prepared and has for many years trained for this war. Hamas is not going to sign a ceasefire agreement just because the President of the United States wants them to. Hamas’ strategy and tactics do not change merely because its leaders change whether through assassination or otherwise. It is true that Hamas previously agreed to a temporary ceasefire which included release of hostages but this was because Hamas at that point was exhausted and desperate for a temporary ceasefire. Why would Hamas want to keep the hostages and slowly let them die? Simply in order to break Israel’s internal solidarity. Israel has much better intelligence on Hamas than have the United States and understands what Hamas is doing while apparently the US does not. Both Hamas and Israel understand that a ceasefire agreement would last for at most two weeks before hostilities are resumed. Hamas understands that Israel will resume the war once Hamas again sends terror rockets against Israel so why release the Israeli hostages? The point is that once the temporal armistice process is complete, the ceasefire is unlikely to last more than two weeks and with that the war will resume. The question is therefore why is Hamas engaging in indirect negotiations with Israel? The answer is that Hamas does it to gain international legitimacy and highly successfully so.