It just seems crazy to me given the power imbalance. A cynical part of me suspects that things are playing out exactly as some evil strategists hoped they would, which, given all the children dying, is super-depressing.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
The US never negotiates with “terrorists”, they fund “freedom fighters” to kill the terrorists and maybe recover some of the hostages.
Hamas likely wanted to force a confrontation in order to make it abundantly clear who’s paying for which “freedom fighters”… even if everyone knew for a long time, did very little about it, and is likely to do very little more either way.